bodhi tree swaying

Almost ever summer over the last ten years, I’ve been teaching low income teens how to use their minds more effectively so that they can be more successful students, but also so that they can be more successful, happier, less stressed individuals. We cover a lot of ground in my six-week course, but a core [...]

First up, I’ve been absent from my blog for some time. One reason is that I was busy with my book tour. But then that only took three weeks, so that’s not the complete reason. Another reason was just that I’m very busy anyway, trying to run a small business (the publishing wing of Wildmind) in a difficult economy, while my wife has increased her working hours and I’m having to take on more childcare. And that, in fact, is the main cause of my absence. I’d also, however, got into the lazy habit of letting Twitter do my blogging for me, by using a plugin to turn a digest of my tweets into blog posts. I’d originally intended this to be a supplement to my “real” blogging, but of course the beermat placed under the wobbly table leg tends to move from being a temporary fix a …

It’s ironic that just as science is beginning to discover how creativity works, it is (in the US at least) in the midst of a marked decline. A Newsweek article reports that while IQ has been steadily rising, generation by generation, creativity began to decline steeply after 1990.

It’s a fascinating article (that I’m only half-way through), but in case one day you ever need to remind yourself what creativity was, here’s how it used to work:

When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available

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At first sight I was a bit perplexed to see that a state law in Illinois requiring a moment of silence in public schools had been nullified by a judge’s ruling. After all, children are so bombarded with stimuli these days that some silence seems just what they need.

But continuing to read the article it turns out that the law is another poorly-disguised attempt to get prayer into schools. According to the judge, the “teacher is required to instruct her pupils, especially in the lower grades, about prayer and its meaning as well as the limitations on their ‘reflection’.”

A state senator commented, “I strongly feel and I still believe that children should have a moment of silence at the beginning of the school day.” The answer then is easy — remove the language requiring teachers to give instruction in prayer, and ensure that …