A question of Creativity -- things you were never taught

     

I just read the following post: Twelve things you were never taught about Critical Thinking.  In reading it, I find that I do not entirely agree with some of it's conclusions and I thought I would use this post to lay out my thinking.

I will begin by stating my fundamental belief: One does not teach creativity. Individuals are creative in different areas. One person is a brilliant and talented cook; another can take a child's crayon and create a mesmerizing work of art while yet another can turn Lego bricks into buildings or space ships or whatever else they can envision. If one is a teacher or a parent, what one does not want to do is to STIFLE children's innate creativity -- I remember hearing my Spanish teacher saying to her three year old son (who had just drawn a gorgeously detailed bird, complete with feathers and feet with claws) 'NO NO! You draw birds like this." And she proceeded to draw two little hills. Really?! I was sixteen and I remember interrupting her and saying 'Actually, I am really impressed by the details he has included.' I then went over the drawing with her while he watched. He went away, bearing his drawing like a treasure and grinning from ear to ear while she stared at me. Shrug. To my mind, the quality that defines the artist, the musician, the inventor is NOT that they are more creative but that they have a sense of themselves, one that does not allow other peoples' opinions to be MORE important than their own. If we want to encourage creativity, we would do well to start by engendering in our children a sense of their own self worth and the courage necessary to stay true to oneself.

But back to the article: The first argument that occurred to me arose in response to the following statement: "Creative geniuses do not think analytically and logically. Conventional, logical, analytical thinkers are exclusive thinkers which means they exclude all information that is not related to the problem. They look for ways to eliminate possibilities. Creative geniuses are inclusive thinkers." Indeed, in writing what he has, the author himself is guilty of 'excluding' information -- and, in truth, Inventors (people like Edison), some of the most creative of creative thinkers, work by progressive exclusion. Edison is famous for having stated '“We now know a thousand ways not to build a light bulb”. A better statement of the exclusionary nature of invention would be hard to find -- and I don't know many people who would try to say that Edison was not creative. It is simply NOT possible to incorporate every piece of data. Much of it is, in fact, extraneous to the problem being solved. What can be said is that creativity requires a unique perspective -- not one canned by someone else. I am thinking, at this moment, of my husband -- surely one of the most logical thinkers I know. He is also an incredibly creative and 'outside of the box' thinker. His creativity and unusual approach to the questions that arise in his work has resulted in a string of patents and new perspective on old questions.

The next statement with which I must take issue is this: "Creative people believe they are creative. People who believe they are not creative, are not." While there is something to this statement -- that some people have had it beaten into them that they are 'not creative' in one area or another (How many of you have said or heard someone say 'Oh, I can't draw. I am just not creative enough.'), what truly differentiates 'Creative' people is a certain bull headed refusal to submit to other people's judgement of their work. No artist can say unequivocally that he or she has not suffered from criticism. Some have hidden away to continue studying and creating. It is less a sense of belief in one's own creativity and more a refusal to submit to the opinion of others on the worth of what one creates. My undergraduate degree was in the fine arts and art history and this is what I remember about the students: each gravitated to a particular medium and WITHIN that area, each student stubbornly resisted attempts to pigeon hole his/her work. I myself did so when, in a drawing class, my Professor (whose work I respect, by the way) said 'One CANNOT combine chalk, pastel and pencil in a single work.' I raised my hand and said 'I have to disagree. I have done so.' He looked at me and said, "Show me." The next day I brought in a chalk, pastel, pencil copy of a Picasso painting. I had had to use all three materials to achieve the same effect as the artist had achieved with paint. My Professor looked at it, shook his head and turning to the class said 'And so folks, never let ANYONE tell you that something cannot be done.'

The author then states: "All creative geniuses work passionately hard and produce incredible numbers of ideas, most of which are bad." Now, again, there is something to this. What he forgets to mention is that, at least in Art and Music, the definition of 'good' is subject to the mores of the time. There are artists who, in their own time, were revered as Masters but who have since fallen out of favor. The same can be said of 'Classic' novels -- who is it who decides what is 'classic' and what is not? I remember being forced to read William Faulkner in High School -- a fact my father found hysterical. He commented 'Faulkner is a hack. He writes 'purple' prose and when he was writing, he was critiqued for that.' On the other hand, Mark Twain -- who wrote many, MANY books and short stories beyond Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, is rarely included in lists of 'Classic' must reads. Definitions of 'good' and 'creative' are at least in part a result of the interests and concerns of the time.

I do agree with the author's statement: "Nothing kills creativity faster than self-censorship of ideas while generating them." I am an inveterate thinker. Ideas attack me in droves. (Laugh). This can be quite a problem because too many ideas at once can make one freeze, overwhelmed by the sheer volume. One of my history professors, laughing at the flood of suggestions that I had regarding the interpretation of one particular event, told me 'Get yourself a notebook. Write the ideas down. Focus on one. Save the others for another time.' Good advice that and I have passed it on to my sons.

The statement that follows, "Never stop with your first good idea." This goes back to my opening argument about the nature of the creative individual -- the bull headed determination to proceed in the face of criticism. The examples that the author provides in this paragraph serve quite well to support my contention.

In his seventh statement, the author states: "They will not look for ways to make it work or get it done because this might demonstrate that what they regarded as absolute is not absolute at all." This is an unwarranted assumption on his part. Not all 'experts' refuse to look at alternatives and many experts, when something is demonstrated to work other than as they had expected, dive into study of the new information. Critiques of one's work are not necessarily self serving. And quite honestly, critique is useful. Returning to the issue of 'exclusion', critiques can push a creative individual in new and productive directions. As I tell my sons, begin by assuming that people are interested and helpful. Take what people say and test it. To assume that experts are afraid of new information is probably more reflective of the author's own approach to such things than it is an accurate assessment of the 'expert' response to new information.

Though it is a lesser issue, the author's statement 'Whenever someone tells you that they have never made a mistake,' really bugged me. It is the sort of general statement that does not reflect reality -- have you EVER met anyone who made that claim? Really? I haven't. Everyone makes mistakes. To date, everyone I have met/known would acknowledge that they have done so. Mistakes are a part of life. Mistakes are fundamental to learning. And anyone who actually reflects on this issue, would admit that they have learned best when they have been allowed to learn by mistake. Laugh. I remember trying to learn to skate. I was 13. All around me on the ice, kids were racing, falling down, laughing. I stood there, balanced on my skates and finally threw myself into a snow bank. I was too scared to race forward and fall but watching others fall down and get up made me long to do so too. I never learned to skate. Was I afraid to make a mistake? Not exactly. But I was afraid of falling even as I wished that I could.

In his tenth statement, the author says something that is so fundamentally flawed, it leaves me breathless. He says 'All experiences are neutral.' ????!!! Really? Rape is neutral? Murder is neutral? Child Abuse is neutral? No. These are not neutral experiences. How someone handles the experience says a lot about the individual who has it. Experience is NOT neutral. Again, as with his 'when someone says he has never made a mistake', this is a generic statement which does not belong in a thoughtfully written article on creativity. It belittles the subject, reduces the arguments to mere cliches.

And next, 'Do not trust your first perspective of a problem as it will be too biased toward your usual way of thinking.' Hmmm... we are talking about creativity here, right? But creativity is greatest where the person focuses on an area -- an artist is less concerned with being creative in his cooking or plumbing or gardening than he is in his medium. To try to think creatively in ALL the areas of life would be exhausting. We all of us develop routines to a large part so that we can be efficient in our use of time. Certain areas are more important to us, deserve (in our minds) more time and attention. We therefore allow other areas to run on auto pilot. And, again, in my own experience -- yours may be different -- creative people generally think in multiple dimensions about those subjects that interest them. They rarely start with one idea -- which returns us to the process of exclusion, a necessary part of the creative process. I will add that, just because those around the individual do not SEE this process, it doesn't mean that it isn't occurring.

In closing, please note, I do advise you to read the article. I do think that the author raises interesting issues. I just don't agree with all of his statements. But that, after all, is the creative process at work;)