Beyond colors, above displays
Last week, my Creativity students did mind mapping.
Mind maps are organizing tools: they allow us to visualize the nature of our assumptions and the extent of our knowledge; they can reveal hidden relationships between concepts once thought to be disparate.
The students from my last class for the day wanted to do a mind map for pancakes (they were either very tired or very hungry). One of their branches was the name of a restaurant, which they described using its food, prices, and logo colors.
Then, I asked them to think of a concept completely unrelated to pancakes.
A student journalist raised his hand, “Construction,” he said.
The class howled as people began to raise their hands and build the mind map. They named the Discayas, a political family associated with construction, and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).
“Connect all this to pancakes!” I announced.
There was thoughtful silence across the classroom. Seconds later, the same student journalist answered, “Orange.”
He’s right, I thought, as I drew the long line that linked both mind maps: Orange was the color of campaigns of people linked to the corruption issue, orange was in the logo of both the DPWH and the pancake restaurant, orange connected worlds that were thought to be different.
The class laughed about the toxicity of the color orange, but it was the thoughtful laugh of students who were seeing a connection that was not so much mystical as it was thought-provoking.
It had little to do with the color orange itself. Rather, the students saw that they could make connections among ideas, no matter how ridiculous— but that even the most ridiculous things could be fodder for contemplation.
I love teaching Creativity because it’s one of the few classes where you can see the students’ eyes go bright with discovery and wild with imagination, as though they’re becoming children all over again.
I saw it when the students linked their individual mind maps to each other, showing how all their different interests could be combined.
I saw it again this week, when my students did design challenges in minutes: a 20-second movie scene involving only a fork, a TV ad featuring a jingle for a toothbrush, a freshman orientation event based on dogs.
The students started with unease, but two minutes and a thousand decibels of noise later, they acted their hearts out with invisible forks, sang and danced to convince people to brush their teeth, and broadcast an event with all the exuberance of professionals unafraid of their silliness.
The change is wonderful to behold, as the students realize that they have power when they see that constraints make creativity flourish.
But as I teach the class, I wonder: Am I making my students too used to constraints, so that they take limitations as a challenge to surmount rather than a problem to examine, study, and solve?
Some of my former Creativity students, however, show hope that they are not merely creators working against constraints, but thinkers willing to criticize the system.
One student cowrote a book on martial law back in high school: “Anna” is published by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom Philippines, and is part of Project Alaala, a collaborative story effort by Mary Joyce Marquez Crisanto to remember the children who were victims of martial law abuses.
Another student cowrote an article for Ateneo’s college newspaper, The Guidon, to discuss the State of the Nation Address and its hollow promises.
My students condemn the corruption cases. They’ve marched on the streets. They’ve called for action. They’ve expressed their disgust at this government’s circus of thieves.
Students of my alma mater have walked out of their classes, braving the heat and rain, as they protested the slow measures being taken to correct a deeply entrenched evil of greed.
I know of many students who are planning their Sept. 21 afternoon around a rally against a government so callous, it flagrantly parades bags and shoes while people gather the fragments of their lives.
The youth are not silent. They are not complacent. But we must mold their minds so that they see their chains, shape their discernment so that they use their voices to speak out, give them space for their courage.
There is hope in the next generation. We, the mentors, cannot look at recent events and despair. We cannot stop and think, “What am I teaching my students for, if mediocrity wins and hard work goes unrewarded?”
We have to teach so that our students see their shackles and have the tools to unbind themselves.
There’s something about the color orange, however, that bears one last connection to the corruption cases.
Convict the guilty: those who committed murder in the name of a madman’s drug war, those who stole from the country’s coffers while the poor went hungry and were sick, those who used our taxes to fund their lifestyles while our cities were flooded with water and illness.
Make them wear their orange prison uniforms. That’s a shade of orange we can all get behind.
