The princes and princesses of possibilities

Teachers have the unrivaled privilege of inviting their students to join them on creative journeys that can produce positive changes in the world. Teachers can present puzzling questions to their students that will transform the student’s perceptions of apparently impossible problems into opportunities for solutions. Realizing that each student has a unique creative genius, the teacher can stir the student’s imagination to provide new energy and insight into unsolved mysteries and to answer questions about our lives. As the teacher’s and student’s minds join together in new explorations, there will be an intellectual fusion and transformation in which the student becomes the teacher. Although few individuals will deny the existence of this heavenly, empowering intellectual change, most will agree that many educational systems do not foster, promote, or invite this personal student empowerment. In fact, teachers may suppress, ignore, or ridicule the vast creative powers of their students. This disregard for celebrating the student’s intellectual potential has become so commonplace in our society that poets sing sad tales about it, authors write derogatory comments, and psychiatrists search for the buried genius of childhood. Harry Chapin, one of America’s most eloquent balladeers, lamented about our modern educational system in his poetic song, “Flowers Are Red” ( 1). He described a little boy on his first day of school. He got some crayons and he started to draw. He put colors all over the paper because colors were what he saw. When the teacher asked what he was doing, the boy indicated that he was painting flowers. She reprimanded him by saying that it was not the time for art and indicated to him that his flowers should be green and red. She pointed out that there is a time for everything and a way that it should be done. She reminded him that he had to show concern for everyone else because he was not the only one. Moreover, she reiterated that flowers are red and leaves are green and that there is no need to see flowers any other way than the way that they had always been seen. Initially, her comments made little sense to him because he knew that there were so many colors in the rainbow, the morning sun, and the flowers, and he saw every one. Angered by his reaction, the teacher said that he was sassy and there were ways that things should be done. She pointed out that he had no alternative but to paint flowers exactly as she perceived them. She ultimately put him in a comer for his own good and would not allow him to come out until he got it right. Well, finally he got lonely, frightened thoughts filled his head, and he went up to the teacher and agreed with her saying that flowers are red and leaves are green and that there was no need to see flowers any other way than the way they had always been seen. His agreement with the teacher allowed him to return to class, beginning his adulthood and the loss of his inner child. In the classic philosophic children’s book, The Lirtle Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupery (2) began his story by reflecting on sad memories about his childhood when he was 6 yr old, at which time he read a magnificent book, “True Stories From Nature,” about the primeval forest. The book had a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Boa con-