Creativity in Education Shown by Percy Walker in His The Loss of Creature - Essay Example

On reading the essay, the common reader would have a vastly different experience from the complex reader, ensuring a completely different understanding of the matter. The Common Reader:  Being a “consumer of prepared experience” the common reader would only understand and gather such information that he is familiar with, tending to overlook the underlying truths. He would understand that the writer is talking about how a student of a prestigious school would view a specimen of a dogfish on his laboratory table, and how a Falkland Islander would see a dead dogfish on the beach.

The student would have a science lesson to be learned by dissecting the specimen using his scientific instruments, whereas the Falkland Islander would only use a crude pen knife to cut the fish and discover some peculiarity. Like the technician, the common reader would appreciate precise and correct technical terms and jargon. His arrogance makes him interested only in the thing that is packaged, and he overlooks the whole. He is like the student with the specimen of dogfish, who only sees a specimen, but misses the dogfish, or like the student reading Shakespeare from a beautiful book in a well-equipped classroom who does not remember what he read.

The Complex Reader: Being humble and inquisitive, the complex reader is a genuine researcher. He is like the Falkland islander who uses his jackknife as a subordinate, not a magical wand. He uses an openness of investigation, which is like a” garden of delights beckoning him,” and, like a wanderer, he wanders into the garden. He is thus concerned with the “whole package”’ not just the one thing that is packaged. His fundamental placement in the world is not that of a consumer, but that of a “sovereign wayfarer” On the other hand, being vague and wandering, the complex reader does not appreciate the importance of methodology in scientific practice.

Analysis: According to Percy Walker, education is now another commodity for the use of the consumer, and educators today tend to package things in a beautiful package, in which the thing itself is lost. One of the ways for the student to” recover the dogfish” is to avoid the educator’s lesson to be learned and reasserting his own sovereignty as the knower. While this may be applicable some times, the majority of the students would benefit from the lessons. The educators should change their perspective so that the student enjoys the sonnet.

  Another way advanced by Walker in which it can be restored to the student is by ordeal. As in the case of a person who has recovered from a heart attack sees his own hand with wonder, an ordeal or disaster makes one see things anew, reducing their utility factor and ordinariness. There are obvious drawbacks to this method of the ordeal.  Yet another way advocated by Walker is an apprenticeship to a great man, which is also not easy for the majority of the students. In my view, it is better for one to be a ‘Complex Reader’ and be humble, keep an open mind and be aware of the whole as opposed to the part, while at the same time, adhering to the rigors of scientific practice.