What is Creativity and How to Encourage Creative Thinking | Montana Mosby | TEDxYouth@IESSanJose
[Music] hi I'm going to speak in English I'm sorry reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge it is thinking that makes what we read hours John mock creativity is the use of imagination or original thought to create something anything so how can we be creative is it something that can be taught or learned or is it an intrinsic ability that some people share and others don't I'm sure the answers to these questions are not simple and perhaps not attainable but I believe that to be a creative person you have to be able to think creatively so thinking creatively what does that entail to me it means looking at life from a new perspective imagining new results challenging norms and asking questions just because it's an opportunity to see something as more than what it is it may not be real but if it exists in your mind the possibility for it to exist and become real as possible as well so creativity can be used for many different things to create art music theater it can also be used in subjects such as math and science or for plans to change the world whether that be environmental changes or social changes and that was those changes those creative things do not come from an intrinsic ability that somebody has but from being able to look at the world differently being creative is not limited to only artists or writers anyone who is willing to look at the world from a new perspective has the ability to think creatively think about Darwin who challenged everything he was ever taught and was told many times that he was wrong but what he was doing made no sense and now because he continued to ask questions and continued his research we have an entire new field of science to study and a new history to investigate perhaps this is something that we should be including more than high school curriculums not what to think but how to think so how do we invoke this creative thinking how can we teach without telling we have to create situations in which students are forced to think for themselves we must be given opportunities to see subjects as more than just words on a page or facts to memorize now not everyone is going to find their creative niche somewhere and as an artist or as a scientist although that's not to say the opportunity shouldn't be given right we should continue to encourage questions and new ideas encourage new perspectives I found my niche in literature literature which is meant to be complex to invoke thought and change take miguel de cervantes for example who was easily the most creative writer of his time he filled don quixote with a ton of new innovative writing techniques and forced his readers to question the once firm line between reality and fiction now as a student I can tell you that Don Quixote at first glance seems like a boring story about a crazy man written too long ago to care about but after taking a class that forced me to look at Don Quixote in relation to the census I had to investigate a little bit further into what I was reading and I realized that don't you what they had to touch things before he realized that they were not what they were in front of him so to me I realized that donkey what they were talking about they tangibility verifies existence tangibility verifies existence this to me was a huge revelation and a philosophy that I came to on my own terms which made it that much more interesting so rather than reading literature as a simple text we have to ask questions what do these characters want how can the text be linked to another what from life is being explored in this text these are the questions that require and spark creative thinking because creative thinking starts with questions now literature language is the basis of literature yes language is the root of all philosophies and concepts it's how we communicate and it's how we share and come up with new ideas now I think when most people start learning a new language they see grammar and vocabulary and perhaps a culture that they associate with that language but creativity's not so much and I was part of that too until I was in a class where my professor made us do a project about second language acts acquisition we were told to do an experiment regarding second language acquisition that's all we got no guidelines no directions and I was infuriated I was no scientist I didn't know how to conduct an experiment and I had no idea where to start I felt lost but out of this I really learned how to think for myself and to come up with my own ideas I ended up trying to answer the question of whether or not untranslatable words exist now I did not find the answer but along the way I discovered some other ideas that really opened my mind and opened my world in Spanish you have two words for something that in English we have only one word you have wooden guns and the schema and in English we have only corner for example in South America there's a spider called the wrinkled Netanya esquina dunya can't exist and corner spider doesn't really evoke the same meaning right because we see a corner as an entire entity but you guys make the distinct that you guys distinguish between the inside of a corner and the outside esquina yes and to me that really opened my mind to the fact that there are concepts that I don't know because of a language barrier there are concepts that maybe exist only in my language and how can language be the root of all philosophies and concepts if the words don't exist to describe it I now can notice the difference between Odin cone and Athena I now realize that there's intricate things in the world that I don't notice because I don't have the vocabulary for it now linguistics is a relatively new field and it's in need of creative minds to continue asking questions and doing research so what does this show us I think that this shows us that creativity is the basis for language and literature and life and to continue moving forward we need to continue asking questions and continue encouraging creative thought which is good idea [Music] you