Trapped in a cage there will be only one thought crossing your mind and that is ‘when will I get out?’ Students react differently when their freedom is curbed. Many accept the authority unquestionably. Among these learners some of them persuade themselves that the authority is infallible and must be obeyed at all cost. But is this acceptance uniform? We cannot assume that the authority is infallible as there is then a gap between the learner and the teacher. This gap is maintained by the belief system that students develop in their early years. If the student is correct and the teacher is wrong, for various reasons, it would create conflict in the mind of the learner thus leading to self-doubts.
The authoritative approach towards learners only subjugates them to an ideology. It does not guarantee learning. A study made a few years back, established that the average attention span in a lecture is only 15 minutes. This is alarming considering the fact that an average lecture lasts for 1 hour. Learners tend to create strategies to manage their learning which they, for the most part, do not reveal to their caregivers and even their peers. They have this fear that their natural response to situations will be curbed. The mind cannot be observed and this is in one sense a boon as the private space in the learner is unhindered, come what may.
It has been revealed that students who are self-driven tend to be more creative than their counterparts, who rely more on a system to govern their learning and strategies towards problem-solving. The reason is that you cannot know for sure how the other person’s thought-process works. Therefore, by mimicking a particular thought process, you can only solve standard problems as in Mathematics. If you are given a problem that involves a radical shift from the manner in which you are trained, you will not be able to step out of the cage. This is why where there is a need for creativity, as is very often the case in problem solving-be it Maths or Science, you need to be given freedom to carve out your thought-process and approach to the problem- situation. Creativity and freedom in learning and life go hand in hand. Some authorities, in their attempt to balance the equation forget that interference will make it impossible to learn as a unique individual. The only person who can balance the equation is the learner in question.