I thought I would start this blog by talking about where a lot of the difficulties start, looking at the education system. My PG cert thesis 6 years ago, was on dyslexia and creativity; explaining that dyslexic individuals are more likely to be creative, whether in the arts or sciences. To many dyslexia specialists use the term lateral thinking to describe the thought process of people with these different styles: ADDers, dyspraxics, Aspies etc that fall into the Neurodiversity spectrum. Essentially, an individual with executive functioning difficulties would lean away from convergent sequential thought processes and more towards divergent/tangental/holistic thought. The term lateral thinking was coined by Edward DeBono as mentioned I believe in this video (I havent seen it in a while). Lateral Thinking is a process that DeBeno devised to promote creativity amongst convergent/linear thinkers, it is a way to allow a conventional thinker to think out of the box or to think out of the linear way into a new direction… Divergent thinking just happens… like a eureka moment, non-sequential and unpredictable.
The Lateral Thinking process probably works well for sheep who go the same way and can be herded. The education system and society expects everyone to be a sheep, to fit in to the pen or box… but some of us are goats that jump around and is difficult to herd (using Will Self’s analogy for Why prison’s fail), which is why schools fail and why essentially why society fails to be able to deal with people thinking differently. Why just eat grass… when you can eat loads of other stuff. Its funny how the education system and society has to put people into boxes, whether you black, white, brown, dyslexic, ADHD etc…. Then there are those that say… To progress there is the need to think out of the box then why is it then those who think out of the box are the one who are always the first to be excluded in education and society, by failing the education system, being institutionalized and undermined.
Love the goat analogy.
I was pretty much asked to leave my first job for allowing my lateral brain to dominate my work. In the eighties a fellow graduate and myself set up a “Junior technical development team”, armed with DeBono’s book, in an attempt to bring light to a stagnating company. I never read the book because I was already a strong lateral thinker but its presence served as a kind of false passport to letting it all hang out. Management were most unimpressed and we were both out the door within the year. The following year the company went bust! Sweet satisfaction indeed.
Hi Fiona, Pleased you like the goat analogy.
It’s not un common for goats to either jump out of the pen or any many cases butted out. The Sad thing is there are so many that never realised that that are a goat in sheep’s clothing, don’t realise their allergic to wool and keep scratching (I’ll stop the analogies now). I hope that you doing well with anything you visualise,
“Imagination is more important than knowledge…”
Albert Einstein
Hi Joseph
I loved your poem The Opposite Subtractor. Its fabulous to connect as it happens very rarely.
I love being a goat but it can be lonely at times. I am big on analogies and visualisation. I see too much and it builds up like a pressure cooker – until I forget or am kicked out.
I think schools are very cruel today. In my day they didn’t promote creativity so when you got into the workforce, unless you were strongly creative like myself, you fitted in fine. Nowadays children are encouraged to be creative but the truth is that the last thing an employer needs in this day and age of very strict government regulation is a creative employee.
Employers, educators and regulators are not united and it creates such strife and misery for thousands. Educating the educators is the biggest challenge in history and I should know as I am the daughter of 2 teachers.
Pleased you liked “The Opposite Subtractor” where did you read it?