I was reading a fascinating article in Scientific American called, Inner Spark: Using Music To Study Creativity, that brought up a really interesting discovery.
The article details Charles J. Limb, who is a hearing specialist at John Hopkins Medical Center, and his discovery of the different way the brain functions in people who are performing Improv style music.
Improv music is music that is played without following notes. It is performed freestyle, with no rules, and the musician is just going with the flow. It is common for jazz musicians to play music this way, where a bunch of musicians will get together and just start playing without any rules.
What Charles J. Limb decided to do, was have the Improv musicians’ brains scanned, as they played, to see if any unusual brain activity occurred.
What he found, was that when Improv musicians play, a specific section of their pre-frontal brain basically shuts down!
Can you guess what specific section of the pre-frontal brain shuts down?
It’s the section that focuses on conscious self-monitoring, self-inhibition, and the evaluation of right and wrong.
Basically, these Improv musicians become uninhibited. They don’t care about breaking rules. They don’t even think about rules. They just play freely.
Here’s why this is interesting to me…
Becoming Uninhibited Is A Pillar To Develop Creativity In Children
When it comes to building creativity in children, there are a lot of strategic things to think about.
Researchers agree that the skills required to develop creativity in children include:
- Divergent Thinking Abilities – An example of divergent thinking would be the ability to answer a question like, “How many different ways can you use a pencil?” The children would then have to list as many ideas as possible in 60 seconds. The more items a child can list, the better they would score on standardized creativity tests.
- Evaluating Potential Ideas – Where divergent thinking is basically a child’s ability to brainstorm ideas, it is useless without also having the ability to quickly evaluate and discard poor ideas.
- Domain Expertise – It turns out that creativity is not something you are just born with. The most creative people in the world WORK very hard at coming up with creative ideas. Creativity is like a muscle. Muscles functions best when trying to master one solution. You probably can’t come up with a very creative idea in the realm of quantum physics, because there is a certain level of knowledge a person has to have about quantum physics before they can start to be a creative thought leader in that field.
Then there’s my favorite…
Building Creativity In Children Requires Non Conformity
One fascinating aspect about us humans is that we have a tendency to NOT want to step out of what our tribe thinks is normal.
One interesting study I read about in Sir Ken Robinson’s book, The Element, proves this point.
In this study, researchers took a group of children (all in on the research study) and would ask these children to answer questions given by a teacher. The children in this study were all instructed to always pick the wrong answer. One child was the subject of the study. This child was the same age as the rest of the children. This child was NOT in on the study, and did not receive instructions to always pick the wrong answer. The study was to determine the social influence that a group can have on a person’s ability to make correct choices.
The researchers had several of these subjects, and would put many different children into this testing environment where all the children were being asked questions. When the question was asked, the individual child could look around to see if their answer was the same as the other children in the classroom.
When the subjects were finished taking the test, they were then questioned about why they answered certain questions the way they did. Almost invariably, all the subjects would give the wrong answers intentionally, even though they knew the right ones. When asked about why, they expressed that it was because ‘everyone else did’.
Their logic was, if everyone was agreeing, then it must be right.
This presents a BIG problem for developing creativity in children…
If a child is not willing to turn off aspects of conforming, and social rule etiquette, their creativity will be stifled at best!
When you look at very creative people, like the Wright Brothers, who built the world’s first airplane, those brothers HAD to have been told how crazy they were, by everyone! I’m sure that their social circle was calling them crazy, and telling them that they were wasting money on a stupid idea. But something inside those brothers empowered them and made them willing to go against the grain. They were willing to break the rules and not conform, just like the Improv musicians! The reason the Wright Brothers could be so creative was because they could turn off those self- regulating portions of their brains!
To really answer the question of how to develop creativity in children, I think you have to answer the question of how to eliminate feelings of inhibition, rule following, and social conformity.
I have many suggestions for how to do this, in a new product that I will be releasing soon called, Cultivating Creativity in Children. It will be full of hundreds of suggestions for you on how you can help cultivate your child’s creativity. For now, I want to just leave you with this last little story that will give you something to ponder, and work on this week with your children.
How My Mother Taught Me To Break Rules
Growing up, I was a VERY well behaved child. And when I mean well behaved I mean well behaved. I was told not to smoke cigarettes because they would reduce my likelihood of becoming a professional athlete, so I didn’t. I was told to not do drugs because I was told they would kill brain cells, so I didn’t. And according to my mother, aunts, uncles and grandparents, they all agreed that I was ridiculously obedient as a child, very easy to raise, because I always did what I was told.
However, when I turned 16, this started to worry my mother!
I don’t know her motives, but I suspect that she realized deep down, that people who grow up learning to NEVER break the rules don’t ever reach their full potential. Great people break rules. And I was breaking NONE.
Don’t get my mother wrong though. She didn’t want me breaking ALL rules. She didn’t want me breaking the sort of rules that hurt other people. She just didn’t want me to be so willing to conform. She wanted me to have my own ‘backbone’.
I remember one school night, she sat me down after getting my truancy report from the local high school (which confirmed I had never skipped a day of school ever), and talking to me about the dangers of always conforming to rules.
That night we had a good talk, and I still remember the last words she said to me, she said, “Mac, I want you to go break a rule this week. AND, I don’t ever need to know what you’ve done. Just make sure it can’t hurt you or anybody else. Obviously I think you’re becoming too much of a conformist and I want you to know what it feels like to do something YOU feel is right, even when the rules say it isn’t.”
I never did tell her what I did that week, and I won’t tell you either (because she reads this blog!). Seriously, though, she still doesn’t want to know. Whatever I did was okay to do, in her mind; a necessity.
I can tell you that I still remember the feeling of freedom that I felt breaking that rule, and can’t help but think it was a major turning point in my life.
But the lessons didn’t just stop there, that would be reckless.
My parents also encouraged me to challenge my superiors, coaches & teachers when I felt they had wronged me, or if I felt they were wrong about something. Instead of swooping in to rescue their baby, like so many parents did, my parents would send me off to the library or internet to research answers as to why I was right and the teachers were wrong. They, then encouraged me to set up a private after school meeting with them, so I could debate the issues with the teachers.
Those talks taught me a LOT about life. They taught me to see others’ perspectives. They taught me about how to confront rules respectfully. They taught me to, first, try to convince others to change certain rules, before just rebelling against them.
Truthfully, those talks with my parents will probably continue to teach me more about things in life that I don’t even know about yet! One thing is for sure, though. My parents’ effort at ridding me of my willingness to conform, was STRATEGIC. To this day, almost all of the creative break-throughs I’ve had in my business career, have come from NOT conforming.
When I see the whole world ‘Zig’, I know with almost 100% certainty, that I should ‘Zag’! Because conformity is the Devil.
Did your parents teach you a childhood lesson about NOT conforming that you’d like to share?
Do you find that you like to ‘Zag’ when you see the rest of the world ‘Zig’? Either way, please feel free to share your story in the comments section below. I’d love to hear about them.
Until Next Time. . . . Happy Parenting!
