There's more than one right answer...

@Luciea (80)
Canada
April 4, 2007 10:18pm CST
I was reading an article taken from a book called, "A Whack on the Side of the Head," by Roger Von Oech. I found it incredibly interesting on how he approached this fancinating topic of how our society was being geared toward one correct answer for every question. There's an example in the book, which demonstrated this. I'll paraphrase this in order to avoid plagiarism: In a classroom of older students, a teacher drew a dot on the chalkboard and asked, "What is this?" "It's a dot on the chalkboard," one of the students blurted out as the other students agreed. The teacher looked disappointed and proceeded to tell the class that her kindergarten class thought of a massive amount of examples it could be: a fly, the top of a telephone pole, the world from afar, a speck of snow, and so forth. After reading that section, I felt guilty. I would've said it was a dot on the board, wasn't that after all true? I continued reading. I learned that although none of the answers were wrong, the obvious would be considered by most the correct answer. This is because our society has been taught for most things that there is a right answer for everything. My friend brought up this issue with me; she baby-sits kids around her neighborhood and said that many of children she took care of were extremely materialistic. They had a tendency to become bored if there wasn't anything on television or the computer to watch or play. She continued to explain that when she was younger, they didn't have such luxuries and had to do with what she had. Her fondest memories were of jungle expeditions in her backyard and side-kick Tubby, her stuffed bear. Does this mean that children are becoming less creative as different generations pass? Are schools teaching children to be more technical? What are your thoughts and inputs? I'd love to hear from you.
1 response
@weemam (13372)
6 Apr 07
I truly believe that games with the imagination are dying out , I am a grandmother of 4 teenage children and they don't play games like I used to , I used to play in the fields on rope swings and hide and seek and make pretend shops , children only want to play with TV games ( not all) I think we had more fun with our imaginations than they do with their really expensive toys xx
@Luciea (80)
• Canada
7 Apr 07
I agree with you...When I was younger, I can still remember playing in our backyard and running around pretending we were adventurers. These days, many children are becoming materialistic, which is unfortunate since they're still so young. Thanks you for your input.