Real vs Imaginary

On March 17^th, before a session with early childhood students, the teachers mentioned St. Patrick’s Day.  In this discussion, several children mentioned leprechauns.  From the very lively discussion, the existence of leprechauns seemed implicit.  I asked, “Are leprechauns real or imaginary?”  It quickly became clear that many PK'ers believe that leprechauns are real.  Deciding to follow a critical thinking path, rather than a doctrinaire, rain-on-your-parade path, I asked what evidence they had that leprechauns were real.  I gave the example that we could demonstrate that horses were real animals because we could find a live horse and touch it.  Could we do the same for leprechauns?

Whenever a discussion like this comes up I feel it is important to proceed gently.  As a parent, I cherish my daughter’s early delight in imaginary animals and imaginary friends, as well as her continued enjoyment of science fiction and science fantasy.  As a science teacher, I do look for ways to begin to build scientific habits of mind and critical thinking.  Early childhood is not too early.  As students grow and develop, they need to be able to distinguish between what is real and what is not.  I always try to do this without being a killjoy.  I need to read some about what developmental psychologists and other child development experts say about how children acquire this ability to differentiate real from not real. 

I have had this discussion before with a different group of early childhood students and it is clear that the composition of the group and their previous experiences make a difference.  Several students in this group had been in one or more preschools where the teachers had told them about leprechauns as real beings and had helped them set leprechaun “traps”.  Several students reported that these traps had actually caught leprechauns, though no one could give a description of one.  Had this teacher or these teachers actually intended to foster the idea that leprechauns were real?  Or was this how their young minds processed a fun story and a whimsical activity?  I will revisit “real vs. imaginary” with this group.  I need to plan how to do this with sensitivity and in a way that builds their critical thinking rather than satisfying my needs to tell them how the world “really” is.

Child Prodigies and Creativity

Adam Grant writes about How to Raise a Creative Child in his Sat-30-Jan-2016 column in the New York Times.  He sums up his advice in two words in his extended title:  Step One.  Back Off.  Grant asserts that child prodigies rarely grow up into the highly creative people who revolutionize their field.  By way of example, he notes that fewer than one percent of the finalists in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, during the time it was considered, as Grant says, the Super Bowl of science prowess, from 1942 to 1994, became members of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s elite honorary body of scientists. And, out of the more than 2000 Westinghouse finalists, only eight have won Nobel prizes.  Although, he says, they often go on to become highly respected practitioners and leaders in their fields, they don’t become “adult geniuses” who change the world.

Grant goes on to dismiss the charge that perhaps these prodigies are social or emotional wrecks who cannot work and play with others.  He refers to evidence, though not cited, that “less than a quarter of gifted children suffer from social and emotional problems.”  This is approximately equal to the often-touted figure of around twenty percent for the population as whole who suffer from serious social or emotional problems. 

The real problem, according to Grant, is that child prodigies do not learn to be original.  They conform to the expectations of their parents, teachers, and coaches, and so are inculcated in the status quo, the current paradigm. “Practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new,” as Grant so aptly put it.  When children grow up simply conforming to “how it is done,” they do not question that way.  They become overly committed to existing methods, tools, techniques, and technologies.  He quotes Ellen Winner, a Harvard psychologist specializing in studying giftedness, that gifted children rarely go on to revolutionize their field and those that "those who do must make a painful transition" before they make profoundly original contributions.  Grant goes on to discuss what economist Thorstein Veblen called “trained incapacity.”