INSTRUCTION vs.

MAIEUSIS
by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D., © 2004 tm. © 2007

This is a letter to both the teacher and the educator. The

teacher being one who teaches a process and the educator one
who is the midwife for the person.
At various levels of sophistication and with different intensities or sharpness of focus
those interested in the phenomenon of DIFFERENCE, something being different, are
aware, at some point along the way, that there is a range of difference from the shiny
yellow buttercup to the exotic orchid.

. Wild buttercup c. Greg Allikas

<www.orchidworks.com>

Perhaps the metaphor is too inept. Let’s say, simply, that if anything can be measured the
units in the measurement can be arranged along a line or continuum so that one can see,
at a glance, that at both ends of this continuum the units have less of the quality or
characteristic being measured than the units in the middle. That is true, that is, if the
display takes the form of a normal “bell” curve.

It is not doubted that each unit has its particular characteristics, uses, values etc, and have
them in considerable variety BUT, for the characteristic being studied the linear
arrangement mentioned is the easiest to understand. Add to the linear arrangement the
idea of frequency of occurrence and we get what is called a “bell curve” which shows us
that at one end of the line there are few units, in the middle there are many, and at the
other end of the line there are also few units. Therefore, if one is interested in the average
behavior or characteristic one looks at the numbers of units in the middle. On the other
hand if it is the rarer occurrence of a characteristic one seeks one looks to either end of
the line. If there has been a qualitative factor imbedded in the study then, usually, the
most desirable characteristics of the units will be found at the right end of the line.

In our studies on creativity the characteristics that have interested us have been evidences
of flexibility, fluency, elaboration, manipulations, in short, evidence of the subject’s
involvement with the task.

To continue with the, perhaps, inadequate metaphor all of the subjects, or units have their
uses and their special attractiveness and it is probably equally without doubt that there are
probably more buttercups than there are orchids. I haven’t made the count recently, but
when I had roamed the fields and woods I found more buttercups than I did lady slippers.
The quality I was looking for was structural complexity.

A woodland lady slipper

The point of all this being that in order to find the rare we have first to find the more
usual. And reality being what it is in order to accomplish that goal a survey of some sort
must take place.

In the area of identifying the person with the creative mind set and subsequently assisting
that person to bring into form the product of his imagination it has long been
acknowledged that it is helpful to take notice of how the person responds to experiences.
This is very different from evaluating a person’s performance on a test where the correct
answers have been pre-determined. It is important to remember that the one
predetermining the correct answer is not the subject but some exterior unit. This means,
in effect, that the subject’s value in whatever quality or characteristic is being tested is in
terms of an application of alien values upon the subject . This is precisely the approach
used in the vast majority of school systems and it underscores the difference I like to
make between being a teacher and being an educator. The teacher teaches a process and
evaluates his own and the student’s success by the number of predetermined correct
responses. The educator carefully evaluates the behavior of the subject and attempts to
coach the subject in appropriate elaborations of the behavior.

There have been several tasks developed to help the observing educator determine who in
his environment may be the unusually creative thinker. Among these are two of my
designs that have been successfully used by researchers (E.P.Torrance and R.E. Taylor)
from time to time in their work. These are The Creativity Design Task and The Just
Suppose Task. Both of these, in various forms, are used in the services offered at the
website THE CREATIVITY PACKET.

Out of these earlier studies came a new slant on the awareness that part of the explanation
for a limited response to non-verbal graphic material was due to the absence of exposure
to and experience with such material and that if such experience were more often
available and a value placed upon it that performances with the material would be
enhanced. We still believe that to be true.

As a way of increasing a subject’s experience in this area and keeping in mind the
perennial problem of school budgets we have designed a number of puzzles which are
based on the sciences of color, pattern, and vision. These puzzles are also unconventional
as compared to the traditional puzzle in that they lack a recognizable subject matter and
the convolutions in shape characteristic of most puzzles, educational or otherwise,
available presently.

These differences in shape and subject matter have their distinct educational values
however. Both shape and subject matter in the traditional puzzle provide clues as to the
predetermined solution to the puzzle. While the absence of a recognizable subject matter
itself encourages the puzzle solver or player to look more closely at the characteristics of
the image for clues, the pieces of the puzzle, being simple squares without extrusions and
indentations expands by many time the available choices which may lead to a solution.
While in the traditional puzzle there is only one predetermined way of fitting the piece of
the puzzle into the system in the creativity puzzle these choices range from 4-64
depending upon how far along one had progressed. These more intense and more
concentrated efforts of puzzle solution provide a portion of the needed experience in
visual education

A series of forty or more unconventional puzzles have been designed and are now set up
for production. and can be viewed in the educational section of that same web site, The
Creativity Packet www.tcp.com.mt . Examples are shown here.
The puzzle above is assembled. The white lines between the squares indicate the edges of
the smaller squares. In the original the small squares measure 2” on a side. The completed
puzzle measures c. 8”x8”.
The above represents an unassembled puzzle. You are invited to try your luck in
assembling it and for yourself experience the thought processes a less experienced mind
would encounter. Print it out, cut out the pieces and assemble them into a square the way
you think the artist intended the image to look.

In summary, this set off forty puzzles is graded and ranges from the simple to the
complex , but what remains the same in each and all of them and is untraditional to their
design is that they lack the involved in and out configuration of most puzzles which
provide the player with additional clues to the solution. They also lack a subject matter
which also provides a clue to the player and because these usual clues to the puzzle
solution are absent the player is thrown back upon his ability to reconstruct using purely
non-objective graphic clues to arrive at what the designer’s original intention may have
been. There are many times more choices to be considered and made in this puzzle
format than in the traditional puzzle format thus providing an enriched learning
experience for the player…young or old. Learning, that is, in the detection of a visual
logic a talent as valuable to the military expert as it is to the art critic.

For additional information please refer to THE CREATIVITY PACKET at

www.tcp.com.mt in the section on education.