Erika Landau †

High levels of curiosity and aesthetic sensitivity

Landau mentioned two very distinct events in which her aesthetic sensitivity and high level of curiosity were involved. One was related to a certain painting and the other to music.

One of the moments of grace I experienced was with an art history teacher, by the name of Dr. Rappaport. Instead of warm clothes he took to the camp reproductions of renaissance paintings. To the light of an oil lamp he showed me the pictures of Leonardo de Vinci and Botticelli. One painting that I remember very well is the Return of Judith to Bethulia. Dr. Rappaport showed me the painting and said: “You see Erika, there were always young Jewish girls who suffered, but they survived. ¹

I was nine when our piano teacher recommended me and two other friends of mine to take part in a competition. My father was abroad and my mother got ill, but there was a good feeling of belonging and togetherness with the other competitors and their parents. Waiting for the decision of the jury, eyes met, hands touched, sharing hopes and giggles. When the first prize was announced I walked up to the stage bewildered, shook hands with strangers turned around bowed to the public and looked for a pair of eyes to share my embarrassment. BUT my friends looked down and their mothers had narrow lips. Later my friends bunched in a group, did not invite me to join them. I was an outsider, not wanted. I hated the prize I had once coveted. I felt lonely for the first time and very often since.

Playfulness and capacity of fantasy and/or imagination

Landau indicated that what kept her alive was her ability to fantasize and daydream. Her daydreams involved music and the vast arena of knowledge out there that she was ready to absorb.

I survived by daydreaming. In the cold nights when even sleep avoided me, I thought and dreamt with open eyes. I saw myself and my fingers on the piano and played and played till the morning came. In another repeated daydream I was standing in front of school, and near me was standing a man with no face. We were waiting for the results of exams. I knew there was a world of knowledge to learn from. My mother taught me all she remembered about poets, music and other things. I had a feeling inside me that I must survive to learn.

Risk-taking and open to feelings and emotions/shows emotional sensitivity

Landau recalled an incident in which she went against her father’s commands, risking herself and her family, to help a boy in the camp, which demonstrated her emotional sensitivity and deep feelings:

With the morning the suffering began with breaking the ice over the water to wash ourselves. To this we were very attentive to keep clean, because dirt brought lice. The louse was the most frightening being in our life. They brought the sickness, the illness of which many died and only a few survived.

Many years later, after a television talk, a man called and reported he woke up one day in the camps, after this illness and around him all were dead. He walked out on the street of the camp, everybody avoided him, because he was uncombed and people were afraid of his lice. He was weak and sat down, and cried in his despair. A girl came up to him and asked why he was crying. He told her about his illness, and the fact that his parents did not move and now “nobody wants to speak to me.” “But I speak to you,” said the girl and smiled. And seeing me on television, he recognized my smile. And in spite of those sad memories I was glad that I had helped that desperate child, who, according to him, got strength out of my smile. Yet, at the same time, guilt feelings came up. What about those I had not smiled at? Those, that life too had not smiled at them? And those that died of hunger, sickness and pain? Why did they have to die? In what way were they bad or wrong and I was good and right?

Emotional sensitivity and problem sensitivity

Landau drew on her experience in the concentration camps to help a young man who was suffering from a similar problem that she had faced after the holocaust, demonstrating emotional sensitivity.

Many years later, during the Yom Kippur War, I was asked to help a young man, who for three days did not react, did not speak, just lying there with wide open eyes without seeing, without movement. The only thing I knew about him was, that he was the only survivor of a tank that was hit. I sat down, held his hand and tried to remember what I had studied. What did I know about how to help him? From my brain, I received no answer, but from the depth of my guts came the words, “You feel guilty that you are alive and your friends had to die”. He turned his head and asked, “How do you know?” “For I feel guilty too, that my friend died in the holocaust and I am alive”. He pressed my hand. And I understood that my suffering got some sense. That from my suffering, I could help a young man.

Awareness of creativeness

As a child in the concentration camps, Landau was not aware of her creativity, but actually practiced it in trying to save the lives of her parents.

At that time, I did not know that it was creativity. No one spoke about creativity. I had a happy childhood. I was loved and gave love. Suddenly came Hitler and took the family (mother, father my sister and me) to a concentration camp. My parents got sick with typhoid and had very high fevers. At 10 years old, I walked out, very sad, searching for something. I saw a big potato. I took the potato and cooked it and made a whole meal. The water in which the potato was cooked became soup. The outer part (the peel) I cut into small pieces and made some kind of schnitzel and served it with the potato. My mother was not conscious, but my father, who could not speak, looked at me with his big eyes and said thank you. His smile was a reward for me.

Independence of thought

An incident in which Landau demonstrated independence of thought was when she approached the boy with lice, despite knowing it was risky and forbidden. She sat with him because she understood the meaning of being alone without support, and she thought she could help the boy. She did so in spite of what she had seen and heard around her, feeling she could make a difference:

I remember, the anger of my father, seeing me with a boy with lice. And when I did not want to leave the boy, feeling his despair, my father in his anxiety tore me away. This was the only time in my life that my father had been rude with me. And in spite of those sad memories I was glad that I had helped that desperate child.

Interest in reflective thinking/introspective

Landau demonstrated an introspective ability that helped ease her suffering during a very stressful event. She knew she was not allowed to cry and found within herself a way to cope:

I was 12 years old and quite tall compared to my classmates. The Ukrainians came into the house. They were the worst. They took people away, killed people, and violated the women. When they came into the house my mother pushed me into a hole/niche in the wall and pushed a cupboard against me. There I was crying quietly and standing in the dark hole. My feet hurt because I could not move, as the stone wall had spikes that hurt my flesh. Suddenly I made a small movement and for a second it did not hurt. Then I moved another finger and another, and this way I could ease my suffering. Many years later I came to the conclusion that in a surrounding, as narrow as it is, you can find alternatives - you can give a child some alternatives.

Originality

The first time Landau came across the term creativity she was motivated to tackle this subject and she was one of the first to write a book on how to teach creativity to gifted and talented children.

Writing my doctoral proposal at the University of Munich in the 1960s, I found the word creativity in a UNESCO document. They said that when the Sputnik was sent by the Russians, Americans came to the conclusion that it must be something else not only knowledge and intelligence, but it must be creativity. This was the first time I encountered the word. My book on creativity, which was published in 1969 and translated into 12 languages, was the first one. I saw that there is a way to teach children to look at creativity.

The creative approach challenges the personality at its whole. The problem is approached from all aspects of the personality: intellectually, emotionally and socially. The problem is seen in its course of a process and not in its static position in time and space. The creative approach flows in time and space, present, past towards the future. The creative approach makes learning an experience and each experience is a building block of the personality. It does not burst or break frames, but tries to find alternatives within the given frame. It is transferable and can be learned. Creativity enriches life, and makes it more interesting, more enjoyable and more beautiful. It gives life meaning – “my meaning.”

Landau was the first to offer programs and courses in Israel to the gifted and talented children she had identified in 1968. The institute she founded has been in operation for almost 45 years.

In 1968, I founded “The Young Persons’ Institute for Promoting Creativity and Excellence” – Israel’s first center for gifted children, a non-profit association to help talented and gifted children to cope with their problems. The Institute strives to develop creative thinking, according to the unique creative approach I developed, based on meeting thousands of children and studying the subjects. Up until now, more than 40,000 children attended the program; the Institute works with about 800 children each semester. The institute started as an educational experience in the Tel Aviv Museum. I started teaching creative thinking. I had to teach them [the children] to ask questions. Students (mostly from elementary school) take creative thinking and other interdisciplinary courses like humor, neurotransmitters, technology and science, and archaeology. When the story of cloning “Dolly” was published in May we started a course in September. Teachers at the institute are mostly former students.

Elaboration – elaborating on the creative process

Landau concluded that children need to be taught how to ask questions:

The most important aspect of education is the way of asking questions. It is through questioning that the individual looks for himself for his own individual way towards the solution. Thus I prepare the partnership of the student to develop the creative approach to their life.

I usually start from the present and insist on looking at what is happening “here and now”, and only after seeing what is really happening do I ask the causal question WHY? The question “What can I do and what is in me to do about it?” is the reformulation of the depressive, causal question ‘Why is this happening to me?’ into an active, creative question: it is the new beginning from a disturbed infantile into a mature and creative being. This change in form and tense of asking the question is the change from the deterministic approach to the security and freedom to choose the creative alternative.

Analyzing and synthesizing

Landau looked deeper into the ways of solving problems, analyzing the process of finding creative solutions and what prevents us from doing so:

Life is a perpetual search for different ways to find and to solve problems, to feel free to choose among them, to dare to try them out and be responsible for your choice. One of the biggest obstacles to finding creative, original and innovative solutions is our acquired stereotyped and mechanical ways to solve problems. In our desire to be loved, liked and accepted, we tend to speak and behave in terms we know a priori will please the society.

Looking at the situation from different angles, we can work ourselves up to different alternatives and the ultimate choice of the most relevant alternative to the real situation is the product of intellectual, emotional and social participation of each student. It is a combination of inner abilities with outer challenges, interaction of outer logic and inner fantasy, intellect and emotions according to the social needs of the individual in the society.

Reorganizing and modifying

In Landau’s approach to teaching gifted and talented students, she dug deeper into the problem and recognized relationships between the personal characteristics of the children and the encouragement needed to develop and express their creativity:

I first look for the strength in my student – “I strengthen the strength” in order to give them the force to confront their weakness. One needs courage in order to confront one’s weaknesses: it is much easier to hide behind social conventions and walk trod ways others went than try out individual ways according to one’s own potentials with the risk of failure. We are allowed to make mistakes, what we should not do is not learn from them. Failure could be a good beginning of something new.

High levels of curiosity and aesthetic sensitivity

Landau offered a course in creative thinking to gifted and talented children interested in arts.

The institute started as an educational experience in the Tel Aviv Museum. I started teaching creative thinking. I taught them to experience, to look at things from different angles, and to ask questions.

Risk-taking and open to feelings and emotions

Landau said, for the child to be him- or herself and to be secure in taking risks, a special open atmosphere needs to be created:

We must create an atmosphere for the gifted and talented child which conveys security, so that he dares to be his outgoing, warm, participating [self] as well as his bright, dominating [self] and will feel the inner freedom to venture into a wider world without the perpetual need to compete, to be constantly admired, and always be best. We need to create an atmosphere which will enable him to play and experiment, invent and create, love and share for his own good, as well as that of society.

Shows emotional sensitivity and problem sensitivity

The biggest problem in the education of children, according to Landau, is the gap between high intelligence and low emotional maturity, which is a result of parents and schools mostly challenging only the intellectual aspect of a child. She went on to elaborate on how the child’s emotional abilities need to be challenged:

To challenge their emotional abilities, is as, or even more important, than the challenge of their intellectual abilities. Children should be taught: a) to look at the matter from all aspects of their personality: intellectual, emotional and social aspect; and b) to ask questions and become aware that each question has different answers and each answer could be asked with continuous questions such as: ‘What more?, What else could be done?, or could be seen?’ to see any concept in its process. To flow in their thinking, to defer judgment as opposite to thinking in static terms, that lead to deterministic, rigid and narrow conceptions.

Awareness of creativeness

Landau found a method for freeing creative potential and developing a creative attitude in children that would make them aware of their creativity and help them in real-life situations:

To understand the different stages in this creative process, to activate bipolar thinking (imagination and logic, subjective and objective, intra- and interpersonal communication) to know the theoretical aspects, to experience the practical exercises – are the helpful conditions to free the creative potentials buried sometimes under layers of habits and inhibitions. These conditions could help to develop the creative attitude to become a general factor in the personality which will find the creative solutions in any existential or learning situation. Most of all, we need this attitude in the very frequent crisis-situations in our present life. The future might find us unprepared; therefore, we must learn how to create new ways, new reactions, and new solutions.

Demonstration of autonomy/independence of thought

To demonstrate individual and independent thought or autonomy, based on Landau’s approach, children need to gain self-confidence and believe that they can conquer all obstacles and be productive:

The aim of education is to give the individual the confidence that he/she has the strength, not only to adapt himself [herself] to the demands of the environment, but also to go out and meet its challenges. It is the acceptance of the student’s anxiety; to help him/[her] to live actively in the present in spite of this anxiety and insecurity – thus preparing him for his independent creative future.

Interest in reflective thinking/introspective

Landau stated that the experience and feelings that go with reflective thinking are a major factor in the creative approach, and making meaning of experience is performed via reflective thinking and introspection:

I revised the aim of education. I came to the conclusion that when things are connected with feelings or a certain person that you love or hate, you will remember. This is the basis to look at things with brains, with feelings and with social interaction. For me, education is not only the aim of knowing. To learn is to experience with many senses. When gifted experience they do not forget; they feel it, they think about it, and reflect on it. Then they can transfer what they had learned to other areas.

Landau proposed a model for developing creative thinking in gifted children that combined a balance of logic and imagination. It addressed four dimensions: ideas, thinking, communication, and self (Landau, 2002). Figure 1 illustrates the creativity thinking model.

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Figure 1.

Creative thinking model (Landau, 2002).