At-Risk Youth and the Creative Process

Talented children and youth who are disruptive, or violent,or delinquent, or just 
poor students are a paradox worthy of exploration in a search for new solutions or explanations.
--Ken Seeley (2003)

What enables young people at risk for delinquency to choose a more constructive path? Most likely it is finding something they are good at, that they enjoy doing, and that is seen as valuable by others. Art is often the answer. Art begins with imagery, a function of the right hemisphere. When right-hemispheric gifts are honored and developed, they serve as a protective shield and channel energy in a positive direction. When they are ignored or neglected, children and youth seek other outlets that may be detrimental to themselves and society.

A disconcerting proportion of the delinquent population is gifted and talented. The largest study ever undertaken of gifted delinquents was conducted in the Arapahoe County juvenile court system. The study revealed that 15 percent of incarcerated youth tested in the top 3 percentile on standardized intelligence scales (Harvey & Seeley, 1984; Seeley, 1984, 2003); some estimate that as many as 25% are gifted. Fifteen percent is five times the number of intellectually gifted youth in juvenile hall than would be predicted by chance. The majority exhibited a "fluid" or "spatial" learning style, in which the right hemisphere is favored over the left hemisphere. Such children are often unrecognized as gifted, as sequential methods of instruction fail to reach them. "The traditional classroom situation appeared to have suppressed these students' high fluid abilities in the process of their learning of academic skills" (Harvey & Seeley, 1984, p. 77).

"High fluid ability versus crystallized ability and high visual-spatial versus auditory-sequential learning style are found among many high risk gifted youth. These fundamental conditions can have a great impact on the students' competence and motivation" (Seeley, 2003, p. 449). Fluid or visual-spatial abilities are usually measured by performance on nonverbal tasks (Block Design, Mental Rotations, etc.). Creative individuals often excel at more visual activities, such as puzzles, LEGOs, mazes, maps, chess, computers, science, taking things apart to see how they operate, and all forms of art. They may not be as facile at linear-sequential reasoning, which is stressed throughout formal education. I call these nonlinear thinkers "visual-spatial learners" (Silverman, 2002) and I believe that recognizing and teaching to their learning style is a powerful way of salvaging at-risk youth.

Visual-spatial learners are individuals who think in pictures rather than in words. They have a different brain organization than auditory-sequential learners. They learn better visually than auditorally. They learn all-at-once, and when the light bulb goes on, the learning is permanent. They do not learn from repetition and drill. They are whole-part learners who need to see the big picture first before they learn the details. They are non-sequential, which means that they do not learn in the step-by-step manner in which most teachers teach. They arrive at correct solutions without taking steps, so "show your work" may be impossible for them. They may have difficulty with easy tasks, but show amazing ability with difficult, complex tasks. They are systems thinkers who can orchestrate large amounts of information from different domains, but they often miss the details. They tend to be organizationally impaired and unconscious about time. They are often gifted creatively, artistically, technologically, mathematically or emotionally.

Non-sequential children have a difficult time in school. The school curriculum is sequential, the textbooks are sequential, the workbooks are sequential, the teaching methods are sequential, and most teachers learn sequentially. Children are graded on their mastery of sequential subjects: reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic. Sequential children feel smart, and non-sequential children feel dumb. They dread long division, spelling, showing their work, step-by-step instruction when they don't know where it's leading, handwriting, rote memorization, drill and repetition.