In a scene from the futuristic science fiction thriller movie Minority Report (based on a Phillip K. Dick story), the main character, who is a detective, assembles the clues for a crime that has yet to happen by moving pictures that are floating around in space on a virtual board. He rapidly pulls together what appear to be unrelated visual images of events that have happened, are happening, or will happen and places them in chronological order so can he ascertain what will occur and stop the crime before it takes place. This stunning scene resonated with me then, and I return to it often as I think about the ways in which we process information. Like the character played by Tom Cruise in this Steven Spielberg movie, we are constantly prioritizing what we know, trying to put facts together so we can figure out their greater meaning, and maybe even discard what we may not need to know. We do this intentionally and consciously; however, we also do this when we're asleep, when we're daydreaming, or when we're staring into space and seemingly doing nothing.
I was reminded of this recently when I read an article in the New York Times called "Discovering the Virtues of A Wandering Mind" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/science/29tier.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=wandering%20minds&st=cse&scp=1) that discussed the ways in which we think when our minds appear to be unfocused. In fact, our brains may be like Tom Cruise's detective moving images around in a more innovative manner than if we were solely concentrating on the task at hand. As the article states, "Another school of psychologists, which includes the Santa Barbara researchers, theorizes that both networks are working on agendas beyond the immediate task. That theory could help explain why studies have found that people prone to mind wandering also score higher on tests of creativity, like the word-association puzzle mentioned earlier." Not all mind wandering is beneficial, and sometimes, and as we know, it can be counter-productive. Nevertheless, there are times when we are "somewhere else" and sub-consciously putting things together in a way that advances our thinking and learning.
I remember an experience when I was a relatively new teacher that made this clear to me. In the summer of 1992, I attended the Klingenstein Summer Institute for Teachers in their first five years of teaching in an independent school. One stormy afternoon at Columbia University, I found myself staring out the window during a lecture on assessment. All of a sudden, I had a moment of understanding that transcended anything I had experienced up to that point. Many thoughts about assessment with which I had been grappling came together, and what had seemed inchoate suddenly became very clear. Although I was fully aware of what the professor was saying, I was also integrating his remarks into what I had been studying earlier in the three week long institute and my "spacing out" actually allowed me to bring what seemed to be unrelated concepts together into a greater whole. At this moment, I also realized that we need to provide students with high level material in our courses, but we also need to give them time to process what they are learning so they can give it context.
For students to place information in a context and see the interrelated nature of facts, we need to allow their minds to roam. They need to have their eureka moments when they suddenly figure things out. There are few events in teaching, or in life in general, that are more gratifying than when one sees a student "get" it. But those moments can only come if there is time to go down paths that may not lead to the right place or to try and fit puzzle pieces together that may not click. Eventually, things do fall in place, but they rarely do so in a linear fashion or on our timeline.
That is why the most important element in teaching may be time which is unfortunately the one resource we seem to lack the most. I recently heard about a student who was reading Homer's The Odyssey during his summer vacation after he had read it earlier in the year. He told his mother that he wanted to read it again when he had more time. Maybe his re-reading during the summer would enable him to see things he could not see before. Fortunately in the world of schools, we have summer to reflect, analyze, and yes, process what we have learned. Although summer is nice, we need to find a way to build in time for daydreaming into our school year so students can make these leaps more often and move to higher planes when they are around their teachers and their peers. As fun as these epiphanies can be, we need to be able to bounce our discoveries off other people and hear what they think.
As Dr. Jonathan Schooler of the University of California-Santa Barbara says, "For creativity you need your mind to wander, but you also need to be able to notice that you’re mind wandering and catch the idea when you have it. If Archimedes had come up with a solution in the bathtub but didn’t notice he’d had the idea, what good would it have done him?"
