When we think of the keys to success: whether it is to overcome a global economic crisis, to be truly excellent in what we decide to undertake in life or simply, to perform a task in a way that satisfies us and others, a word that comes to Our mind is this: creativity. And today we are going to tell you the keys to encourage creativity in your children. Our role as educators is to let creativity flourish.
What is being creative?
The creativity It is not, or at least not only, singing, dancing or drawing with many colors or inventing fantasy stories. Creativity is much more than that. It is really what has made us human, to think until we find a solution that solves a dilemma.
In be creative lies the ability to respond to the challenges and problems by giving new answers that nobody had given before, be absolutely original, be combining previous contributions in a surprisingly effective way. We should not kill creativity, because we really do not know what challenges our children will face.
Creative human beings
Darwin was a creative genius. Einstein Heisenberg Curie. Schrödinger and Bhor. They are the people who discover remedies for diseases, those who investigate until they discover how our genes describe us, those who traced trade routes and those who thought it was possible to fly. Also, of course, artists and drivers of men: Leonardo is creative, but so is Mandela.
It will be creative geniuses who discover how we can manage to maintain a dignified life on a planet that is too small for us, or how to recover environmental damage, or how to throw ourselves to live among the stars, or achieve a human organization with more justice and equity. To achieve that we need creative men and women.
Without creativity we would have been lost many times in the past and we will be lost in the future. The key to survival as a species and personal progress is creativity. That is why it is so, so important to help our children, the men and women of the future, not to lose it, but to learn how to use it and even increase it.
How to encourage creativity?
Well, the theory so far. But, What is creativity really? How does it work? How is it stimulated? And, above all, what can parents do to encourage creativity?
We will analyze it gradually and I promise you that I will tell you some of the resources we offer to the trainers of the White Pedagogy course, which is now the project I am working on with Professor Azucena Caballero and on which we focus on offering Teachers and parents resources to foster a more creative education that fosters the talents and passion of each child.
We must understand creativity as the ability to give solutions or make something real born That can be put into practice. By solutions I do not mean only, of course, science or technology. A new way of organizing a company, a book, a pedagogical current, a musical work, a delicious ice cream ... all that is an act of creation carried out, motivated by passion.
The three phases of creativity
I explain. Imagining a fascinating story is creative, but imagination is only the first phase of the process. The key is learn to do that real creative act It is going to be able to be able to make that real, be it like a book, a movie or a storyteller. And besides, let's not deny it, we want other people to enjoy our creation.
He creative process has three phases: reverie, practical and critical design. And these three phases is fundamental, I repeat, fundamental, that as parents or educators we know how to understand and respect them. And it is especially important when we are accompanying children because interfering in each of them, advancing them, can distort and even paralyze the creation.
Let me tell you. In the first phase it is the moment of the most overflowing imagination, the one that has no more limits than those of our ability to dream. This phase is essential for anyone to dare to invent something wonderful, new, brave. But if when they are in that phase they crush us (and especially if they do an authority figure like parents or teachers) with negative comments and criticisms.
When we dream we should not listen to anyone who tells us that our dreams are absurd or impossible. Do you know what they said to men who started revolutions like movies, airplanes, cars or spaceships?
We have the right to dream and children, more. But those dreams, those ideas that may seem crazy and that break with all the previous knowledge, are the germ of innovation and the discoveries that move the world.
Therefore, in the creation phase, let them dream. And then, as I tell you tomorrow, let's continue accompanying your creative process with the following phases: reality design and constructive criticism. Understanding the process and accompanying it correctly is the key to creativity.
