Free thinking

A lot of stuff never gets done because it's 'against the rules'. Rules and regulations are the bane of creativity, and can stop innovation dead in its tracks. Every organisation has an IPD - an Innovation Prevention Department which is there to ensure that the rules are abided by, and that nothing happens without a rubber stamp of approval.

My reading of 'The Facebook Effect' recently has led me to believe that mavericks and anarchists - those who tend to bend the rules, or simply ignore them - are at the centre of many creative projects, and in some cases actually become the gamechangers. Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard student friends have radically changed the way we communicate with each other, and they have changed it on a global level. Regardless of your opinion of Facebook, you would probably agree that it was a game changer. Zuckerberg was not, and is not someone who 'tows the line'. He got into trouble while at Harvard and ever since, he has led an edgy existence at the vanguard of a movement which has fractured many of the social conventions that existed prior to the advent of online social networking.

Zuckerberg isn't the only one who has kicked against the rules and bent them to get where he needs to go. Richard Branson, in his recent book 'Screw it, let's do it,' also admits to being a maverick (but we all knew that anyway). He says 'Though I have never followed the rules at every step, I have learned many lessons along the way. I am still learning and I hope I never stop.' Branson has carved out, time and time again, business opportunities that have broken the conventional mould with outrageous success. Beside their vast fortunes, what do Zuckerberg and Branson have in common? They are both free thinkers. They disregard the structure and restrictions of their surroundings, and dream up new ways to circumvent the constraints imposed upon them by 'the rules.' For them, the way forward is to 'just do it.'

There are many other free thinkers I could talk about - in the field of art (Picasso, Monet, Pollock), music (Mozart, Stockhausen, the Beatles), and science (Einstein, Darwin, Edison) - who were renowned for bending the rules and sometimes ignoring them. Creativity in this sense, is not so much about building on old models (although this is sometimes the case), nor is it about extemporisation around a known theme. No, it is more to do with what Margaret Boden called 'transformational creativity' where scant regard for what is acceptable or achievable, is replaced by the will to make something happen regardless of the constraints, the rules, the expected.

Is this the kind of ethos we see in our schools, colleges, universities? As teachers are we fostering a sense of the impossible in our learners, and are we nurturing dreamers and entrepreneurs? Or are we instead continuing to impose rules and constraints which are no longer necessary or simply outmoded, because 'it has always been done that way?' Carl Rogers, a free thinker in his own right, once made it clear that the educational situation which most effectively promotes significant learning is one in which 1) threat to the self of the learner is reduced to a minimum, and 2) differentiated perception of the field of experience is facilitated (Smith, 2004)

In clear language, this means that people learn best when they feel that they are under no constraints to express themselves and when they are given licence to change things and make them personal. How could this be applied to our own classrooms, and how many of us as teachers facilitate free thinking within our practice? Next time, don't ask for permission. Just do it.

'It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission'

Image source by Jack Lyons


Free thinking by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.