A 5-Step Technique for Producing Ideas circa 1939

“…the habit of mind which leads to a search for relationships between facts becomes of the highest importance in the production of ideas.”

Literature is the original “inter-net,” woven of a web of allusions, references, and citations that link different works together into an endless rabbit hole of discovery. Case in point: Last week’s wonderful field guide to creativity, Dancing About Architecture, mentioned in passing an intriguing old book originally published by James Webb Young in 1939 – A Technique for Producing Ideas (public library), which I promptly hunted down and which will be the best $5 you spend this year, or the most justified trip to your public library.

Young – an ad man by trade but, as we’ll see, a voraciously curious and cross-disciplinary thinker at heart – lays out with striking lucidity and clarity the five essential steps for a productive creative process, touching on a number of elements corroborated by modern science and thinking on creativity: its reliance on process over mystical talent, its combinatorial nature, its demand for a pondering period, its dependence on the brain’s unconscious processes, and more.

Right from the introduction, original Mad Man and DDB founder Bill Bernbach captures the essence of Young’s ideas, with which Steve Jobs would have no doubt agreed when he proclaimed that “creativity is just connecting things”:

Mr. Young is in the tradition of some of our greatest thinkers when he describes the workings of the creative process. It is a tribute to him that such scientific giants as Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein have written similarly on this subject. They agree that knowledge is basic to good creative thinking but that it is not enough, that this knowledge must be digested and eventually emerge in the form of fresh, new combinations and relationships. Einstein refers to this as intuition, which he considers the only path to new insights.

To be sure, however, Young marries the intuitive with the practical in his formulation:

[T]he production of ideas is just as definite a process as the production of Fords; that the production of ideas, too, runs on an assembly line; that in this production the mind follows an operative technique which can be learned and controlled; and that its effective use is just as much a matter of practice in the technique as is the effective use of any tool.

In a chapter on training the mind, Young offers:

In learning any art the important things to learn are, first, Principles, and second, Method. This is true of the art of producing ideas.

Particular bits of knowledge are nothing, because they are made up [of] called rapidly aging facts. Principles and method are everything.

[…]

So with the art of producing ideas. What is most valuable to know is not where to look for a particular idea, but how to train the mind in the method by which all ideas are produced and how to grasp the principles which are at the source of all ideas.

But the most compelling part of Young’s treatise, in a true embodiment of combinatorial creativity, builds upon the work of legendary Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (of Pareto principle fame) and his The Mind and Society. Young proposes two key principles for creating – that an idea is a new combination and that the ability to generate new combinations depends on the ability to see relationships between different elements.

The first [principle is] that an idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements.

[…]

The second important principle involved is that the capacity to bring old elements into new combinations depends largely on the ability to see relationships. Here, I suspect, is where minds differ to the greatest degree when it comes to the production of ideas. To some minds each fact is a separate bit of knowledge. To others it is a link in a chain of knowledge. It has relationships and similarities. It is not so much a fact as it is an illustration of a general law applying to a whole series of facts.

[…]

Consequently the habit of mind which leads to a search for relationships between facts becomes of the highest importance in the production of ideas.

STEP 1: GATHERING RAW MATERIAL

Young talks about the importance of building a rich pool of “raw material” – mental resources from which to build new combinations – in a way that resonates deeply with the Brain Pickings founding philosophy, and also articulates the increasing importance of quality information filters in our modern information diet. This notion of gathering raw material is the first step in his outline of the creative process:

Gathering raw material in a real way is not as simple as it sounds. It is such a terrible chore that we are constantly trying to dodge it. The time that ought to be spent in material gathering is spent in wool gathering. Instead of working systematically at the job of gathering raw material we sit around hoping for inspiration to strike us. When we do that we are trying to get the mind to take the fourth step in the idea-producing process while we dodge the preceding steps.

Even seven decades into the past, Young knew that the future belongs to the curious. His insistence on the importance of curiosity would make Richard Feynman nod in agreement:

Every really good creative person…whom I have ever known has always had two noticeable characteristics. First, there was no subject under the sun in which he could not easily get interested-from, say, Egyptian burial customs to modern art. Every facet of life had fascination for him. Second, he was an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information. For it is with the advertising man as with the cow: no browsing, no milk.

[…]

The process is something like that which takes place in the kaleidoscope. The kaleidoscope, as you know, is an instrument which designers sometimes use in searching for new patterns. It has little pieces of colored glass in it, and when these are viewed through a prism they reveal all sorts of geometrical designs. Every turn of its crank shifts these bits of glass into a new relationship and reveals a new pattern. The mathematical possibilities of such new combinations in the kaleidoscope are enormous, and the greater the number of pieces of glass in it the greater become the possibilities for new and striking combinations.

(I once used a similar analogy with LEGO.)

STEP 2: DIGESTING THE MATERIAL

In his second stage of the creative process, digesting the material, Young affirms Paola Antonelli’s brilliant metaphor of the curious octopus:

What you do is to take the different bits of material which you have gathered and feel them all over, as it were, with the tentacles of the mind. You take one fact, turn it this way and that, look at it in different lights, and feel for the meaning of it. You bring two facts together and see how they fit. What you are seeking now is the relationship, a synthesis where everything will come together in a neat combination, like a jig-saw puzzle.

STEP 3: UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSING

In his third stage of the creative process, Young stresses the importance of making absolutely “no effort of a direct nature”:

It is important to realize that this is just as definite and just as necessary a stage in the process as the two preceding ones. What you have to do at this time, apparently, is to turn the problem over to your unconscious mind and let it work while you sleep.

[…]

[W]hen you reach this third stage in the production of an idea, drop the problem completely and turn to whatever stimulates your imagination and emotions. Listen to music, go to the theater or movies, read poetry or a detective story.

STEP 4: THE A-HA MOMENT

Then and only then, Young promises, everything will click in the fourth stage of the seemingly serendipitous a-ha! moment:

Out of nowhere the Idea will appear.

It will come to you when you are least expecting it-while shaving, or bathing, or most often when you are half awake in the morning. It may waken you in the middle of the night.

STEP 5: IDEA MEETS REALITY

Young calls the last stage “the cold, gray dawn of the morning after,” when your newborn idea has to face reality:

It requires a deal of patient working over to make most ideas fit the exact conditions, or the practical exigencies, under which they must work. And here is where many good ideas are lost. The idea man, like the inventor, is often not patient enough or practical enough to go through with this adapting part of the process. But it has to be done if you are to put ideas to work in a work-a-day world.

Do not make the mistake of holding your idea close to your chest at this stage. Submit it to the criticism of the judicious.

When you do, a surprising thing will happen. You will find that a good idea has, as it were, self-expanding qualities. It stimulates those who see it to add to it. Thus possibilities in it which you have overlooked will come to light.

* * *

Years later, upon reissuing A Technique for Producing Ideas, Young recounted the many letters he had gotten from “poets, painters, engineers, scientists, and even one writer of legal briefs” who had found his technique empowering and helpful. But what’s perhaps most interesting is the following note he made to the postscript of a reprint:

From my own further experience in advertising, government, and public affairs I find no essential points which I would modify in the idea-producing process. There is one, however, on which I would put greater emphasis. This is as to the store of general materials in the idea-producer’s reservoir.

[…]

I am convinced, however, that you gather this vicarious experience best, not when you are boning up on it for an immediate purpose, but when you are pursuing it as an end in itself.

FRANZ KAFKA wrote that “a book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us.” I once shared this quotation with a class of seventh graders, and it didn’t seem to require any explanation.

We’d just finished John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” When we read the end together out loud in class, my toughest boy, a star basketball player, wept a little, and so did I. “Are you crying?” one girl asked, as she crept out of her chair to get a closer look. “I am,” I told her, “and the funny thing is I’ve read it many times.”

But they understood. When George shoots Lennie, the tragedy is that we realize it was always going to happen. In my 14 years of teaching in a New York City public middle school, I’ve taught kids with incarcerated parents, abusive parents, neglectful parents; kids who are parents themselves; kids who are homeless or who live in crowded apartments in violent neighborhoods; kids who grew up in developing countries. They understand, more than I ever will, the novel’s terrible logic — the giving way of dreams to fate.

For the last seven years, I have worked as a reading enrichment teacher, reading classic works of literature with small groups of students from grades six to eight. I originally proposed this idea to my principal after learning that a former stellar student of mine had transferred out of a selective high school — one that often attracts the literary-minded offspring of Manhattan’s elite — into a less competitive setting. The daughter of immigrants, with a father in jail, she perhaps felt uncomfortable with her new classmates. I thought additional “cultural capital” could help students like her fare better in high school, where they would inevitably encounter, perhaps for the first time, peers who came from homes lined with bookshelves, whose parents had earned not G.E.D.’s but Ph.D.’s.

Along with “Of Mice and Men,” my groups read: “Sounder,” “The Red Pony,” “A Raisin in the Sun,” “Lord of the Flies,” “The Catcher in the Rye,” “Romeo and Juliet” and “Macbeth.” The students didn’t always read from the expected perspective. Holden Caulfield was a punk, unfairly dismissive of parents who had given him every advantage. About “The Red Pony,” one student said, “it’s about being a dude, it’s about dudeness.” I had never before seen the parallels between Scarface and Macbeth, nor had I heard Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies read as raps, but both made sense; the interpretations were playful, but serious. Once introduced to Steinbeck’s writing, one boy went on to read “The Grapes of Wrath” and told me repeatedly how amazing it was that “all these people hate each other, and they’re all white.” His historical perspective was broadening, his sense of his own country deepening. Year after year, ex-students visited and told me how prepared they had felt in their freshman year as a result of the classes.

And yet I do not know how to measure those results. As student test scores have become the dominant means of evaluating schools, I have been asked to calculate my reading enrichment program’s impact on those scores. I found that some students made gains of over 100 points on the statewide English Language Arts test, while other students in the same group had flat or negative results. In other words, my students’ test scores did not reliably indicate that reading classic literature added value.

Until recently, given the students’ enthusiasm for the reading groups, I was able to play down that data. But last year, for the first time since I can remember, our test scores declined in relation to comparable schools in the city. Because I play a leadership role in the English department, I felt increased pressure to bring this year’s scores up. All the teachers are increasing their number of test-preparation sessions and practice tests, so I have done the same, cutting two of my three classic book groups and replacing them with a test-preparation tutorial program. Only the highest-performing eighth graders were able to keep taking the reading classes.

Since beginning this new program in September, I have answered over 600 multiple-choice questions. In doing so, I encountered exactly one piece of literature: Frost’s “Road Not Taken.” The rest of the reading-comprehension materials included passages from watered-down news articles or biographies, bastardized novels, memos or brochures — passages chosen not for emotional punch but for textual complexity.

I MAY not be able to prove that my literature class makes a difference in my students’ test results, but there is a positive correlation between how much time students spend reading and higher scores. The problem is that low-income students, who begin school with a less-developed vocabulary and are less able to comprehend complex sentences than their more privileged peers, are also less likely to read at home. Many will read only during class time, with a teacher supporting their effort. But those are the same students who are more likely to lose out on literary reading in class in favor of extra test prep. By “using data to inform instruction,” as the Department of Education insists we do, we are sorting lower-achieving students into classes that provide less cultural capital than their already more successful peers receive in their more literary classes and depriving students who viscerally understand the violence and despair in Steinbeck’s novels of the opportunity to read them.

It is ironic, then, that English Language Arts exams are designed for “cultural neutrality.” This is supposed to give students a level playing field on the exams, but what it does is bleed our English classes dry. We are trying to teach students to read increasingly complex texts, but they are complex only on the sentence level — not because the ideas they present are complex, not because they are symbolic, allusive or ambiguous. These are literary qualities, and they are more or less absent from testing materials.

Of course no teacher disputes the necessity of being able to read for information. But if literature has no place in these tests, and if preparation for the tests becomes the sole goal of education, then the reading of literature will go out of fashion in our schools. I don’t have any illusions that adding literary passages to multiple-choice tests would instill a love of reading among students by itself. But it would keep those books on the syllabus, in the classrooms and in the hands of young readers — which is what really matters.

Better yet, we should abandon altogether the multiple-choice tests, which are in vogue not because they are an effective tool for judging teachers or students but because they are an efficient means of producing data. Instead, we should move toward extensive written exams, in which students could grapple with literary passages and books they have read in class, along with assessments of students’ reports and projects from throughout the year. This kind of system would be less objective and probably more time-consuming for administrators, but it would also free teachers from endless test preparation and let students focus on real learning.

We cannot enrich the minds of our students by testing them on texts that purposely ignore their hearts. By doing so, we are withholding from our neediest students any reason to read at all. We are teaching them that words do not dazzle but confound. We may succeed in raising test scores by relying on these methods, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.

Our young people are taking in not only the words of prominent adults but also what the rest of us are doing as “bystanders” as we listen in and watch the “show.”    Educators can and must play an important role in the anti-bullying efforts but so must the rest of us.  When politicians who are running for the office of the President of the United States use name calling as a technique to criticize their fellow candidates or the President himself, we each lose a bit of our credibility and influence as adults to teach our children to treat their fellow students whom they might view as different, with respect and dignity.  While I was deeply disturbed at Limbaugh’s slur, the more vital lesson occurs when young people observe what adults do when norms and values are violated.  We can utilize a range of strategies to insure that our children don’t mistake the name calling done by powerful people for the way that men and women are supposed to act.  In order to ensure that our children don’t confuse adult rudeness and narrow mindedness for the norm, we can explicitly express our concern at the violation we all feel when rude, disrespectful, and defaming comments are made.  We can also take action and demonstrate the outrage we feel when our core values are violated.  In Rush Limbaugh’s case, we could write to him, submit a letter to a local paper, join a petition campaign, and/or we can remove our support for any of the sponsors of his show.  Any of these would model for our children the way to be an upstander when one witnesses bullying. Out of all that we could do, silence is the only option that would insure that our children learn how bystanders unwittingly support the smears and the dehumanization that are the results of bullying behavior.  When we collectively support the work of our schools by behaving in ways that support the values that we verbally embrace, our children will take notice.

John D’Auria is the author of Ten Lessons in Leadership and Learning and the President of Teachers²¹ (teachers21.org)

• Fostering a culture of collaboration focused on student achievement
• Developing a definition of successful schools focused on achievement and establishing clear goals for success

The current superintendent, Dr. Alan Ingram, also made a bold move as a result of these collaborative efforts. He invited key leaders of the union to become part of his leadership team. It was also impressive to learn about the resiliency and tenacity that union officials and school leaders showed in maintaining a collaborative stance despite forces and old habits that pulled them towards a more traditional “us vs. them” viewpoint. I encourage you to download the full report at the link listed above. It is worth the read!

-John D’Auria

TEACHERS21 is one of the seven organizations recently selected by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to join the Network of Educator Evaluation Partners (NEEP), the newly established group tasked with assisting districts in implementing the new regulations. As an organization that specializes in providing professional development to Massachusetts schools, we are currently assisting districts in planning for the new system by providing expert consultation and skill building on key features of the regulations including:

• using rubrics to analyze instruction
• promoting self assessment
• developing educator and team goals
• identifying evidence to inform judgements about the effectiveness of instruction
• conducting mid-year formative assessment conferences
• applying a collaborative approach to the implementation of the supervision and evaluation regulations.

Building on each district’s strengths we customize our programs to provide the technical content and adaptive skills required to effectively implement the new evaluation system. Our approach helps districts in three distinct areas:

Understand the new evaluation framework by

• Fostering a culture of self-assessment
• Beginning the process of examining and calibrating the rubric
• Building school-based administrators’ understanding of the standards.

Establishing a culture of continuous self improvement by

• Supporting a “growth” mindset
• Developing high functioning teams
• Creating a culture of reflection and inquiry.

Evaluating student learning through goal setting and evidence of learning by

• Formulating effective personal, professional and team SMART goals
• Assessing learning and student achievement.

Rather than a potential administrative burden, I firmly believe that the new Educator Evaluation Framework is an opportunity for every school and every district to advance leadership and learning and I look forward to seeing your comments.

Democracy, Public Education and Habits of the Heart:

Teaching and Leading in Courageous Schools

A conversation with Parker J. Palmer

March 28, 2012, 8:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.

Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA

Participate in a morning of reflection and conversation for educators with Parker J. Palmer, author of The Courage to Teach and Healing the Heart of Democracy, who will be joining us in person at Wellesley College.

Democracy is a non-stop experiment in the strengths and weaknesses of our political institutions, our communities, and the human heart. Public education is the most powerful implement we have to grow the kind of citizens required to sustain a government of, by, and for the people. 

Together, we will explore ways that schools can help students develop democratic “habits of the heart.” Courageous citizens come from courageous schools, schools that model what it means to resist the forces that would reduce them to something less than what democracy demands.

Cost: $195 regular registration.

$145 early registration by February 15, 2012

Registration:

Visit our website at www.CourageNE.org for information about how to register.

Also visit the link

http://www.cvent.com/d/ycqkrk/1Q to download a brochure.

About Parker J. Palmer

Parker J. Palmer is a writer, speaker, educator, and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality and social change. His work speaks to people in many walks of life, including public and higher education, healthcare, religion, business, philanthropy, community organizing, and grass-roots social change. He has published a dozen poems, some 200 essays, and several books, including best-selling and award-winning titles. Dr. Palmer is founder and Senior Partner of the national Center for Courage & Renewal.  He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as ten honorary doctorates, two Distinguished Achievement Awards from the National Educational Press Association, an Award of Excellence from the Associated Church Press, and major grants from the Danforth Foundation and the Lilly Endowment.

At a critical time in American life, Parker J. Palmer looks with realism and hope at how to deal with our political tensions for the sake of the common good—without the shouting, blaming, or defaming so common in our politics today.

In his newest book, Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit, Parker J. Palmer builds on his own extensive experience as an inner life explorer and social change activist to examine the personal and social infrastructure of American politics. What he did for educators in The Courage to Teach he does for citizens by looking at the dynamics of our inner lives for clues to reclaiming our civic well-being.

So what is this magic recipe? It turns out to be remarkably straightforward: Give

frequent feedback to teachers, use loads of data on individual students to guide their

instruction, employ heavy tutoring, increase instructional time, and maintain very

high expectations. All of the very best performing charter schools in his New York

sample did these things aggressively, according to a paper Fryer (Harvard Professor Roland Freyer) released last month,

and this is what turned around the Houston schools.

I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher I have tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or deescalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.

This quote eloquently captures the power and potential that educators have to create a climate or culture within their area of responsibility - a climate that affects children in much the same way that a sunny day can brighten our outlook or a rainy day can dampen our mood. Parents of school-age children understand this notion intuitively. They attend an open house, converse with a teacher, and listen carefully to the comments of their kids. These experiences provide an impression of the kind of atmosphere to which their children are exposed within a classroom. How a teacher responds to mistakes, the tone of voice employed when engaging students, and the approach used in communicating expectations are indicators that describe the climate established within a particular teacher’s domain.

While a great deal has been written about the strategies that teachers can utilize to craft a responsive and thriving climate or classroom culture, we know less about the ways this climate can be established by educational leaders within their spheres of influence. Yet, developing a vibrant and thriving work climate is an important responsibility of leadership and a most essential factor in a learning school district. Schools are systems. The learning environment in a particular classroom is often influenced by the more encompassing climate or culture that has been established within a department, a school, and an entire district.

John D’Auria and Matt King have altered the original Ginott quote to describe this aspect of leadership:

We’ve come to the conclusion that a leader is the decisive element in the school community. It is the personal approach of that leader which creates the climate. It’s the emotional responses of the leader that make the weather. The leader has tremendous power to make the life of teachers and students miserable or joyous. The leader can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. He or she can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is the reactions of the leader that decide whether a crisis will be escalated or deescalated and a community strengthened or diminished[1].

One of the most important lessons that we have learned as educators is that a leader’s effectiveness is dependent upon his or her ability to create an atmosphere that brings out the best in people and leads its members to continually improve. Roland Barth writes, “Unless teachers and administrators act to change the culture of a school, all innovations, high standards, and high-stakes tests will have to fit in and around existing elements of the culture. They will remain superficial window dressing incapable of making much of a difference.” Barth continues, “For, as we know, more than anything else, it is the culture of the school that determines the achievement of teacher and student alike.” (The Culture Builder, Barth)

About MSPP– Founded in 1974 as an independent graduate school of psychology, MSPP provides unique training programs for mental health professionals at the doctoral, master’s and certificate level, each designed to immerse students in both academic study and real-life clinical experience. Constantly assessing and evolving to meet the needs of a rapidly changing and diverse society, MSPP currently offers programs to train highly skilled professionals to care for Latinos, veterans, children and adolescents and families in a variety of settings, including the schools, the courts, the community and the workplace, among others. For more information about MSPP’s academic programs and special events, go to www.MSPP.edu.

1. 46 PERCENT OF TEACHERS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS LEAVE THE PROFESSION WITHIN FIVE YEARS.

2. 14 PERCENT OF TEACHERS LEAVE THE PROFESSION EACH YEAR; IN URBAN DISTRICTS, THE TURNOVER IS 20 PERCENT.

3. IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS, MORE THAN 1.8 MILLION OF THE 3.2 MILLION TEACHERS IN THIS COUNTRY WILL BECOME ELIGIBLE FOR RETIREMENT.

4. THE HIGH TURNOVER OF AMERICAN TEACHERS COSTS OUR COUNTRY OVER $7 BILLION EVERY YEAR.

5. THE AVERAGE STARTING SALARY FOR TEACHERS IN AMERICA IS $39,000; THE AVERAGE ENDING SALARY-AFTER 25 YEARS IN THE PROFESSION-IS $67,000.

6. 62 PERCENT OF TEACHERS HAVE SECOND JOBS OUTSIDE OF THE CLASSROOM.

7. TEACHERS MAKE 14 PERCENT LESS THAN PEOPLE IN OTHER PROFESSIONS THAT REQUIRE SIMILAR LEVELS OF EDUCATION.

8. IN TERMS OF BUYING POWER, TEACHER SALARIES HAVE DECLINED FOR 30 YEARS.

9. TEACHERS ARE PRICED OUT OF HOME OWNERSHIP IN 32 METROPOLITAN AREAS.

10. 77 PERCENT OF ADULTS FEEL THAT TEACHING IS AMONG THE MOST UNDER APPRECIATED PROFESSIONS IN THE UNITED STATES.

11.TEACHERS WORK AN AVERAGE OF TEN HOURS PER DAY.

12.ONLY 4.7 PERCENT OF COLLEGE JUNIORS WOULD CONSIDER TEACHING AT THE CURRENT STARTiNG SALARY. 68 PERCENT OF COLLEGE STUDENTS SAID THEY WOULD CONSIDER THE TEACHING PROFESSION IF IT PAID 50 PERCENT MORE THAN THE CURRENT OCCUPATIONS THEY WERE CONSIDERING.

13. 92.4 PERCENT OF TEACHERS SPENT THEIR OWN MONEY ON THEIR STUDENTS OR CLASSROOMS DURING THE 2007 -2008 SCHOOL YEAR.

14. 61 PERCENT OF ADULTS THINK TEACHERS ARE UNDERPAID GIVEN THEIR LEVEL OF TRAINING AND IMPORTANCE TO SOCIETY.

15. IN 1970 IN NEW YORK CITY, A STARTING LAWYER GOING INTO A PRESTIGIOUS FIRM AND A STARTING TEACHER GOING INTO PUBLIC EDUCATION HAD A DIFFERENTIAL IN THEIR ENTRY SALARY OF ABOUT $2,000. TODAY,
INCLUDING SALARY AND BONUS, THAT STARTING LAWYER MAKES $160,000, WHILE STARTING TEACHERS IN NEW YORK MAKE ROUGHLY $45,000.

Source material for these facts and more can be found at www.americanteachermovie.org