Can creativity be learned?
This is one of the great questions.
Creativity is a word that is used often in today’s literature and seems to have become a really fashionable word in more recent times. It has to be one of the most vague and difficult words to define. The definition that I went with and supported is that creativity is, ‘The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations. Originality and/or imagination’ (dictionary.reference.com). I looked at various other definitions and they all had different parts referring to creativity. This was one of the most basic, easy to understand definition that didn’t contradict itself. Using this definition of creativity I believe that creativity cannot be learned. Immanuel Kant famously argued that creativity could not be taught. There is a small line between teaching something and learning something. It is believed that creativity is made possible in the right brain hemisphere while the technical information is processed in the left hemisphere. It is a popular belief that technically minded people tend to be less creative than others, who, in turn, are not very technically minded.
I believe that you can not learn creativity, but I do believe you can be taught to become more creative. What I am saying is that you are either born with this creativeness or not. Not everyone uses or enhances their creative streak. Creativity can be taught to those who have it. If I compare someone who is creative and an elite sports person there should not be many differences between them. Children can be born with a creative side and some can be born with good hand eye coordination. If we let these children grow up without developing and learning they would lose much of this born talent. You also have to develop creative muscles. At the school level all the teachers can do is to teach kids thinking that they are all creative. Creativity could come out later on in their life. It might just take longer develepment.
There are certain conditions that creative individuals have to meet to have the ability to create. These are the five most agreed on. Firstly: intelligence. People who are intelligent are often thought to be creative. This is not true; a high IQ is not a guarantee that the person will be creative. J.W Getzels and P.W Jackson did some research on the topic and tested some children. They finished with two groups. One group had an average IQ of 150 and the other, with the high-creativity and lower IQ, had an average of 127. In conclusion they found a low correlation between creativity (divergent thinking) and intelligence. They also came to the conclusion that intelligence is necessary because a high IQ does not mean you will be creative but a low IQ means there is almost no chance of being creative. On the other hand it is really hard to test for creativity. People have tried to test for it but they always seem to fail, because the test makers would have to be more creative than the applicants. They have never succedded because they are too mainstream and structured.
The second condition is persistence and insistence. Long and hard work is a condition to ensure meaningful creative material. H. Poincare says “Creative work is impossible, and at least ineffective, unless it is preceded and followed by a period of hard, conscious work”. (Poincare, 1970 page 83).
Thirdly: Concentration and discipline. These are the direct result of persistence and insistence. Concentration is interest in and the curiosity in one’s subject. Discipline is usually ones commitment and caring of one’s work.
Fourthly: Having wide prior experience. People’s creative thinking usually occurs in areas and subjects they know quite a bit about.
The last condition is that of attachment to tradition and resources. This is one of the most discussed and debated issues referring to creativity. There are people out there who say that nothing is truly creative unless it is original. I disagree with that way of thought; I believe that you can create something creative by using tradition and old resources. “A new idea is the fruit of a tree that others have planted and pruned”, says Ryle. (Ryle, page 118). I think this is a great explanation of the use of older works and tradition. I believe that this is just another step in nurturing and developing creativity. Learning design skills and design principles and various other styles can be learnt through these old works. It is a necessary step in the creativity process. “Even the work of an original temperament may be relatively thin, as well as tending to the bizarre, when it is not informed with wide and varied experience of the art in which the artist operates”. (Dewey, 1958 page 265).
Towards the end of the nineteenth century Henri Poincare identified four stages in the creative process. The first stage is that of preparation which occurs through schooling. Activities, tasks, and strategies that make students think. Once there is that under layered preparation, it then leads on to assimilation of material. This stage includes deliberate research, brainstorming and reflecting on such materials. When an idea is realised, Poincare called these moments of illumination. It is basically when an idea becomes suddenly clear. The last stage is of verification of new ideas, and to find out how useful they will be. These steps in the creative process need to be worked on in the school curriculum with young students.
Creativity in children is a lot different from the creativity in older children and adults. When we refer to mature people’s creativity we usually associate it with expertise, technical skill, artistic ability and talent: All of the five conditions that I mentioned before. Children do not have much experience. They have lower expertise but what they lack from the above they make up in their unique ways of thinking and approaching tasks. One major point pushed by a lot of people is that creative people are confident. Marvin Bartel says, ‘Most five year olds are totally confident that they can draw, sing, and dance. Tragically, within three or four years, this child, if she is typical, will experience a crisis of confidence. She will no longer feel competent or creative. As teachers, we are often partly to blame for the diminished inclination to be creative as children become socialized and more intelligent’ (Bartel, 2008, p. 1). So teaching and nurturing the creativity in children will bring back the confidence that they had when younger.
The best way for children not to lose their confidence is to keep them creative and not too structured. ‘Teaching in an area of the curriculum which is concerned with the imagination and learning through creative or inventive response should not be dull, routine or predictable. It is much more likely to be full of variety, uncertainty and tension, for there will be times when a child’s own imaginative ideas will modify or even oppose the teacher’s plan and a child’s personal way of working can contradict the methods the teachers wishes him to adopt.
In fact, when this happens, it is very often a guide to the success of his teaching and he should try to find ways to cope with it rather than avoid it. The difficulty arises when thirty or more children begin to respond in this way and make diverse and exacting demands on the teacher and the resources he has at his disposal’ (Gentle, 1974, p. 44).
But, if a teacher sees the value in children working imaginatively from their own ideas, then the problem of organisation and increasing resources is a subsequent problem and should not deny the belief the teacher has in his approach.
At the school level all the teachers can do is to teach kids thinking that they are all creative. They could develop his later on in their life. Encouraging and nurturing the original and imaginative thought in students is one of the hardest problems that we have in our school curriculums today. Creativity and education is the big issue here, a study by George Land revealed that as we grow up we learn to be uncreative. There are ways we can do this. Asking questions, ask Mother Nature, gather ideas, play and experiment, persist, fail, visualise, sleep on it and stimulate your mind. These are great things to do to enhance creativity and try and get kids off the normal and structure in mainstream schooling.
Schools that nurture creativity in children follow these conditions (conditions from ‘Creativity and the Young Child’, pages 23-24). The first condition is that school personnel strive to reduce stress and anxiety in children and in themselves. Which also means feeling good in school, treating each other with self respect and building self confidence.
The second condition is that the process is valued over the product. Children are encouraged to find and play with their own ideas and not come to any sudden conclusions. Children need to seek many alternatives.
The third condition is that time limits are removed from activities in which children are deeply involved. Schools that are committed to creative expressions let the children get absorbed in what they are doing.
A free, open atmosphere is established where self expression is encouraged and valued. This means that teachers support creativity by providing a wide variety of materials. They also give help but do not interfere with the children’s creative processes.
The fifth condition is that of the children are encouraged to share ideas, not only with the teachers but also with one another. Children need to see themselves as creative and the best way for them to do this is in their reflected selves. The responses that others give and receive make the children experience the verification/communication stage of the creative process, as well as preparation, incubation and illumination.
The last condition is that competition and external rewards are minimised. If children know that there is a contest with rewards, three things will happen. The first is that they will become cautious and ‘play it safe’. Second, they feel like they have to please someone. And thirdly they will tend to rush to get the reward. These three things affect the spontaneous and less complex ideas. In other words the children will become less creative.
Schools need to address these conditions of other schools and put them in place if they want to encourage creativity in the classroom.
In my definition of creativity I believe that creativity cannot be learned. I believe that it can be developed and nurtured. Someone that is creative is someone that is intelligent (does not have to be a genius), has persistence and insistence, concentration and discipline, has a wide prior knowledge in their certain area and an attachment to tradition and resources. To get these conditions in children so they can grow up to be creative individuals, the school curriculums need to change to encourage creativity. Learning design principles and styles is not the only way to produce creative individuals. For the teaching of design, schools need to start at an early age to nurture the great minds of the children. It is not an easy task to put these creative conditions and rules in schools. As said before there would be little structure in schools if they became completely creative orientated. The only thing they can do is to moderate between these two styles of teaching because not everyone is going to be creative when they get older.
References
Eggleston, J 1976, Developments in Design Education, Open Books Publishing Ltd, 87-89 Shaftesbury Avenue, London
Juster, NP 1999, The Continuum of Design Education, Professional Engineering Publishing Ltd, Bury St Edmunds and London, UK.
Eggleston, J 2000, Teaching and Learning Design and Technology, Continuum, London and New York.
Isenberg, J and Jalongo, M 1993, Creative Expression and Play in the Early Childhood Curriculum, Macmillan Publishing, USA.
Bowkett, S 2007, Success in the Creative Classroom, Networked Continuum Education, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London.
Eglington, K 2003, Art in the Early Years, Routledge Falmer, 11 Newfetter Lane, London.
Abinum, J 1981, Creativity and Education: Some Critical remarks. The Journal of Aesthitic Education, 35-39.
Getzels, J and Jackson, P 1962, Creativity and Intelligence, New York.
Torrance, E 1962, Guiding Creative Talent, Englewood Cliffs, NL Prentice Hall.
Poincare, H 1970, Mathematical Creation, in Creativity, Penguin, New York.
Dewey, J 1958, Art as Experience, Putnam’s, New York.
Ryle, Teaching and Training, op. cit., p 118
Abra, J 1988, Skinner on Creativity: A critical commentary. Leonardo, Vol.21, No. 4, pp 407-412
http://www.goshen.edu/~marvinpb/arted/tc.html
http://www.magazine-deutschland.de/en/artikel-en/article/article-cat/thema/article/kann-man-kreativitaet-lernen.html
http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/turning-sows-ear-into-silk-purse-469
http://www.creativityatwork.com/articlesContent/whatis.htm
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http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/turning-sows-ear-into-silk-purse-469
http://vels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/essential/interdisciplinary/design/index.html
