As a parent or teacher, we teach our children to abide by disciplines and obey orders as what we are expecting with them to do or think. We counsel or put emphasis over them to be an honest, sincere, and indebted to our society and nation. Even we are demarcating (inducting?) their path of life or career as our own perspective. Parent or even teachers like to see their children in this and that career path when they will graduate from the school education. Perhaps, this may be necessary for disciplinary measures. But, when they enter the job markets or any professions, they are just encircled within the routine works and develop their efficacy and proficiency within the boundary of procedure set by others, this may lead them either to change career paths or lead to dissatisfaction. Even more, they try to embody their talent with the theories and practices discovered by the others. It means they just become skillful implementers rather than innovators.

This is indirectly, even directly, related with our existing biggest flaw of education and associated with our self satisfying culture, because we are limiting our child in corner to fit inside this box of our expectations. In reality, (un)knowingly, today we are suppressing our child's capabilities. That’s why; it is a time for us to reeducate ourselves and encourage our children likely to be more interactive, creative and enthusiastic on their learning process by thinking differently viz. "Out of the Box" thinking.

Conceptual Reality
Conceptualizing with the reality, this writing is based on my lived experience of last year's visit and interactions with teachers of different five schools of Israel. Where, I got an immense opportunity to reflex on success in school education by the state of Israel. The open clue behind the success was emphasizing student center pedagogy and adopting out of the box thinking in teaching and learning. During the 22 days training on "Pedagogic Training for Principals and Educational Supervisors" conducted by the 'Aharon Ofri' International Training Centre of MASHAV Jerusalem', as a participant I was delighted by the presentation of experts, director and the coordinator who logically encouraged us to think out of the box. "

Out of the Box" Vs "In the Box" Thinking
Germany Kent, a dynamic and charismatic speakers, she is also known as a "Hope Guru" has said "You have to change your thinking if you desire to have a future different from your present." To make change possible and being a change agent she has been motivating youth to break the status quo, that means, "In the Box" thinking.

 I don't know of an official definition for "out of the box" thinking, but here is my viewpoint starting with "in the box" thinking. Those who think inside the box, they ignore the quality of an idea, just look for prescription of solution and are skillful at killing ideas. They escape with attitude as 'it's never work or it's too risky' and more than this, they often believe that every problem needs only one solution. Therefore, finding more than one possible solution is a waste of time. Simply we can say, 'in the box thinking' it refers to being constrained traditionally to do something or a conventional way of handling a situation.

"Out of the box" thinking is an expression that describes creativity. It requires openness to new ways of seeing the world and a willingness to explore new ideas. Thinking out side of the box began from imagination, where all of idea and thought reside. Also, it is the combination of existing knowledge and new ideas which may not be rational but critical, logical and it ignores consequences. Imagination creates innovative thought that comes out of creative state of mind.

Don't forget, Space craft to iPad, Uranium to drugs- all of these inventions were born out of creative state of mind. Einstein said "imagination is more powerful than knowledge", which means without imagination knowledge do not occur and it is just the beginning of the way of thinking differently which is possible by out of the box thinking. To be a creative thinker, you need to overcome from usual patterns stored in your memory and explore different ideas.

 "Out of the Box Thinking" Within School
Ironically, it is said that, the place where our first creative ideas go to die is none other than school. It was a direct blame for a teacher, because the teacher favors those students who are instantly ready to fallow direction or do what they are told and those students say creative ones, overwhelmingly ignored. To overcome from this blame, first teachers need to think out of the box themselves that helps to find the answers of the different questions concerned with children's learning.

 The teacher should be proactive to encourage it by getting the answer of how does it work with children to bring different thought processes into their lives through teaching? It does depend on the hand of the teacher, how to make students ready to learn with full potential.

Remember the words by Pablo Picasso "Every child is an artist; the problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up". As a teacher, it depends upon you to make them best artist by putting emphasis on their area of interest in learning. How do you encourage it in your children? There is no any such procedure to think out of the box, but the teacher could set some ways to encourage students by applying different pedagogic mode such as brainstorming in course issues, storytelling, motivational talks, changes in the typical routine of learning to foster creativity, re-conceptualization of problems to get alternative way of solution, communicating daydream in group and recognizing the worst case scenario etc. To think outside the box, you only need to ask 'Is there another way to think about this?' Teacher, as a role model, needs to demonstrate high enthusiasm to create fun in learning and inspire students by appreciating their every achievement so they can perform outstandingly.

School, an organization and a place of diversified culture and mutuality, needs to acknowledge individual differences in learning and behaving differently. Students doesn’t come school alone but they bring different thoughts, ideas, feeling and perception along with them and stay in school at least twelve years. So a school needs to be aware in these sensitive issues and should handle with care by respecting their social, economical and cultural as well as individual freedom that gears up student's knowledge to acknowledge differently. A common concern of today, most of the children is facing boredom and loses the interest in classroom because of lengthy and rhetoric curriculum and ultimate liability goes to school to make learning with fun and creative. It is very important to keep the ability of divergent and creative thinking in this age. If not done systematically, children may get scared of solving anything out of ordinary in later grades. To overcome from these challenges, a school needs to arrange everything, items and so on, whatever needed that helps to our child to see far beyond of their vision, make them think outside of box and finally provide the strong foundation for further meaningful learning.

"Out of the Box Thinking" Beyond School
Every child is curious and enthusiastic to learn from any single object what they have seen and touch in front of them. It helps to retain outstanding knowledge, even more than classroom learning, who are probably have not got proper care at school. The school is just a mean of learning but it is not an end for overall development of students.

Outside of the school, every child has different perspective of learning through their community, culture and household which input their mind with bold shape and understanding. We have diversified communities and culture with different assumption and belief, most of them are just taken from granted and there are a lot of spaces for questioning about their rightness. The need of the hour is not to take for granted and needs to spark our creativity with curious mind by asking ourselves from why? And what if ? questions. Without this we won't generate creative insights for the sake of our children and enlarge their thinking beyond the box.
 
Emotionally, no other better understands children more than their parents. Outside the classroom, particularly, it falls under the parent's responsibility to engage children in creative learning activities. Parental behaviors, attitudes and thoughts are very much influential or inherited for their child to learning and making ideas ahead, that’s why it is said, a house is the first school of children. To make children more interested in their subjects, parent need to create intellectual culture at their home by supporting them in innovating new idea and divergent thinking. They must demonstrate new things that inspire to rethink their children to acknowledge differently.

Albert Einstein was assumed that he could travel the universe with the speed of light and his imagination which was far beyond the horizon. 'General Theory of Relativity' was the result of his imagination. To make imagination bold, creative thinking is most as Isaac Newton has said "no grate discovery is made without a bold guess". As a parent and respective member of the community, your prime responsibility goes toward your kids to enable them to be success in their own area of interest. So don't put restriction on them to do anything extra ordinary and don't scold or say your child silly, when they work or tried to works differently and help them to learn by their own mistakes.

Without any extra financial burden, there is a lot of mean within our periphery that would be the best way of creative learning within our community and household or today's children have more option to be a part of different activities beyond the school in urban and villages both. Different club, fun park, movie centre are available easily in these area. Here are some examples, such as, uses of libraries in their local area or at school that enlarge their reading habit. Engaging in household chores are a source of creative learning for children, i.e a cooking, gardening, shopping of daily needed commodities. Today, technologies are embracing, every child is addicted with it but these provide curious learners access to answers to all their tricky questions. YouTube is a valuable source of educational videos covering all subjects, from history or physics. Moreover, it leads to learning differently, provide opportunity to overall development of child and enlarge the thinking beyond the box.

Ways Ahead
It’s the role of educators to come with innovative strategies to improve education by collaborating with parents and others and should make learning fun and tailor-made for today's students. There is an urgent need for every girl and boy in school to be taught the importance of believing in themselves and following their dreams. Need of the day is to focus on way of improving educational system and our ability to learn throughout our lives. Existing patterns of learning designed to teach the same course every year to be changed and let's free a child to learn that encourage curiosity. Policy needed to help students develop on ability to process, interpret and use information for every day application. For this, curriculum should be designed by introducing more creative problem solving assessment to help students use knowledge gained from books and classroom in real-life situations. This will help students to think differently when faced with basic problems in life. So, the only one way with us ahead to overcome the existing paradigm crisis and long shift by applying " Out of the Box Thinking" in Teaching and Learning.

This article is dedicated to Ms Yudith Rosenthal, director - A. Ofri Training Centre and Mr. Areal Cegla, the course coordinator.

Koirala is an Under-Secretary associated with National Examinations Board, Nepal.