literacy

Some say a word is dead
when it is said,
I say
it just begins to live that day.
Emily Dickinson

A whole life of nothing to say is a life full of saying
'I have nothing to say' or 'I will say nothing'.
Anyone who claims language hasn't got a hold on him had better never make the claim, else he utters an absurdity, he shows he needs language to make the claim.
Anyone who says nothing (intentionally) to prove that language hasn't got a hold on him, is a demon and practicing self-deception, similarly anyone who doesn't say much to prove the same point.

Art & Language Group
Van Abbe Museum

In the 1980s, after massive public and private efforts over almost a century, Great Britain was the first nation able to declare its people literate. At the approach of the 21st century Britain and other Western countries face a challenge at least as great: to go beyond the disabling level of literacy in which many people are now stuck. Technologically we are far better equipped for the job than our predecessors; but we have much less will to take it on.
The literacy given to most people is insufficient for the needs of increasingly complex societies and, more important, inadequate in ways essential to a democracy. Most leave school critically, culturally and imaginatively sub-literate. Fifty years ago, Trevelyan the great historian said much the same: 'Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.' The case is more depressing today; only a minority read at all if 'to read' means more than occasionally skimming over two-syllabled words about trivial matters. Two forces, one evident and crude, the other subterranean and often subtle, work against a readiness to remedy the situation. Each opposes that urge towards helping others which impelled our forefathers from the 19th century. One is the false philosophy which claims that market forces can meet all social purposes even in health, education, the arts and broadcasting. It then elevates the directly vocational purposes of education at the expense of those wider elements which aim to make everyone, not simply a lucky minority, into more than the servants of society's unquestioned material needs. Its proponents have never accepted that 'the unexamined life is not worth living'; they find the injunction altogether too moralistic, and certainly not applicable to the likes of the great body of them-out-there.
A joke has been going around for some years about a man who tries to persuade the government ministers to set up warm, free, reading rooms in every city, and is abused for his pains. "What about the cost-effectiveness?" they respond. "The market should and will provide." The well-intentioned man was only trying to reinvent the public library; which again the British were the first to establish, in the 19th century, along with free art galleries and museums, public parks, swimming baths, allotments and university extra-mural education. The Open University managed to be founded only a quarter of a century ago; it remains to be seen if it would be planted or nurtured in today's climate.
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Montessori management of creatvity
And like so many other good ideas hardly anything has to be new except for the combination. Also in education very creative pioneers have been active for example Neill in Summerhill and Maria Montessori. Maria Montessori was an Italian physician, specialized in psychiatry, an educationalist who lived and worked for large part of her life in the Netherlands. She was the first one to clearly make a distinction between learning and teaching. And in the schools she established put the accent on learning. She demonstrated that in much education teaching often happened at the expense of learning. On experiments and experience she based the basic principles of learning.
Firstly: pictures are better than words (see mind mapping). When people actively use their senses (as many as possible) they learn better. Secondly: showing is better than telling. This was worked out extensively by Marshall McLuhan who formulated this as: the medium is the message. Thirdly: too much material is worse than too little. Children should be taught to associate and develop their learning skills. Nobody knows what the future will bring and if they are only allowed to learn what grown-ups know they will not be able to deal with future problems. Fourthly: when the pressure is too high, people avoid new experiments and fall back on old structures. They will not learn anymore but perform routine tricks. The montessori classroom therefore allows for mistakes since these give feedback. Fifthly: positive reward of achievement is more effective than sanctions of mistakes. As she said every child asks nothing but: "Teach me how to do it myself." Sixthly: people want to learn, are active and not passive, but should be regarded as independent individuals.
Well, there is little too add if you want to develop your creativity. It certainly opened my eyes when I attended a montessori course.
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