Lord of the Flies - A Dark Look at Humanity

One of my favorite books from high school has to be William Golding's Lord of the Flies.  For me it portrayed in the most graphic way, the true characters and archetypes of the human race, and it did so using children.  Reflecting on the story, each character speaks to me in different ways and for very different reasons.  Simon for example is a character that I will never forget. His quiet demeanor and resemblance to a "Jesus-like" figure is uncanny, down to his death.  Take a minute to reflect on the characters in this novel and respond with who spoke most to you as a reader.

Divergent Thinking

A general definition of divergent thinking is:

  "A thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions."  Wikipedia


What's interesting about this concept is how little we use it in education.  So often as teachers we are looking for one "right" answer and penalize any other "wrong" answers.  I think that this concept is a great tool for the English classroom and should be utilized more.  As readers, we can only guess at what the author meant when writing a piece of work, so why not use divergent thinking to think of more creative possible answers.  Creativity is a wonderful gift and we should celebrate this gift, not stifle it for the sake of testing.  Below is a great video of a lecture Ken Robinson gave which tackles this very subject, along with other topics regarding our education system.