Comments on the Net: Can’t Live with Them Can’t Avoid Them

Once you’ve bitten your cheek, it’s impossible not to bite it again and again. For me that is how I feel about reading the comments that follow on-line blogs and reports about education. I know it is going to hurt and annoy me, but I find myself irresistibly drawn to do it again and again.

The thing is that I want to hear other opinions. I want to sharpen my thinking by listening to the thoughts, objections and experiences of others. Each complication introduced to a topic requires an effort of mind either to make it fit into my paradigm, figure out why it doesn’t fit, or to decide that the paradigm itself needs modification or scrapping. This helps me move a bit closer to wisdom. But the problem is that far too many of the responses veer towards the rude, the crude, the racist, the ignorant, or the cliché.

It’s worse, of course, when the article itself is one of the masterpieces of partial truth that masquerade as news. I meet these quite often in reading articles or blogs dealing with education.  When I read one of these fabulous mythologizations of my profession, I always feel certain that other readers will call the author on it. I expect this despite years of experiences that suggest otherwise. Surely, anyone who would take the time to read and then respond to such an article will be a person who has done some serious thinking based on reality! Unfortunately, this is seldom the case.

Recently, I read a piece that said that teachers hate creative students. It cited studies from1962 to 1992[1] which defined personality traits of “creative” people and then indicated that these are traits that teachers identify as ones they find annoying in the classroom. In fact, the interviewed educators identify these traits as obnoxious. The writer of the article concludes that teachers are repressing creativity in their classrooms in favor of compliance, and, since creativity is of the essence in order to compete in the global marketplace, obviously, teachers are responsible for America’s fall from dominance.

I was incensed at the use of studies that were from two to five decades old; at the misunderstanding of the structure, purpose and meaning of the studies; at the illogic of the writer’s conclusions; and at the fact that the article was given space at the Huffington Post[2]. Surely, I told myself, the respondents would be choking either with laughter or with rage at the sloppiness of the writing and the thinking behind it. At the same time, the voice of experience in my head was screaming, “Don’t, for God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t read the comments. They will make you crazy!”

But even as I was thinking it, my hand was on the mouse scrolling to the bottom of the page. Sure enough, instead of pointing out the limitations of the studies or questioning the way they have been misinterpreted, the readers were accepting the idea as true, and putting forth their own unsubstantiated theories about why it is so, what should be done about teachers and schools, how unions are ruining the country and how Obama was a mind-controlling megalomaniac.

I should stop reading but I can’t. I’m searching vainly for the person who mentions that teachers are advisors for literary magazines, choruses, drama clubs, forensics, chess, art, and band. That much of the creativity that thrills us began as an idea during one of these activities. Surely there will be one person who mentions the junior high school project assigned by their social studies teacher that brought to life the creative spark that led to their lifelong love of the subject.

If not that, then certainly someone will dispute the idea that creativity is limited to people with certain personality traits. Aren’t compliant people also capable of creativity in areas of interest? Don’t, in fact, the best students in a class get to be thought of as the best as much for their creativity in going beyond the formulas and formats they are given as for their ability to internalize those forms to begin with? Someone should note that the vast majority of teachers are thrilled by really thoughtful work that goes beyond what was expected. They share this work with other teachers and all shake their heads in wonder.

And isn’t anybody going to question the idea that teachers should be allowing obnoxious behaviors in their classrooms because those behaviors indicate creativity?  I know better than to expect that any of the readers would check the author’s sources, but if they did, they would find this statement from Arthur J. Cropley whose 1992 study was the latest work cited,

“Associated with the spiritual view of creativity is the notion that any restrictions on children’s behavior will crush their creativity. In its strongest form, this view holds that expecting children to be familiar with bodies of facts, or to regulate their behavior in accordance with anybody else’s wishes, blocks creativity. However, although excessive dependence on external sources of evaluation and excessive conformity to social conventions, may well be anticreative, it does not seem likely that creativity is automatically encouraged by the fostering of selfishness, arrogance, contempt for everything but one’s own judgment, or by ignorance of the three Rs. Marjoram (1988) explicitly rejected the idea of “freedom” (in the sense of doing whatever you like) as a precondition for creativity in the classroom. His experience suggests that the opposite is true.” (Cropley, p. 5)

Page five, page six, page twenty-three of the responses and I’m still seeing them flowing in the same tired argument streams.  “My teachers all stink and they get paid whether they teach me or not.” Fine, but do they hate creativity?  “My son’s teachers are incapable of understanding his need to express himself.” Really? And is anyone capable of understanding your son’s need to stand up in the middle of class and turn and bend to fart loudly in the face of the girl sitting next to him? “Unions demand better pensions than those given in the private secter (sic) and are bankruping (sic) the country.” Uh, does anyone here remember the topic?

I’m defeated. I skip the rest and head for the box where I can leave my response.   It will be response number 498 and no one will get to see it, but at least I can be sure that at least one person responded to the topic, at least one person will bring up the weaknesses in the author’s argument, at least one person will bring to the board actual knowledge of what goes on in the actual classrooms of thousands of actual teachers.

I type my response and send it.  Then I realize that this, in fact, is my problem. The reason I keep looking for thoughtful, knowledgeable, respectful responses, is because I know there is one person who is trying to write in that way…me.

Early in his study, Cropley writes, “In this book creativity is conceived of primarily as the capacity to get ideas, especially original, inventive, and novel ideas.” (Cropley, p. 6) Whether or not this is expected in education, it has become increasingly obvious to me, that it is not expected in the public responses to blogs and articles about education.

Bibliography

Bachtold, Louise M. “Effects of learning environment on verbal creativity of gifted students”. Psychology in the Schools, pp 226 – 228. Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Oxford, England. 1974.

Cropley, Arthur J. Fostering Creativity. Greenwood Publishing Group. Westport, Connecticut. 1992.

Dettmer, Peggy. “Improving Teacher Attitudes toward Characteristics of the Creatively Gifted”. Gifted Child Quarterly, v 25 n1 pp11-16. 1981.

Getzels, Jacob W., Jackson, Philip W. Creativity and Intelligence: Explorations with Gifted Students. Wiley Publications. Oxford, England. 1962.

Tabarrok,  Alex. “Teachers Don’t Like Creative Students”. Dec. 12, 2011. www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/12/teachers-don’t-like-creative-students.html

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[1] Bachtold1974; Cropley, 1992, Dettmer, 1981; Getzels and Jackson, 1962, Torrance, 1963

[2] Alex Tabarrok, “Teachers Don’t Like Creative Students”, Dec. 12, 2011, www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/12/teachers-don’t-like-creative-students.html.