Creativity: What Are Our Kids Learning?

The major problem with our culture is the lack of a classical education and the ingestion of accelerent drugs. There. I’ve said it. Accelerent drugs is a term I made up. I’m talking about everything that revs us up too soon and too fast, from speed to diet pills to coffee or sugar–whatever makes you angry, roadrageous, and mean. When we are any of those things, we cannot learn.

Our future depends on learning.
A long time ago, education’s purpose was to show children that other people thought differently, behaved differently, and spoke differently. The purpose was not to extol one’s own culture, but to learn how to work in coalition with others. How to get along with others who don’t think like we do.

Once the industrial revolution hit, education branched off into vocational training–for those whose lives were to be spent in factories and at machine trades, and the upper classes, who studied languages and philosophy to learn how to think.

Somewhere in the 1960s, we hit a roadblock. If a subject didn’t have an immediate practical application, it was frowned upon. That quickly led to a “path” of learning. By seventh grade you were on the college track or on the vocational track, and you took courses accordingly.

And now we are paying for it. Children aren’t going to school, they are going to test-preparation classes. We aren’t teaching them how to think, or even what to think, we are teaching them to pass a test so schools can look like they are doing their job, which seems to be taking knives and guns away from armed kids.

We are way beyond “no child left behind,” what we are doing is leaving a nation behind.

Right from the beginning, we are training creativity out of our children. We want them to color in the lines, and make sure the sky is blue, please. We teach them that there is only one right answer to every question. We take away the arts, music, dance, and replace them with organized sports that don’t allow for individual creativity, but praise competition and winning. Our educational system today is not appropriate for the 21st century. It is narrow, destructive of creativity and human potential, and squashes the one thing that will bring us safely into the future: original ideas that are practical and work. In a word, creativity.

Everyone is born creative. To paraphrase Picasso, the problem is not in creative children, it’s in remaining creative as we grow up. Instead of asking, “Is this the only answer?” we ask “Is this the answer that we need to know for the test?”

When a teacher is explaining something, the best result would be “Huh. That’s interesting. Wonder what would happen if. . .” Instead, the question at the end of a raised hand is, “Will that be on the test?”

Wally Olins, Founder, Wolff-Olins says, “Competitive advantage does not come from the Internet. It comes from leveraging creativity. ” Maybe it’s time we remembered what education means. It comes from the Latin and means “to bring out of” and not “to stuff into.”

For a great take on creativity and education, watch Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on education. It’s not only bright, it’s very funny.

–Image: www.brown.edu

–Quinn McDonald had a classical education and thinks she’s still creative because of it. That, and she isn’t afraid of making mistakes. See her work at QuinnCreative.com

Sounds like. . .words that spell trouble

There it was again. In a reputable magazine for artists. “The collage peaked my interest.” Luckily, it didn’t, or you would never have a peak experience again. The collage piqued your interest. Totally different word. It’s from the French and it means to give it a little stab of interest. Peek is to look, peak is a top of a mountain, and pique (pronounced peek, that’s why it’s a problem) means to be interested in.

Last week, in the newspaper, I read that woman had performed while she was ill. “She was a real trooper.” Only if she was a policeman. In this case, she was a trouper. Because she was in a troupe of actors, dancers, or other performers. And the show must go on.

In today’s newspaper, I saw a grocery store that had a “souper sale.” I thought it was a joke, maybe tomato or chicken noodle soup was on sale. Nope, just a typo. A super big one.

Some other words that give us trouble:

It’s is never the possessive. When its tail comes to rest, the dragon will be sleeping. No apostrophe. That’s hard, but the only meaning of it’s (with an apostrophe) is it is.

Disinterested means fair or impartial. It has nothing to do with not being interested.

Peruse means to read carefully, not to skim.

Lie is to recline, lay is to place. I lie down on the bed, I lay the baby back in bed.

That’s enough for one day.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach. See her work at QuinnCreative.com (c) 2008 All rights reserved. Image: altaread-austin.org

Mascara Tree Sketch

There’s a clip on YouTube of a man drawing Bette Davis with mascara. It’s speeded up, and it may be edited, but the result is amazing. He uses the mascara wand as a brush and makes it work with line, shading and value.

After seeing it, I wondered if it was real. So I grabbed by two mascaras–Avon and L’Oreal Voluminous, both in brown/black, and went to work. Surprisingly, neither one had enough color to make it work well. The Avon wand was also quite flexible, great for applying mascara to eyelashes (after all, that was what it was designed for) making it hard to control.

A trip to the drug store, and I had my teen-reliable mascara–Maybelline in double black. The bottom of the container is pink, the top green. I don’t think it’s changed in 30 years. And it worked.

The trunk worked best because the uneven application makes great rough spots. The branches benefit from the the application of the brush held so the bristles create the long leaves of the willow tree.

Ink, brush, paper: cheap. Art in mascara: Not priceless, but washable.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach. She is a collage artist and teaches workshops, but not in mascara painting. Yet. Image: “Don’t weep, willow” Mascara on paper. (c) 2008 Quinn McDonald, All rights reserved.

Tutorial: Altered Photograph

An artist sees nature in a new perspective every day. In a different slant of light, with different shadows, with different meaning.

On my early morning walks, I noticed that the tiny water-saving sprinklers are hard at work before the sun evaporates the water. When a breeze kicks up, the spray hits the sidewalk. The water here is hard, so the place where it hits the sidewalk deepens to blue-gray. The edge of the stain is often a red or pink color, depending on the material the sidewalk is made of.

The patterns are quite ordinary, except when they are in the process of drying. At that point amazing things happen to them. They dry from the outside in, leaving Rorschach-like patterns. I photographed one of the drying puddles with my iPhone camera, which produces remarkably good close-ups. I printed it out and took a closer look. I printed the picture on non-photographic paper, 100 percent consumer-waste recycled, slightly heavier than normal. I chose this paper because I wanted to use Prismacolor light-fast pencils as the art medium, and they work best on an uncoated stock.

I saw a tree, clearly at the top. I was surprised to see the Lady-of-Guadalupe-like pattern around the figure, giving it a spiritual feel. Using Prismacolor pencils, I began to pick out the design. First I darkened the edges using French Gray 70 percent, then overlapping strokes of Indigo Blue and Dark Grape.

Next, I used French Gray 30 percent and 10 percent, along with Sky Blue to give more contrast between the light lines and dark lines. I started with a light touch and used a bit more pressure once the picked-out lines made sense and created a pattern.

There were several possible figures that could have emerged from the center, under the tree. To begin, I called up the face I saw, using Cream and Light Peach, blended together. The work is still in progress, but it is clearly an image of a tree with a strong aura, reaching out beyond the light above and the dark below. The woman is most likely an earth-goddess, awake and watching beneath the tree.

There are other possibilities and I will create a series, each with a slightly different image. It’s always surprising and sheer joy to find such wonderful art already existing in nature. It just needed a few highlights to bring it out.

–Images and tutorial (c) 2008 All rights reserved by Quinn McDonald. Quinn is an artist and certified creativity coach who runs workshops in writing, presentation, journal writing and collage. See her work at QuinnCreative.com

The Oxygen Mask

She was struggling as the middle layer of the sandwich generation. Kids in college, still needing a safe haven; elderly mother in another state, not doing too well.

When the phone call came in the middle of the night, it was time to drive through the darkness into the heart of the struggle. Mother may die, that would be awful Mother may live, that would also be awful. Because mother can’t be alone, needs help, doesn’t want to accept help. The story’s pages are smoothed by thousands of worried hands who have written down the words of struggle: what do I do now? How can I take this on and have it end well?

Because I’ve made that middle-of-the-night drive myself, I suggested the one thing sandwich women forget: take care of yourself first. You can’t help anyone else if you aren’t functioning.

As most women, this is not easy to hear. We are used to taking care of everyone else first. As I asked how she could take care of herself, there was a pause. Then a slow, smiling voice came back, in the singsong of a flight attendant:
“In case of emergency, reach for your own oxygen mask first. Put on your mask before helping others around you. The bag may not inflate, but oxygen will flow through the mask. Tighten the straps and make sure you can breathe. Then help others.”

She knew what to do. She would be fine.

Image: firesomeonetoday.com

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and a certified creativity coach. She is also a transition coach, who helps people reinvent themselves to cope with new careers, situations, and people in their lives. See her work at QuinnCreative.com (c) 2008 All rights reserved.

Tortillas and Passover

There is not a matzoh to be had in Mesa. Well, not quite true. I could have purchased a case, propped up against the old Easter Peeps and Paas egg-coloring kits. And I’m not overly concerned that in Mesa, many people think Passover must be the same time as Easter. The city was founded by Mormons, and their 114,000 foot temple is a major site in the city. About 80 percent of high-school graduates in the Mesa/Chandler area identify themselves as Mormons. To Mormons, Jews are “gentiles,” which always makes me smile. And if you want to talk about persecution and immigration, Mormons can add a big chapter to that book.

But there I was, on the second day of Passover, having been in five grocery stores in Mesa and not turning up a small package of matzoh. There was no other Passover food available, not even a display, not even dusty bottles of gefilte fish on a shelf next to Ramen noodles in the “International Food” section.

What to do? Matzoh is unleavened bread, made in haste, by a people who were not wanted in the area. So it seemed to me that a great stand-in for the bread of affliction would be tortilla. Flour tortillas to be precise. They are made without a leavening agent, and cooked one at a time, made at meal time to be eaten. It was a good match. I purchased a pack of the kind you have to finish yourself.

If you compare the picture, the largest difference seems to be the shape.

When I got home, I wanted to prepare a Passover snack, so I turned the front electric burner on “low” on the electric stove and tossed a tortilla on it. Flipping it over to keep it from sticking to the heating burner, I got a good facsimilie of a hot tortilla. I buttered it, sprinkled agave sugar on it along with cardamom, cinnamon, corriander and, yes, a few grinds of red chiles. Hey, it’s a tortilla. I then rolled it up and enjoyed a wonderful Passover snack, while contemplating all the peoples in the world who are pushed from one geography to another, who choose a better life in a place different than the country of their birth. It seemed a fitting thought for the day.

Images: matzoh: www.exploratorium.edu, tortillas: www.sacatomato.com

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and workshop leader who teaches communications, including writing, giving presentations and corporate culture. See her website at QuinnCreative.com

Gratitude Journal: New Age Hype or Useful Tool?

The first time someone suggested I keep a gratitude journal, I suggested they set their hair on fire. I was a little cranky at the time. I didn’t want to be grateful, I wanted to seethe and be angry. Once I got finished with anger, I wasn’t sure why I should be grateful. And that’s the point.

Being grateful and writing it down helps slow down all that gallopping emotion. In the mood I was in, my approach was a “revenge of the gratitude journal.” I wanted to prove that idiot who suggested the gratitude journal that they were wrong. Hah! So I wrote down, “I have nothing to be grateful for.” So there. I looked at it for awhile and felt a little dumb. Except for the thing I was angry about, which had taken over my life, I had a roof over my head, clean clothes to wear, a caring spouse, enough food to eat. I knew that other people didn’t have all of that. But hey, I was still angry.

So I wrote down, “My cup of coffee was not total crap this morning.” That seemed about right. The next day, I wrote down, “My annoying cube neighbor has the flu.” Then I added, “Traffic was OK. I got to the client on time.” I found that having a few small things to be grateful for seemed to reduce my anger. Only because all that anger was exhausting me.

Over time, I began to notice the quality of items I was grateful for changed, almost as if I could predict a bad mood, a new project coming my way, and when I was in problem-solving mode. I began to dare to notice that I was good at some things and write them in the gratitude journal. I could see the big picture and the details to get there. I was a good problem solver. Being grateful for what you are good at and noticing it makes you better at it.

A gratitude journal sharpens your skills. The first time I suggested it to one of my coaching clients, he tactfully suggested I set my hair on fire. (Well, no, he was quite polite. But I could feel the shock wave over the phone. This was no girly-man.) But he kept up the gratitude journal. I promise my clients anonimity, so I can’t quote his entries, but they started simple and got quite complex. It was working for him, too.

 Here’s what he wrote to me this morning:
“You can tell your tough-guy clients that when I got laid off, the journal had mentally prepared me to view it as a blessing and an opportunity rather than a death sentence.
It allowed me to think clearly and focus on what I really wanted to do. Kind of like boot camp mentally prepares a “green” soldier for his first combat mission.”

Thanks so much for letting me know. You and I discovered the same thing about gratitude–it’s not a new age emotion, it’s a business tool. Particularly if you own your own business.

—Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach and a life coach who specializes in guiding people through transitions. She holds workshops on writing, corporate culture, and giving presentations. See her work at QuinnCreative.com
encounter, so does the grateful journal keep the newly laid off working professional
from panicking in the face of financial danger.

Tutorial: Index Cards Do it All

Index cards are inexpensive and come in several sizes. I’ve written about using index card as a to-do list before. Now I’ve found an organizational system that combines index cards and rollabind disks and makes sense for organizational problems.

I carry a paper calendar because I need to know what isn’t happening as well as what is, and only paper calendars do that. In other words, If I’m meeting with a difficult client, I’m not booking another stressful event right next to it. My desktop calendar doesn’t show things that way, it simply shows dots, and sure, I could polka-dot up a few days, but without context I could run into trouble. Someone will certainly invent calendar software that shows holidays and works easily with my existing computer calendar, because I haven’t seen one yet.

My calendar goes with me, and so does a thin notebook and here is where the index cards come in. The thin notebook covers meeting notes, phone numbers, to-do lists and deadlines. Because I have a visual memory, I’ll know what side of the page that name and phone number was on, so using index cards wasn’t helping me. I couldn’t find my non-project notes fast enough.

Here’s the solution: I used some of the divider index cards and created a cover and separator pages, creating a book of its own. The book works on rollabind rings, giving it a spatial relationship. I can shift project cards and to do lists, but the notecards from phone calls and information (urls, ideas, people’s names) stay in the same order. When I get too many, I transfer them, in the same order, onto a storage “book.” Because I date each card, I keep them in date order and can find that great dim-sum restaurant in Chandler again, because I know it was on the left side of the page, right after the directions to the paper store in Tempe, which I looked for in March. My memory works that way.

The great thing about this system is that you can also file in alpha order, project order, geographical order–whatever makes sense to you. It’s not limited. Rollabind rings let you take out pages and reposition them without damage, and with complete ease, so the system becomes versatile. Remember the calendar? It’s also on rollabind disks, so I can pull out to-do lists and put them in the calendar as a reminder until the job is done. Or put notes about a client in the appointment day, so I’ll remember the personal and business details that work for a good relationship.

The combination of index cards, rollabind disks, calendars and imagination are limitless. You don’t have to purchase a lot of equipment to personalize your organizational system, and it doesn’t take up a lot of space. I like 4 x 6 cards for project notes, but nothing beats a 3 x 5 card for idea generation. And in this system, you can use both.

It’s a system that works and is ideal is you travel or have limited space to keep your work.

–Quinn McDonald is a trainer in business communications. She runs workshops in writing, speaking and giving presentations. She uses index cards to organize ideas for presentations and articles. (c) 2008 All rights reserved.

Welcome to QuinnCreative’s Blog!

I’m Quinn McDonald, and I spend my time as an artist, helping other artists as a certified creativity coach. In case you need a trainer or speaker, I do that, too. And I’m a writer, as well.

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