The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [27]
Half a brain is better than none: A whole brain would be better
With their sequenced verbal and numerical classes, the schools you and I attended were not equipped to teach the right-hemisphere mode. The right hemisphere is not, after all, under very good verbal control. You can’t reason with it. You can’t get it to make logical propositions such as “This is good and that is bad, for a, b, and c reasons.” It is metaphorically left-handed, with all the ancient connotations of that characteristic. The right hemisphere is not good at sequencing—doing the first thing first, taking the next step, then the next. It may start anywhere, or take everything at once. Furthermore, the right hemisphere hasn’t a good sense of time and doesn’t seem to comprehend what is meant by the term “wasting time,” as does the good, sensible left hemisphere. The right brain is not good at categorizing and naming. It seems to regard the thing as-it-is, at the present moment of the present; seeing things for what they simply are, in all of their awesome, fascinating complexity. It is not good at analyzing and abstracting salient characteristics.
The nineteenth-century mathematician Henri Poincaré described a sudden intuition that gave him the solution to a difficult problem:
“One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and could not sleep. Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination.” [That strange phenomenon provided the intuition that solved the troublesome problem. Poincaré continued,] “It seems, in such cases, that one is present at his own unconscious work, made partially perceptible to the overexcited consciousness, yet without having changed its nature. Then we vaguely comprehend what distinguishes the two mechanisms or, if you wish, the working methods of the two egos.”
“Approaching forty, I had a singular dream in which I almost grasped the meaning and understood the nature of what it is that wastes in wasted time.”
—Cyril Connolly
The Unquiet Grave: A Word
Cycle by Palinuris, 1945
Many creative people seem to have intuitive awareness of the separate-sided brain. For example, Rudyard Kipling wrote the following poem, entitled “The Two-Sided Man,” more than fifty years ago.
Much I owe to the lands that grew-
More to the Lives that fed- But most to the Allah Who gave me Two
Separate sides to my head. Much I reflect on the Good and the True
In the faiths beneath the sun But most upon Allah Who gave me Two
Sides to my head, not one. I would go without shirt or shoe,
Friend, tobacco or bread, Sooner than lose for a minute the two
Separate sides of my head!
—Rudyard Kipling
Today, educators are increasingly concerned with the importance of intuitive and creative thought. Nevertheless, school systems in general are still structured in the left-hemisphere mode. Teaching is sequenced: Students progress through grades one, two, three, etc., in a linear direction. The main subjects learners study are verbal and numerical: reading, writing, arithmetic. Nowadays, however, seats often are set circles rather than in rows. Time schedules are more flexible. But learners still converge on “correct” answers to often-ambiguous questions. Teachers still give out grades that often are tied to the “bell curve,” which guarantees that one-third of every group will be judged “below average,” regardless of achievement. And everyone senses that something is amiss.
The right brain—the dreamer, the artificer, and the artist—is lost in our school system and goes largely untaught. We might find a few art classes, a few shop classes, something called “creative writing,” and perhaps courses in music; but it’s unlikely that we would find courses in imagination, in visualization, in perceptual or spatial skills, in creativity as a separate subject, in intuition, in inventiveness. Yet educators value these