Creativity

I recently went through an intelligence test. When I went into the room where the test was to take place, I noticed some crayons on the table, and was horrified. I don't have great appreciation for my own drawing abilities, and I would hate to be judged on that basis. But the woman conducting the test was lenient. She was interested in some metrics of creativity - the ideas being stimulated and generated, and not necessarily the graphic rendition. Whew.

Creative people can generate new ideas and new connections among existing ideas. With this definition of creativity, it is clear why a discussion of education in the 21^st century must include this issue: The world is changing so quickly around us, that there is not enough time to build habits and respond according to these habits. We have to respond in creative ways. Moreover: If we want to be active in a fast-changing world, rather than just responding, we have to be creative.

Is everybody potentially creative? It would seem that many people around us are grey and dull, reacting to the environment according to prescribed patterns. Not creative. Can they be taught to be creative? Could they have been taught to be creative when they were kids? The answer is easier and more straightforward than I thought when I first asked myself. Take a look at a small child. Children's world is full of surprises for them. Even in slower-moving times, children, who did not yet construct a stiff world view, had to deal with surprises - what was surprising for them. So their responses are almost universally "creative." They make guesses about the meaning of what is going on around them. Often they are wrong, but just as often they are interesting to the adults, or funny, or ingenious. In another word: Creative.

Allowing creativity at school is not easy with normal schooling systems, based on the premise that knowledgeable teachers endow knowledge upon the students. But with the education system we must have in order to deal with 21^st century reality, we already know that the teacher doesn't know everything, and the teacher and class need to respond to new situations and new knowledge. This is where creativity manifests itself naturally. As with curiosity and the love of learning, the main imperative is just avoid destroying the good tendencies. Giving pupils a positive feedback for coming up with new (=creative) ideas and solutions, would strengthen that tendency. Giving this positive feedback in new fields and in ever increasing levels of abstraction, together with the students' development, can retain the creative tendency and expand it into new realms.

In addition to letting our creative nature take its course, the school can be active in creating situations that call for increasing "strength" of creativity. For example, by presenting problems: Problems that the teacher knows to be difficult. Problems with a solution that the teacher doesn't know. Problems with a solution that humanity doesn't know, and even problems that humanity knows have no solution. Presenting such problems to students encourages creativity. Constraints enhance creativity.

Seeing that creativity is important for the graduate, and that creativity is natural for children, a question comes up regarding whether we are doing a good job retaining and improving that creativity. Sir Ken Robinson says we don't. Pink Floyd say we don't. We know we don't. It is easier than it looks at first glance. Let's.