Is the notion of the scientific method taught in schools and colleges wrong? Does scientific genius stem more from the ability to creatively detect patterns from a few observations rather than from classic experimentation? Robert Root-Bernstein thinks so. And, if he’s right, what does that say about approaches to research currently supported by the U.S. Department of Education?
The playful side of scientific genius
October 19, 2008 by Mark Warschauer
Papyrus News 
A good way of analyzing the relationship between the palyful side of a learner and their educational performance is observing this link in individuals with a intelligence much higher than the average population. Even though not all higly gifted work the same way, all studies agree that the majority share a series of cognitive, emotional and behavioral characteristics (apart from other issues such as failure at school and common intra-personal problems; consequently, they are a special-needs student population).
Most highly gifted children only develop their potential in environments in which they can feel completely free to take perspectives, make connections and come up with proposals that the majority of the students in the clasroom, or even the educators, would have never thought about. In other words, very often little geniuses need to escape from authoritative environments and figures -whether they be a teacher, a parent, or very self-disciplined organizations- in order to feel at ease to start unfolding their enormous potential in their creative, innovative (and sometimes odd) ways.
Geniuses like Dalí, Da Vinci or Picasso would have never reached their astonishing level of talent if they had constantly been subjugated to the strict set of norms and rules of the very methodical, unflexible lecture-system of academia. The scientific method contains, as well, a tangled set of unavoidable steps and unflexible rules. And the way it is generally taught at schools makes it even more methodical and damned rigid – bringing up, once more, the ongoing educational controversy of conservative teaching/learning vs innovative teaching/learning.
Based on studies of the varied dimensions of intelligence, psychologist Howard Gardner explains this issue quite clearly in his more than enjoyable books “Creating Minds: An Anatomy Of Creativity As Seen Through The Lives Of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham and Gandhi” and “Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership”, both in Paperback.
This also brings some light on how important is the link between the emotional dimension of highly gifted children and the quality of their final achievements in real life. It seems to me that keeping our ability to play is vital in developing our intelligence, as Edward de Bono has been long concluding for many years. Then according to this, our ability to remember and, sometimes, remain the child that we once were, is fundamental in learning to become more intelligent as adults. The fact that cognitive research has focused in emotional intelligence in the last decade would be an additional proof of this. Intelligence, however, stills mean different things to different people… but that is another debate.
Perhaps all this is why some leading-edge companies, such as Google, are keen to provide a comfortable, non-stressful, playful environment to their employees? Why, if not, would they believe theirs is the best way to get the most out of their people?