The call for change in American Education is a famliar and recurring theme in the literature and at conferences. One of the specific recommendations for new approaches to learning has, for a long time, been promoted by the Education Division of the World Future Society. Arguments are made for the deliberate teaching of processes of thinking in addition to the more traditional teaching of content and skills. It is argued that since science and technology had made possible the accumulation of an infinite storebouse of information, it is incumbent on educational services to provide specific understanding of the full range of processes of thinking available to students for maximum positive use of that information in a changing, complex, interrelated global society.

Today the emerging attention to metacognition and a better understanding of one’s individual “mind field” is evidence that a better balance between the teaching of content and the teaching of learning and thinking styles and process is under way in the schooling experience.

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“Participating Democracy”, a familiar term in the writing of Alvin Toffler, is having a significant application in educational planning for a community in northwestern Montana, and could become a model for mutuality in educational design in other places. The future of Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell, Montana, was the subject of an event that took place on Big Mountain near Kalispell during a weekend in April. The event was the Flathead Valley Community Collage Charette. It is an example of the effectiveness of combined educational and community initiative and leadership.

What, then, is a charrette? It is a French term for a form of problem-solving defined as “a planning process that involves many people of diverse talents and relationships over a relatively short period of time.” It is said to have originated during the Middle Ages when the charrette, a two-wheeled cart, was used as a transportation for architects on their was to a planning session. Since last minute redesigning took place on the charrette, the word came to be identified with intense planning sessions with set deadlines.

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With the gentle warning that educators must learn to operationalize a better, more flexible structure for implementing what is beginning to be known about the process of learning, Bea Bleedorn said that conferences such as this one on the future of education can help to dispell a sense of despair and show signs of hope for the future. To set the tone for her remarks on creative problem solving she reviewed a number of idealistic prOjections from the recent past. Included were: more emphasis on process than the delivery of facts; more experientially based education, with perhaps one half of students’ time spent outside schools; and more credence given to using the collective minds of children for group and individual ’stimulation and personalization. In addition, schooling was expected to begin earlier in a child’s life; active learning was to continue over the individual’s life time; and teachers, in their techniques for facilitating learning, would move away from an emphasis on the transmitting of information and toward the teaching of processes of thinking, especially that of creative problem solving.

Bleedorn then reviewed some of the research and contentions of Robert Ornstein on right and left brain hemisphere differences and of Paul Torrance on observing and measuring thinking traits as well as the characteristics of convergent and divergent thinking. She emphasized that, in the creative problem solving process, it is crucial to include the involvement of both hemispheres to fully integrate intuitive, right brain, and logical, left brain, thinking. Both are vital to develop novel ideas and to make these ideas fruitful products.

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The research conducted by Donald MacKinnon with a population of creative architects provided a valid listing of behavioral traits of creative personalities. The following is a listing of trait ratings from his research report::::::::

Originality. Originality and creativity of thinking and in approaches to problems; constructive ingenuity; ability to set aside established conventions and procedures where appropriate.

Esthetic sensitivity. A deepseated preference for an appreciation of elegance of form and of thought, of harmony wroght from complexity, and of style as a medium of expression.

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This session is planned to acquaint participants with specifics in the needs and leads of creative education.  Discussion and audience involvement will center around some of these topics:

1. Everyone is creative, teachers as well as children. The difference is in degree. The last twenty years have brought us many new ways of understanding thin vital concept of man’s personality. (Definitions will be presented through participation activities.)

2. Pre-school experiences of children are critical to their future behavior and creative development.  (Children enter school as “originals”.  We can avoid causing them to become “carbon copies.”  Creative teaching makes a difference!)

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