The coffee houses of the Enlightenment; the Paris salons of Modernism – two examples of the spaces conducive to innovation and new ideas.
Here’s Steven Johnson on how good ideas happen to good minds and how they are incubated over time and in spaces where intellectual diversity thrives and connection happens. Could classrooms be like that? Faculty meetings? Admin meetings?
This clever video illustrates his major thesis: Chance favors the connected mind.
I’ve come to realize how essential environment is regarding learning. I make my class a place where students are free to think, to make inferences, to “essay” as the French would say. Then, something amazing happens–I can see students making connections. Other teachers come up to me and ask me what we’re reading in class because students reference books that remind them of other books. The synapses will fire in the process of talking and writing.