The Educational Value of Creative Disobedience
I found this article very interesting. Much like Andrea's father, my uncle also knows a little bit about everything. For years I have seen my cousins go to him for everything and anything. There is always a pretty good chance he knows the answer. When he does not, they will usually ask more questions, wonder for a while and then move onto a new topic. However for Andrea, that was not the case. She researched even deeper until her question was answered or until she was satisfied and I find that challenge admirable. Solving a mystery can be fun for students and should be encouraged.
Lectures, yes can be boring, but I personally find them beneficial, especially story telling. If a teacher fits in a personal story or a story about something that he/she read or saw on television, I tend to remember it. It also helps me relate to the subject we are learning in that class. Was school helping or hurting my intellectual growth?" My answer is no, I don't think the discouragement of creativity hurt her growth, but it may have helped her choose her preferred way of learning.
Not every student is going to want to figure out problems on their own and not every student will try to think outside of the box. I think that acting like a peer on occasion and not giving direct instruction can be beneficial, like in the case of the researcher who used different sequences to see if the children could figure out how to make a toy play music on their own. I am not surprised that when the researcher acted clueless and let the children take charge, they were able to figure it out. That method of teaching can be useful sometimes, but not all the time because it may not benefit every student.
In our class, it seems like we often follow this approach to learning. We will be given an assignment or project and then try to create a concept on our own. I find it to effective because we able to use our own examples to understand the content we're learning. If we had just memorized the notes taken in class, then yes ,we might be able to answer it correctly on a test, but would we be able to understand how it used? Probably not. We may also remember the information longer because of the amount of thought and time put into the project.
