Imagine you’re sitting at a desk in the back of a classroom. The teacher gives you two sheets of construction paper, one white and one red. On the board are written instructions that tell you what to do with these papers: make a Valentine’s Day card with a red paper heart in the middle. You have five minutes. No asking questions. No talking.
Everyone who reads the board tries to follow the instructions but you don’t notice that there’s anything written there. You know you’re supposed to make a Valentine’s Day card, so you start working on cutting out different shaped and sized hearts from the white paper and gluing them to the red paper. You draw flowers in the margins. You write a poem in glitter glue across the top. Your card is beautiful. Stunning! You’re thrilled.
Time’s up.
The teacher glides up and down the aisles of the classroom picking up cards. Some have red hearts on white paper that are off center, and those students have made mistakes. The instructions clearly stated that the red heart should be in the middle of the page.
Finally the teacher gets to you and because you completely disregarded the instructions, you know you’ve made nothing but mistakes. You try to explain you didn’t see the board so you made something different, but it’s too late. Your card is torn to shreds in front of everyone as an example of the wrong way to complete the activity.
This was my experience twenty years ago in an art classroom. It was the first time I thought I might not be “normal”, that I might think differently from other people. I made something I thought was beautiful but was wrong for the assignment. The lesson I learned that day was that I needed to follow orders in school no matter what, even when making a holiday card.
I think we can all acknowledge that creativity is not about following directions or thinking the same way as everyone else. It’s the opposite. Creativity is defined as the ability to produce new ideas to solve old problems and express ourselves. Thinking “outside of the box” should be encouraged in schools and for the most part, it is. At least, much more so than when I was in 2nd grade some decades ago. But it’s only been in the past few years that the (mostly) positive “thinking differently” of being creative has been linked to the (mostly) negative “thinking differently” experienced by neurodivergent people.
Neurodiversity is a term that recognizes there are groups of people who think differently from others. The term was originally used by the autistic community in the 1990s to empower and organize people to advocate for inclusion and recognize that thinking differently from others is a natural part of being human.
Today, communities who are neurodivergent include those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD or ADHD), anxiety, depression, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and other learning disabilities. There are also some who are unofficially diagnosed but experience “divergent” thinking in certain circumstances or for short periods of time. While in school, many students are diagnosed with disabilities and given accommodations, individual goals, and specialized instruction to help with learning. While there are challenges to having a disability, advocates believe that thinking differently from others can be helpful in problem solving and creative thinking.
People with disabilities that fall under the neurodiversity umbrella often have strengths that help inspire creative solutions in the fields of computer science, engineering, design, and art. Studies show that autistic people can see and understand complex patterns faster. People with dyslexia have a strength in visual-spatial thinking that allows them to understand and identify “complex objects” and perform better in areas that require three dimensional thinking. Researchers have observed that people with ADHD score higher original creative thinking and real-world creative achievement than people without ADHD.
By taking a neurodiverse approach to education, schools encourage thinking differently as part of the creative process. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, no one thinks exactly the same way based on our own biological and environmental differences. And it also shows that there’s no wrong way to make a Valentine’s Day card.
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