Question: How does language limit knowledge making, and what are the consequences of rational thinking on creativity? Inside my brain they connect. I will attempt to verbalize it.
The Interest: Education is dominated by language. We read textbooks, we write essays, we perform written tests, we workshop other writing, we take written notes. Language in education is ubiquitous. So much, we take its place as the primary tool by which to learn as a given. Would education change if classrooms were reorganized to integrate discussion, team presentations, films, and other modes of information sharing and creating? I ask this question because I wonder to what extent reading comprehension determines success in college. To be honest, I often hypothesize that students with 4.0s mostly have high reading-comprehension aptitude. But what about conceptual thinking? The ability to track visual images? Spatial reasoning? How is it that language has come to dominate the education market as the dominant method by which to learn?
Language mirrors logic in the way it is organized hierarchically, terms objects, and restricts observations to specific perspectives. In the same stride that language takes to assist us in communication, it also restricts and contains our ideas to the ways we can express them. Pirsig’s “Mu” response demonstrates language’s lacking, and how the words we speak affect the way we approach a situation.
This should be interesting to you, if you have ever considered yourself stupid. It should be interesting if you have ever desperately wanted to communicate something, but couldn’t find the words. If you have difficulty finding your creative flow. If school often pushes you to the brink of meltdown. If you answered “n/a” to all those questions…well, I find you rather boring, and suggest you stop reading. If you answered yes to any, then you should definitely leave me a comment saying why.
I drew a picture once. It was a giant bubble over a stick-figure’s head that contained “all the knowledge ever.” But what they understood and could express was only a small trickle that could escape through the valve of language. Language filtered all of knowledge making, because if we couldn’t express something, then how could it be real? The only knowledge that was accessible was what we had been able to verbalize—but a fragment.
Jump back to rational thinking. This hierarchical, locked-step, prescribed thinking is taught as a way to think and know. How can this NOT contain creativity and expression? How can boxes ever assist individuals in imagination, innovation, and creation than free association thinking? What about hyper-rationalism interferes with the creative process? Language and logic proportion knowledge. It is but one way to understand, and unfortunately dominates the market. What are non-verbal ways of knowing and learning?
Interested?
The Investigation: This area needs development. Ken Robinson’s TED talks are a great start, in understanding this issue. I also hope to find correlations between high school SAT/GED reading comprehension scores, to see if there is a correlation with post-secondary success.
I will have to examine how we “be” creative. That question alone could dominate the discussion. I intend to work neuroscience into my paper—the manner in which different cortexes of the brain process information, and note that the spatial relationship area is opposite the language-expressing area. That is, we understand relationships (which according to Pirsig are the source of all knowledge) with a different hemisphere of our mind than we formulate words. Isn’t that interesting? Already there is a physical block between understanding and language. As children, we learn through images. We learn through associations and stories. Toddler books are dominated by shape, texture, finger puppets-- hardly any words. Analyzing the differences between early childhood learning material and the text-heavy materials of postsecondary education may prove helpful. Children get toys that make music, books that pop out, puzzles to rearrange. This multi-modal learning is needed as children, but language becomes the principle learning mechanism, and all others are downgraded as non-essentials.
My mother’s spatial reasoning skills are squat. She’s smart, but she can’t visualize rearranging furniture or conceptualize directions. She does fine though, because she writes like a pro, and that is how the world runs. But what knowledge does she miss out on, because this aspect of her comprehension was never pushed to develop further?
That is all I have for now. I need more concrete research methods, though. Ideas?
No comments:
Post a Comment