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Creativity is more important than knowledge

Creativity is more important than knowledge
Table of Contents
Society has entered the information age, new technological revolutions are surging, and all countries have put the cultivation of students' innovative spirit and creative ability in an exceptionally prominent position. 

Because creative activities are an important guarantee for human survival and the sustainable development of human civilization and are the source of the evolution of human knowledge. "Creativity is more important than knowledge." 

The followings are the reading exercises and answers to "Creativity is More Important than Knowledge" compiled for you by the editor. I hope to help you.
creativity-is-more-important-than-knowledge

Creativity is more important than knowledge 

1. There is a competition question in the US Middle School Olympiad. 
Students are required to design a water vehicle, but they must break the conventional model, emphasize the thinking of different things, and reflect the spirit of innovation. Many students racked their brains and designed various types of vehicles, but they can't get rid of the well-known ship-shape and structure. Only one student has a strange idea. His work is like a huge "water spider". Sail on the water like a boat, but "crawl" on the water like a water spider. This work is unique and eye-catching among all the entries. Although this design failed in actual operation, almost all the judges gave him the highest score. 

2. This is an example of cultivating students' creative ability. 
Society has entered the information age, new technological revolutions are surging, and all countries have put the cultivation of students' innovative spirit and creative ability in an exceptionally prominent position. Because creative activities are an important guarantee for human survival and the sustainable development of human civilization and are the source of the evolution of human knowledge. "Creativity is more important than knowledge." 

3. So, how to cultivate creativity?

4. Scientific giant Newton said that he made great achievements because he stood on the shoulders of giants. This "giant" can be understood as the embodiment of knowledge created by countless predecessors. Accumulating knowledge is the foundation, and integrating knowledge is more important. Modern science and technology are developing in the direction of continuous differentiation and continuous integration. The growth point of new knowledge often appears at the edge of disciplines and the intersections between disciplines. Liberal arts students should understand some science knowledge, and science students should also dabble in literature and art. 

The French chemist Lichtenberg once said: "A chemist who only knows chemistry may not really understand chemistry." Extensive study, knowledgeable, thorough knowledge of the past and present, and comprehension of analogy should become the common pursuit of aspiring middle school students.

5. The more knowledge we have, the easier it is to produce new associations, new insights, and new creations; but we know too much about the traditional meaning of a certain thing, which will hinder the flexibility of thinking and make us involuntarily The predecessors led the nose to walk, thus forming an intellectual barrier, leading to the rigidity of creative ability. There are many people in China and abroad who work hard in ancient and modern times, but throughout their lives, there is accumulation but no creation. They are tired and trapped by knowledge. Students should learn to empty the "cup" of their minds and leave enough room for the development and change of ideas so that knowledge can flexibly aggregate, replace, jump, collide, and burst out sparks of creation.

6. Good at capturing hotlines and recording inspiration at any time. "Hotline" refers to mature ideas and ideas. Once the hotline flashes, we must hold on to it and dig deeper. Of course, we must also be good at grasping the fleeting "flash of thoughts". For those new ideas, new concepts, and new images that suddenly intrude into the brain, we must always remember, organize them regularly, think deeply, and stimulate creativity. The chemist Nobel was inspired by the sentence in his notebook that "the *** fell on the sand and then condensed", and successfully solved the transportation problem of ***. Every student should prepare a thought record book for himself. When new thoughts and new inspirations flash into their minds, they should be written down in time, long-term persistence, habit formation, quick thinking quality, and outstanding Creative talent can be gradually cultivated.

Einstein said, "Creativity is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited, and creativity almost sums up everything in the world, it promotes technological progress, and it is even the source of knowledge."

Creative activities are based on creative thinking, and divergent thinking is the main form of creative thinking. Different types of creative activities are related to different divergent thinking abilities.

Two kinds of divergent thinking abilities closely related to children's future learning abilities are semantic divergence and graphical divergence.

Semantic divergence

It is related to the fluency of children's language and is the basic ability necessary for creative activities related to writing and creativity.


Graphics divergence

It is connected with creative activities such as space and image art. Children with well-developed graphic divergence capabilities have stronger thinking flexibility and flexibility and can make full associations and imaginations based on existing information, and produce various New ideas and concepts.


Semantic divergence

NO.1 Age characteristics of children's semantic divergence ability

The development of children's semantic divergence ability is closely related to the development of children's own language.

In the preschool stage, children’s language development is very rapid. From the kindergarten class imitating the adult’s speech and being able to express their meaning in simple words and sentences, the small class gradually has the basic listening and speaking skills, to the middle class the number and types of vocabulary mastered rapidly increase, and the coherent language Begin to develop, and then in the big class, I can pronounce all the pronunciation clearly, and I can understand some more complicated sentences, and grasp the vocabulary of similar concepts and causal relations.

The development of children's semantic divergence ability also shows a trend of gradual improvement with age, and the development process does not advance at a uniform speed, and there are large individual differences.

Around 5 years old is a turning point in the development of children's divergent thinking. Children with strong semantic unit divergence ability are more likely to generate new ideas and can organize these ideas together; and the poor development of this ability is likely to be manifested as slow writing speed, empty content, poor composition ability, and lack of humor.

NO.2 Methods to improve children's semantic divergence ability

To improve children's semantic divergence ability, children should be encouraged to fully associate and imagine, and express themselves with different names and sentence patterns.

1. combined with the life experience of young children around the target, expand activities

Only close to the associate, similar to the associate. Associated things must be close or connected in some ways.

For example, if you make associations around the theme of "eating", if teachers want to guide children to name names related to food, the materials provided must be close to their lives.

For example, suggest bananas and watermelons to remind children of their favorite fruits, such as peaches and pears. In addition, if the child says the names of other objects, the teacher cannot deny his answer, but cleverly uses "What do you like to eat?" and other methods to guide him to talk about "eating" related topics.

In a topic that focuses on a certain activity, it is necessary to guide the children in familiar places and various activities frequently performed, so that the children can think of similar activities that they have performed in their familiar environment, and say these similar activities. If the child cannot tell the name of the activity, encourage him to imitate the action of the activity, and then help him to summarize it.

2. Grasp the age characteristics of young children, teach students in accordance with their aptitude and vary from person to person

The oral expression of preschool children is not very standardized and cannot express their ideas well. Teachers should help them learn phrases or simple complex sentences during the game, and use standardized syntax to express them.

For example, let the children start from the short phrase "I like to eat XX", transition to replacing the names of foods, and imitations, and then practice "I like to eat XX, and also like to eat XXX" and other simple parallel complex sentences to express more than two things.

Children’s life experiences are different, and the content they associate with is also different. Teachers can repeat children’s good words and sentences to guide other children’s theories and help share each other’s experiences.

Some children do not like to express or express themselves inappropriately because of personality or ability problems. Teachers should encourage children to participate in activities as much as possible and create as many expression opportunities for children as possible.

3. Use enlightening questions to guide young children to associate

Abundant knowledge and experience are inexhaustible sources of the development of creative thinking. Teachers should expand children's experience scope in many ways in their activities, encourage them to perceive, observe, explore, and discover all kinds of things, and guide children to see more, listen more, do more, think more, ask more, and talk more. Only with abundant living materials can the association be successfully developed and the divergence can be carried out effectively.

4. help children sum up experiences, to extend the life

After children gain certain perceptual knowledge through activities, teachers should help them to summarize, summarize, and improve their experience. Teachers should always pay attention to repeating children's sentences and summarizing them.

For example, when children say "I like to eat watermelon", the teacher can help them to summarize: "Watermelon is a fruit, round and sweet." And ask questions to inspire them to think again: "What else do you like to eat? Fruit? Which fruits have a sweet taste?” Lead them to associate and name more other foods that are related to “fruit”, “round” or “sweet taste”.


Graphics divergence


1. Age characteristics of children's graphic divergence ability

Children in small classes focus on knowledge, understanding, and memory of graphics. At the same time, they can make simple combinations, changes, and associations of simple graphics under the guidance of adults, and their graphic divergence activities are more dependent on fiddling with materials, and their purpose is not strong. Imagination often lags behind the operation.

Middle-class children can generalize abstract graphics in some things, but the points and content of the divergence of the graphics are related to daily life experience, and the type of change is less.

With the enrichment of their life experience, the children in the big class have strong abstraction and generalization abilities for graphics, can break through categories and diverge, cross over more angles, and have stronger task awareness and purpose. Under the guidance of adults, they can Understand things and requirements more openly, generate new ideas more confidently, and express them freely.

Children with a well-developed graphic divergence ability are confident and able to complete graphic creative activities with high quality. If they are not well developed, their thinking will lack fluency, flexibility, and flexibility, which will affect the completion of tasks due to a lack of clear instructions. , Or unable to use new ways to solve the task.

2. Methods to improve children's graphic divergence ability

The purpose of practicing divergent thinking in graphics is not to cultivate a genius in painting but to gradually guide children to understand things and requirements more openly through practice, and to generate new concepts and methods more freely.

The core content of the design of graphic divergence activities is to use various methods and forms to make changes to the graphics under certain conditions so that the graphics will change. The more changes, the more different the better.

Graphic divergence activities have higher requirements for the development of children's movements, especially the development of small muscles, and require a certain life experience basis, so different forms of activities should be adapted for children of different ages. Young children are still unable to move the pen freely, and their life experience is also limited. Therefore, teachers can use graphic associations, combinations, and simple deformations.

As children grow older, teachers can gradually add puzzles, add paintings, change paintings, and associate and create forms of symbols (Chinese characters, English words, numbers, etc.).


Graphic association

Associate with specific graphics as limited conditions, such as a circle, the things associated with it should be related to the circle, and there are many directions of association. The intuitive direction, the most similar shape, can be a ball, the sun, etc.; the extension direction, which extends outside the circle, can be hats, flowers, etc.; the inner direction, which is contained in the circle, can be the earth, wheels, etc.


Graphic combination

Taking several specific graphics as the limiting condition, it is required to use the given graphics to make multiple combinations. The result can be the relative position change of multiple graphics, the direction change of a single graphic, and so on.


Graphical changes

For a given unit graphic, gradually add, subtract, or change a certain part, make new associations, or purposefully add or subtract to make it a new thing. Let young children expand their imagination by adding and subtracting changes. In the process of "adding a point" and "min using a point", create new patterns, experience the creative methods, and try to perform creative activities, such as changing colors, changing positions, adding, Reducing some, and so on.


Graphic distortion

Use easily deformable soft iron wire, string, soft clay, and other materials to change the shape and form of the figure, and imagine the corresponding thing according to the change, or make the corresponding change according to the imagined thing.


Jigsaw

Use the given graphic blocks to spell out meaningful things. You can limit the use of a specified number of graphics to spell out the target pattern.


Graphic painting

Use a pen to add pictures to the given graphics, you can limit the results, or you don't have to limit the results. It can be that a graph is constantly added and changed, or multiple identical graphs can be given so that each graph becomes a different thing, and the greater the difference between things, the better. 

If a circle is given, various patterns can be added, as shown in the figure:


There are many forms of activities for developing children's graphic divergence ability.

For example, the following figure shows multiple identical geometric figures (circles, squares, triangles, mixed shapes), and at the same time restricts specific scenes. Toddlers are required to find basic geometric figures in the living room scene, but the geometric figures are already It becomes a concrete objects, which requires children to observe and imagine what the basic geometric figures may become as much as possible.
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