Re: if you only had 75 minutes

[bobbie silk <bsilk@keller.clarke.edu>]

Years ago I started using "creative" assignments in my comp classes,
partly because those assignments added a liveliness that we seemed to be
missing otherwise.  I now believe this was intuition at work, because the
creative assignments seemed to help the students' writing overall.  When I
started reading books and articles on critical thinking, I came across
something Matthew Lippman wrote about critical thinking actually being a
combination of critical and creative thinking.  This made sense to me,
given all the trouble I had in coaching students to come up with a thesis
idea that wasn't merely informational.  Lippman points out that the
"critical" part of critical thinking is the analytic function, while the
"creative" part of critical thinking is that which makes sense of or finds
the meaning in the analysis.  

I often use this example to explain critical and creative thinking to
students:  A plant geneticist (whom I interviewed for a feature article) 
was working with hybridization in corn plants.  Although his own interest
was in a particular cellular feature of plant reproduction, as a good
scientist he kept complete records of various chracteristics of the
hybrids as well as looking at the cells through a microscope.  One of the
elementary characteristics recorded for each hybrid is its sugar level.
The scientist would often do a quick field-test of kernal density,
moisture, and sweetness by biting in to a freshly picked ear of corn.  On
one occasion he noticed that the sweetness was particularly high.  That
was critical thinking--simple analysis, an informational entry for his
logs. The creative thinking was having the insight (completely unrelated
to his own interests in cell division)  that this sweetness could mean
more consistent, high-quality corn crops for the food industry.  This
hybrid is now the most common variety of sweet corn sold in grocery
stores. 

  --Bobbie