Austin Kleon. Does that name mean anything to you? Perhaps you've read one of his books - Steal Like An Artist or Newspaper Blackout? Maybe you're familiar with his recent TED talk?
I had the privilege of hearing Mr. Kleon speak this evening at the opening of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Annual Conference. Yes, I'm hanging out in D.C. this week getting the down low on the arts, donors, and educational creativity systems. Don't worry - it's not all work. I had the chance to eat at Legal Seafood (thanks, guys!) and get to the National Gallery of Art (my wife is still hotter than Venus); all is well.
Anyhow, I was impressed with Mr. Kleon. He discussed how we are all thieves. Yes, thieves. We all steal. Well, "steal" is, perhaps, a strong word. We borrow. We use. We interpret, variate, rearrange, and synthesize. We adjust. We adapt. But we rarely create. What's the scripture? Ecclesiastes 1:9 "... there is no new thing under the sun." Mr. Kleon's premise is fairly simple: No matter what you create, you are essentially doing something that has been done before, and that's okay. All creative work is based on what was done before. Our life mission is to take what was done before us and improve upon it.
How does this translate into education?
Education is the proverbial wild west right now. Everyone but professional teachers have a handle on it. There are ideas flying all over the place. It's a no-holds-barred landscape of data, test scores, politics, and general ineptitude. What's being lost is creativity, passion, inspiration... While the government opens the profession to "skilled practitioners", the actual practitioners are leaving the field for jobs with incentive, security, and - dare I say - RESPECT.
You know what wasn't broke? The way we were teaching. It worked! It worked for me. It worked for most of you. Sure, we needed to update it. We had to add technology. We had to open the structure a little to make room for politicians with microscopes on our kids and our classrooms. We also had to adjust our approach for a generation of students that are actually reading (on a screen), writing (texting/typing), and interpreting (filtering?) more data than any other generation in the history of the world. They have tons of data at their finger tips, and most of them don't know how to use it. They have one sided communications via their cellular and texting devices about what they ate for dinner and which Kardashian has a nicer tush. They certainly don't know how to refine a search, cross reference data, organize, or apply what they see, but they have access to it at light speed.
So, do we throw our hands up and say, "We can't teach these kids?" -- That's not a viable option.
In a side portion of Mr. Kleon's presentation he said something very interesting. He was talking about taking some students to the art museum. He had digressed from his main point and was trying to pull an idea back around. During his aside he discussed a teaching tactic that he used with students to get them to higher order think. He encouraged kids to look at the painting first, come to their own conclusions, and then check out the caption to find all the information about the painting. Now - I had been at the art gallery with my brilliant colleague and artist, Alex Higgins, all day. We had been playing this game. We looked at pictures and guessed who the artist was, what the period was, and what the title was, then we looked at the caption to see if we were right. Obviously knowing the title of the work gives insight to the artist's mind, and can shed light on what the artist's statement for the work is. Often a title will define the artist's intent for the work.
Anyway, back to Mr. Kleon... As he brought his main point back into focus he discussed student answers. Some of his students said brilliant things - things that he had not thought of, that were true to the piece. Kleon said, "Sometimes you don't need to change the painting; change the caption."
#mindblown
Sometimes your answer is right, it's just not what everyone else had thought of. In this case you are being truly creative, but your creativity is still based, fatalistically, on what you perceive - and that is based on what you know, which is based on what you've learned. Those building blocks are passed up to you from those that went before you, and you can't help but utilize them. In this case, there is nothing wrong with your creation, just your caption.
I have taught with Musashi's style. I have used Aristotle's methods. I have taught using Socratic method. You can package them up any way you want to: Coach, Drill and Kill, Answer a Question with a Question, Scientific Method, Discovery Learning, Project-based Learning... call it whatever you want, but it's really just TEACHING.
What is teaching? To me, it's using the best tactic to get across to each student - individually - the content that I'm trying to provide. Now, here's the kicker, and this is also what I think Mr. Kleon was trying to bring around: I'm not trying to give them the knowledge in the hope that they will simply retain it. It is my hope that they will USE it. I want them to expand it. I want them to discover it. I want them to do something with it. I want them to synthesize it. I want them to create something *new*; but it will still be based on what I got from my teachers, that they got from their teachers...
If artists, designers, musicians, creators, and thinkers are thieves - teachers are their fences.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with that term (and I only know because I play the Elder Scrolls video games), a fence is someone that a thief can do business with. Fences deal in stolen goods. They smuggle, trade, and broker for thieves. You can find a more formal definition of this informal use of the word at Urban Dictionary. Teachers are fences. I take what I gained from my teachers, that they stole from their teachers, that they stole from their teachers... and I broker that knowledge to my students. I want them to utilize it for their benefit. I want them to run with it. I want them to re-sell it. I want them to customize it. I want them to trade it in their circles.
Aristotle believed that only intellect was immortal. This passing of conscience understanding from one coherent being to another is the immortality of intellect that he spoke of. The problem is that many of our students are too anesthetized by entertainment, drugs, TV, and other distractions both in and outside of the home, that keep them from being coherent enough to pick up what we're trying to sell. Make no mistake about it, teachers; we are selling. We are hustling ideas. We are moving intellect, and increasingly this particular intellect, creativity, is being labeled as contraband. We have to get it into the mind of the student and get them to begin to experiment before the creative life is sucked from them. Increasingly I can't teach a lesson without an administrator asking me, "How's that going to help test scores?" Could it be that this is the one thing that this kid needs to help him or her understand this concept? If I'm doing things right, the test scores will come.
You're right, Mr. Kleon: Art is theft; Creativity is theft. People that are creative must steal ideas...
...and I'm a fence.
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