Illustrated Daily; 3126; Olympics of the Mind

The Illustrated Daily, Managing Editor Hal Roads. Good evening. When the National Commission on Excellence in Education released its long-awaited report yesterday, that which many Americans had suspected for some time was confirmed. In its open letter to the American people, the commission said, and I quote, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and as a people. That there is cause for alarm here is obvious, but behind that cloud there lurks from time to time, a silver lining. This past weekend, the Albuquerque Public School System held its first annual Olympics

of the Mind. Modelled after the competition of varsity sports, the Olympics of the Mind have been called Mental Gymnastics calculated to induce creative problem solving. I think it's providing an outlet for kids to get some recognition that are bright kids that normally don't get that good. The athletes get it. Most of these kids look around. These kids will be in the year of 2020. They're going to be younger than I am now. And they're going to be facing a different kind of set of problems, but maybe we can't even conceive yet. And I think the important thing is to solve problems in a unique way and don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid to explore. Months of preliminary competition preceded last week's events, and in the end, some 170 students made the finals. They represented high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools, and they tackled such creative challenges as designing a Leonardo da Vinci spring car.

Are many candidates here on the spot? Your vote is as grandadously exclusive interview about this traumatic event. Tell me your vote. How did this come about? Creating humor out of Homeric tragedy. We got the feature for the flavor of a burger. It's the black part. It takes it. It's a crispy crunch. As a burger, please. We need a bun. And designing a structure made a small quantities of balsa wood, capable of sustaining hundreds of pounds of weight. Man, how many of these do we need for that? Up there. There. Sounds like push-ups or something. You can kind of use whatever you need.

You have to put them on in certain places. This is going to be under here to catch the press. So it doesn't fall all the way, and then we can look at the pizza and see how it broke. Go slow, actually. Just like you said, wait a second. Now, let's get it here. It broke down here near the supports. Now, this would mean this was on the bottom, wasn't it? No, this was the bottom. So it buckled. It broke. Don't be too rough with it. We have to look at that later. It's mostly a trial and error thing. You build it once. You test it. When it breaks, you try something else. And you keep changing it until you get something that's worked. It works. It was a case of clever thinking combined with good fun. And all who entered were Olympic champions. Definitely matter. I mean, it's just for fun. And so it's better that you test things. There is what?

No, everybody takes it seriously. I mean, everyone can win. But if you just know what I'm saying, well, I might win. I might not. I'm going to do my best. I'm going to do it because I enjoy doing it. And if you win, you're great. But if you don't win, you won't feel as bad as if you just... That's all you're in for with to win. I want to win. And I'm going to win. All right? That's what I'm in there for. Well, that is certainly an attitude with which Elizabeth Wendell is by now familiar. Mrs. Wendell is the coordinator of Albuquerque's Olympics of the Mind. And Mrs. Wendell is nice to have you with the illustrated daily. Thank you. Congratulations, first of all, on the success of the Olympics of the Mind here in Albuquerque. Thank you very much. You had a right to be very proud. I'm surprised. I had a thought originally when I first became aware of the Olympics of the Mind that it was something calculated primarily for problem solving, creative problem solving in the world of science and technology. And yet I find out that classical literature also has lurking within it. And it problems which require creative problem solving. That's correct.

You can look at that as another interpretation of a classic when you talk about that. Was the... Were the classics, was literature the humanities, was that always built into the idea of the Olympics of the Mind from the very beginning? As far as I know, yes, how this is the first year that we've done in Olympics. And so I didn't have an opportunity to see the competitions of the past. But I understand that while they first emphasized science, technology, and mathematics, there was a strong push from people who were involved to also do something in the arts, and therefore we had humor from Homer this year. All right, I know the finals were this past weekend. And this is the first year, as you mentioned, that they've been held here in New Mexico. But the preliminaries leading up to this year's finals of the first annual Olympics of the Mind here, what kind of time are we talking about? When did this all begin? Well, actually it began a year ago in the spring when we had an opportunity to have a representative from the Olympics of the Mind group in New Jersey where it originated,

come out to Albuquerque and give a two-day workshop on just how one would conduct on the Olympics of the Mind. After having that workshop, a group of regular and special educators got together and felt like this was an opportunity that we really could not miss. And during the summer we worked together to put together the structure that we would use. This last fall then, we pulled the schools and offered it to every school in Albuquerque. The schools that responded sent coaches to a training workshop, and the coaches were taught how to do brainstorming and problem solving with the students. They then went back to their schools and held some general brainstorming sessions with any student in the school that was interested. From there, we had a competition to see who would be representing the schools by being on their teams. So, something like 170, as I understand it, ended up in the finals.

But all together, have you any idea how the number of youngsters who participated from beginning to end in the preliminaries and the finals of the Olympics? I would say between five and seven hundred students began the competition together and went through the brainstorming exercises, which we feel is a very positive thing for Albuquerque. I know that the idea of the Olympics of the Mind were made very popular and nicely people were made aware of it with the very creative program Bill Moyers did on PBS called On Creativity. How many of the youngsters who got involved in the Olympics here in Albuquerque, perhaps were induced to do so by having seen the Moyer series? Do you know that any of the kids acknowledged it? Well, that's what got me interested. Well, yes, and we had a strong intention of showing that Bill Moyer's creativity tape to any school who was interested in seeing it. So, there were many, many schools that took advantage of borrowing that

and showing it to the whole school so that the students would have a better idea. That's what they're getting into. I'm curious about the underlying assumptions of the Olympics of the Mind, the notion that somehow that you can induce, create an ability to deal creatively with problem solving. Is the supposition that you can teach creativity and problem solving, or is the supposition that somehow there lurks within us in our personality somehow, the ability to deal with problems creatively and that all we have to do is bring it out? I think it's a little of both how. When we look at teaching in the public school systems and teaching in general, we look at a model that's usually convergent in nature, in that the teacher asks questions and the student responds with an answer. The whole idea behind bringing out creativity with students is to see as many different responses as we can get to a question with no censure for any question

that we get a response for. We have had brainstorming sessions with all of the students who've participated in Olympics of the Mind. That's very important in the whole process. Is that any idea is worth entertaining? That you are not to be censured for it one way or the other. Thomas, when before we continue, I'd like to introduce some of the Albuquerque school students who participated in the local Olympics of the Mind this past weekend and then we can continue this conversation. Loretta Canapeli, right? Canapeli. Canapeli is a student at Rio Grande High School and she was one of the team members from Rio Grande High and the Leonardo da Vinci spring car competition. Kendra Walsh is in the sixth grade at Jefferson Middle School here in Albuquerque and one of the Jefferson team members in the famous wrecking ball structure competition and finally from Comanche Elementary School in Albuquerque, Kristi Leonard,

one of the fifth graders from that school who found humor in Homer. Congratulations to all of you on your success at the Olympics of the Mind. I understand you were all members of first place winning teams that's something in the foot you can be very, very proud. Loretta, may we start with you perhaps. Actually, I want to ask you all the same question and then we can continue from there. But your team worked on the Leonardo da Vinci spring car competition when you first tackled this project. As I understand it, the process begins with something called brain storming going way back to the very beginning when the whole process begins. Do you recall what happened at that brain storming session? Well, nobody really had quick answers and kind of didn't get the hang of just answering quickly. Everybody just kind of answered answers that weren't. They didn't, a lot of people repeated other people

and it didn't go, they got better as we went on. How long did you brainstorm? You eventually got to the point of constructing a Leonardo da Vinci spring car. Do you have any idea? No, the boys at work and they have shop class. They worked on the frame of it a lot. We had gotten the idea of how to compress the spring. We used hydraulic jacks. We got the idea pretty early and then they worked on the gearing systems and stuff in their shop class. Did you know when your project was finally put together? Did you had there the first place winning Leonardo da Vinci spring car? We knew we were against about three other high schools and I don't know, we just wanted to finish it at least and get into the competition. We saw your spring car in the beginning of the program

in the video tape segment we had there. It was a very creative solution to a very difficult problem. You'd be congratulated. Kendra Walsh, sixth grader from Jefferson Middle School. You worked on the Balsa wood wrecking ball problem. How did the brainstorming process begin on that project? Well, we started and everybody was slow. They had pretty good answers but they didn't really know what was happening. Did you work with Balsa wood before? Did you know what Balsa wood was? When they showed you how frail, how fragile and how light Balsa wood was and told you that somehow this was going to have to support a lot of weight. What was your first reaction to your recall? Our team thought it was impossible. We didn't think we could do it because it had to weigh 5-8s of an ounce and it's really light and it breaks very easily. And we didn't think we could do it.

How many experiments did you actually recall engaging before you were able to support sufficient weight to even be qualified under the Olympics in this instance? Well, we experimented with one little one. It was just a tester and it held pretty much weight, a lot of weight. And then we built a structure but we didn't think it was going to hold very much. So we built another one and it was pretty, it held a lot. That's the one we get put in the competition. How much weight eventually did it hold? 97.5. 97.5. Do you know what the record is, say nationally for that? 900 pounds. 900 pounds? Yeah. Now that's some creative problem solving taking place when you can get 900 pounds. Could you consult? Could you find out who ever has the record on this, managed to put their project together or was that against the rules? Well, it didn't say.

It didn't say so you don't know. All right. Kristi Leonard. Fifth grader from Comanche Elementary School. Your creative problem solving caused you to find humor in a home. Now as a fifth grader, Comanche Elementary School. Had you, when you entered upon this project, already read Homer's Iliad and his Odyssey? No. Did you ever read all of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey in preparation for this project? No. How did it work then? How did you, how did you, how did you to dolly in? How did you hone in on a project in Homer? Okay. Well, a whole bunch of people came to the first meeting and each meeting they eliminated some people. Because we had different things to work on. And then they finally got the people that they wanted on the teams. And there was three different teams. There was humor from Homer, pirates and treasure, and the wrecking wall structure. And I was put in the humor from Homer.

And then, and okay, so our teacher, Ms. Nicholson, assigned each of us to read a humor from one of the books. Which one did you read? I read book nine. I mean, book 10-11. Of the Odyssey. All right. Of Homer's Odyssey. Go ahead. Okay. And then, so everybody read each one and then we talked about it. And we decided to do Odysseus and the Cyclops Polyfamous. Yes. Yeah, okay. And then, so we decided how we were going to do it. And we had meetings about once or twice a week. How did this go on? Well, I think about, yeah, about four months maybe. Wow, Christie. And so, and then we took notes and we practiced a lot. And so. Did you know when you finally ended up at the finals of the Olympics of the mind that you had the first place winning humor from Homer? No.

Did you feel pretty, pretty confident about it? Well, yeah. I bet you did. I bet you all did have a little bit of confidence. You know what I would like to do, Elizabeth Wendell. If I might try and experiment of my own here at the Sydney, perhaps for the remainder of the program. As you know, I think all of you now know that yesterday the National Commission on Excellence in Education released a report which defined a very serious problem with which all of us, I guess, as either adults or children, have to deal. It's the problem as a commission put it of an educational system in this country, which is being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity, which threatens our very existence as a nation and as a people. Now, what I'd like to do, Mrs. Wendell, is ask these young creative problem solvers to participate with us here for the remainder of this program to brainstorm at least as to what we might do by way of coming to grips and addressing this problem of difficulties in our system of education and see what we might come up with.

And I will have to ask for your intervention here because I know it all begins with brainstorming, but I'm not sure what happens after we brainstorm or even how we get into brainstorming. Okay, how usually there are three stages to the brainstorming process. If we had time here on camera, we would spend a few minutes in some easy relaxation exercises to get everybody loosened up. And then we would throw out the question. There are usually three stages that we find in brainstorming. The first response is that you get to your question will probably be some very average things that anybody would think of. And then perhaps we'll go into some very wild types of ideas that might or might not work. Depending upon the timeframe, we might come up with something and we might not. The third stage is usually ideas that perhaps will work and are the most creative. We'll see what we have here today.

All right. How would we begin? Girls, if you were the president or if you were Mr. Sanchez from the Albuquerque Public Schools, and you had the task of making a school system better by better, I need help you to learn more, learn faster, be more interesting, and come out of school with many, many more skills than perhaps you have right now, what are some of the things that you could do in your classrooms to help with that? Maybe we could start with Kendra and just go around. Because let me do just around the corner. All right, Kendra, do you want to lead off here? We could have better textbooks and stuff and have more hours of the day put into school. More hours in the classroom with better textbooks. All right, that's one idea. You read it, you got an idea? Well, when the teacher is lecturing, it's easier for the students to pay attention when they're involved in the,

you know, when the teacher asks questions for the students to answer and stuff instead of just standing up there and lecturing. So, you know, if the teacher is just arranging it so that they can ask questions and the students can stay involved in the conversation kind of. So, you'd like some more questions and answer activity in the classroom. You think that would be helpful to better learning. What about you, please? Okay, well, like, if we were studying about science, we should have somebody maybe from the science department or something, come and talk to our class and show us some examples of things. All right, let me ask you, Mrs. Wendell. Now, here, there's some fascinating ideas. She would like to have experts in science talking to them about science. She, in fact, sounds to me like she's like a good dialectical experience taking place in the classroom. And she'd like to be in there a little longer with better textbooks. Now, how do we follow up at that point in brainstorming?

What we would do would be to continue discussing this around the table and one can pass if one can't think of an answer at that point. And as we go around in brainstorm, the teacher would write down everything that was mentioned. Would it be fair for a minute, for instance, for me to ask follow up questions like how they would elaborate on their ideas? Certainly, however, that may come if you had a long enough time that might come spontaneously. Well, for instance, I'd like to know of Kendra. How many hours a day do you think youngsters should spend like yourself in a school? How many do you spend today? Six. You spend six. How many hours do you think would be better for you to spend in there? About seven. About seven. About seven. What would you do for that extra hour? We could put longer periods and instead of just 43 minutes. I see. You would have longer classroom periods for the existing courses rather than necessarily adding another course. Or would you add additional courses?

No. I would just keep the regular courses. Is that fair way to brainstorm? Yes, you can pull questions out like that. I'd like to pull a question out of Loretta, the idea of more questions and answers. How do youngsters in a classroom come equipped to ask the right questions, to get the right information that would help them learn what they need to learn? Well, just by staying involved in what the teacher is talking about, then that makes them think about it. But the teacher is just lecturing and students get bored and just sit there. If the teacher just gets all the students involved and they'll think about it and ask more questions. Can I ask them, does it fair to ask some questions about one another's ideas? No. That's against the rules. There should be no censure of any of the questions. No, I didn't want to censure anybody.

No comparisons. No comparisons. All right. See, there are two ideas here. I find fascinating. One is longer. That's one idea that, as a matter of fact, the commission recommended, as you probably know. But over and above that, the idea of improved textbooks and Christie's idea of having first-rate scientists visit the classroom to share it. I guess that's what you'd like to have some really first-rate scientists. Well, and then, well, that's just for the subject of science. Sure. You know each subject. Sure. You like science? No. No rules. It's okay. What have you taken in much science? Yes. What have you taken? Well, we have different lessons like about cells and about animals and about weather and things like that. What would you like to ask a scientist about weather? Well, I don't know, but...

I bet at the time, when the time would come, we would have some good questions. All right. Now, I think we've got a couple of minutes here. Where, if we were able to carry this out to its logical end, where would we go from this point in the brainstorming process? The teacher would gather a list of all of the ideas. And after the activity took place, then, here she would hold that list. The next day, we would come back and discuss it again. Each of the students would have a list of the brainstorming responses that had been mentioned. And we would talk about them together and talk about the implications of whether one would work or another would work. And perhaps we would get some further webbing. So it would be fair if we had more time than to try to integrate some of their ideas. It would be fair if I tried to hear, because I would like to ask these two young ladies, if they would agree with Kendra's proposition, that another hour in the classroom a day might improve the quality of the education you're receiving.

Do you think that might be the case, Loretta? In high school, there are seven hours, because I go from eight to three. But like in mid-schools, I know that it's shorter, and so the longer classes would be easier, because they're just like not even 45 minutes and can't get into a subject really. So you think a longer period for a longer period devoted to existing subject matter would improve the quality of your education. Would you feel that? Would you feel that way, Kristi? No, not wrong. Well, go ahead. Explain. See, I think that they shouldn't make everybody have a longer hour. I think they should just take the people that need more help to stay for the longer hour, or you know the people can't read or write. All right. What do you think about that? I don't know. You don't?

Well, there's another idea. I mean, I participate in the creative problem. There's another idea that's being kicked around, and that is perhaps not only longer classroom hours in the course of a given day, but perhaps a longer period in the school year. I think what they're talking about, another 20 days, I believe. Does that idea strike you as being something that would help you perhaps become better educated? No, because a lot of kids get burned out if they work hard all year, they get tired of, you know, working, and they need a vacation. Otherwise, they start slacking off and not doing as much. You feel that way, too? Yeah, people need vacations, and our literature, language arts and literature teacher told us today, that about a nightline last night, she watched it, and they're thinking about, because we're falling behind Europe, and they're thinking about making us go to school 10 months a year, have seven and a half hours a day,

and all, you know, a lot more things. Kendra, it's been a joy of having you, and Loretta, and Kristi, you're at the Ulstrad Daily. Congratulations again, and Mrs. Wendell, congratulations to you. I'm afraid our time is up. That is it for tonight. Please join us tomorrow when we go on location for a visit with one of America's best known, and most respected landscape painters, his name is Wilson Hurley, and he belongs right here in New Mexico. Thank you for joining us. I'm L. Rhodes. Good night. Thank you.