11A The Gift Of Stress!

                  While I was reading this week readings, I came up with 4 questions that would be asked in a quiz/essay. The questions were:

1) What are the negative consequences of removing difficulties and making things easier?

 2) What is the strategy of interleaving and why should we use it?

 3) How can student cultivate their creativity and why would this be important in their future?

4) How is a nurturing environment important for creativity?

The question I will be answering is what are the negative consequences of removing difficulties and making things easier?

In the article “Creativity, Education and the Gift of ‘stress’” Ian Leslie writes about the importance of stress and how it plays in creativity and learning. She gives the example of The Beatles. She writes that in 1966 they all got together in a studio and they discovered that the obstacles they faced actually boosted their creativity and they created sounds that nobody had created before. This resulted in the Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.  She also tells the reader that difficulties and obstacles and encourages greater depth in learning. She points out that the phrase (Keep it simple Make It Fun) may be a good phrase for the industry, but we need some difficulty in our learning so that we can be more interested in it.

         She also mentions a method called interleaving, forcing your self to move back and forth between subjects that you are attempting to learn. This is a beneficial method that will increase the efficiency of your learning. Interleaving creates a sense of difficulty, which will increase your capacity to retain knowledge.

         Everyone believes that taking the easy way out is best for him or her, but Leslie disagrees. She believes that having difficulty can increase your capacity to learn.

Works Cited

Jinkins, Michael. "Creativity, Education and the Gift of

 'Stress'" The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com,

18 Jan. 2013. Web. 08 Nov. 2013.