What follows therefore is a binary discussion of what should occur and what actually occurs, based on my experience and that of others. Therefore, the reader is asked to “read between the lines”, combining theory with reality.
As a former advisor to the College’s President notes, my college was “the first in Canada to create a curriculum around creativity that favoured critical thinking, quality ideation, and novel solutions to existing problems [yet this distinction] seemed to carry no weight with politicians, and certainly not with other competing educational fiefdoms.” The advisor fails to note that the program he was referring to was actually based on a licensing agreement with a creativity program at an American university. We had to teach what they told us.
But I was in a different program at a different campus. My task was to present, verbatim, the week-by-week ten-year old creativity curriculum developed by a professor who had already retired. Despite being hired because of my PhD (earned in later life through Griffith University, Gold Coast), which ultimately led to my being managed as a commodity, rather than an asset, my hands were ‘tied’ as to what I could and could not do, including being able to leverage my insights gained by teaching previously at different colleges, and through the various academic articles I had authored and which were published in various peer review related journal articles.
As such, I was not allowed to be neither creative nor innovative. The business school administrators did all they could to bury reports I prepared (in response to standardized teaching requirements) which challenged our lack of creativity, our lack of innovation, our lack of lateral thinking at the expense of increasing standardization. Needless to say, my seven-year term ended with an early retirement offer, as so many supervisors did all they could to steer me away from creative thinking and challenging the status quo.
This scenario represents “hire education.” Which seems ironic given that many employers today are loosening their formal education requirements as the labor market remains tight and attitudes towards skills-first hiring practices change. These managers seem more willing to consider candidates who can demonstrate the required skills without necessarily having a degree. Yet higher education is still deemed important for professions such as law, medicine, and engineering.
Given that this trend is growing, one has to stand back and question why higher education is still a popular rite of passage for so many young people, and older individuals seeking retraining.
Can you imagine having the audacity to ask one’s students why they were actually there? For what purpose are you attending college, spending a large amount of money on tuition? The majority were there due to either family or peer pressure. Most believed it was an important step in their lives, yet so many graduated with only lower skill sets if one uses Maslow’s Taxonomy.
Fully aware of how the school’s administration (revenue generation, market share), and to an extent, the students’ priorities (grades, diploma) were so divergent, I strived to make my own impact as a creativity professor, knowing full well that I had to cross boundaries, cross disciplines, experiment, and leverage my own multidisciplinary background while respecting the spirit of the curriculum. I subconsciously took on the role of ethnographic researcher, embedding numerous opportunities for qualitative, open-ended responses to test questions and most assignments.
I was very interested in student’s reactions to the College’s purported “creativity” focus within a standardized, traditional curriculum. Not surprisingly, most students were most concerned about passing the courses, achieving as high a grade as possible, and graduating. A few students however did contribute their thoughts, but in looking back, none of these individuals capitalized on creativity, innovative thinking or disruption. Our society, including higher education, notes the need for creativity but is not prepared to forgo what they have always done.
Where possible I strived to get the students outside the classroom, whether it enabled walking a labyrinth, visiting a mall, visiting local wineries or reading novels (e.g. Graham Moore’s The Last Days of Night). I employed many unorthodox techniques designed to allow students to discover their own creativity.
Creativity is freedom. But we don’t know what to do with that. We were trained to obey, to follow rules, to respond to what the teacher was asking us.
Perhaps this is my point of deviation. While many of us have viewed and have been inspired by Sir Ken Robinson’s creativity talk, we still have not found our way to plant the ideas into our programs, regardless of the school level or affiliation. I believe the stumbling point is our continuous interchange of the concepts of teaching and learning, as if they are twin ideas. The reality is that they are not.
As Karl Marx notes, “To be radical is to grasp things at their root” - a recommendation that we explore the Latin root for education. It turns out that there are two opposing interpretations – educare and educere. Educare means to train or to mold, while educere means to lead out. One promotes creativity, the other does not.
My former college spoke of creativity but relied heavily on standardization. In an educare scenario, which is most of our education systems, originality is confined to mimicking what works for others. This was evident when my former college simply imported the creativity curriculum from an American university and paid a licensing fee. No original thinking required at a school that purports itself to be creative.
I am sure you understand the byproducts of education/educare are about staying within existing lines, teaching to the test, restricting curiosity, treating problems like a puzzle, relying on used insights. What’s exciting though is any system that is based on an educere approach which promotes self-learning, paying attention to weaker market signals, leveraging non-linear imagination connecting unexpected and seemingly unrelated bits of information. Rather than rely on mentors and/or teachers, an educere approach relies on intrinsic motivation to create novel ideas of societal value.
The educere tactic enables a creative environment in which various perspectives are blended together rather than focusing on only one way of seeing. It purposely seeks insights from all sorts of sources and disciplines, to enable us to see a situation from a different perspective than most.
As you may discern, I don’t see teaching and learning as interchangeable perspectives but rather two ends of a continuum.
A creative brain requires foundational knowledge and technique in a chosen domain. Therefore, some formal training will be helpful in talent development. Yet when it comes to extremes, formal education can undermine the capacity for variational thinking. Educations’ direct tie to grades requires students to forgo personal creativity to ensure conformity to what others are asking of them.
The deeper a student pursues higher education, the greater the specialization. One is tasked with finding a novel research topic, such that the student becomes an expert in what may be a nebulous topic. If you are looking for entertainment, consider reviewing the titles of various academic papers. Having published a few papers myself, I now enjoy reading the extensive labels attached to other writings. A different type of creativity!
A modest amount of education is appropriate, but too much seasoning spoils the originality. The inventor is more suited to introverted conditions, free to contemplate in a solitary environment. In other words, stay away from too much formal education, where proficiencies are more easily measured. Better to engage in self-education.
As Mark Twain allegedly noted, “I have never let school interfere with my education.”
In my book, Reimagining Higher Education as a Learning Experience: Another Way, I present six provocations designed to initiate thinking on how creativity can be a key element of higher education. The what-ifs are purposely blue sky in nature, rather than detailed recommendations. Each questions existing practices while offering an alternative.
- What if we (broad opportunity, beyond existing institutions) creatively introduced a unique program that distributes learning opportunities in a myriad of ways across, and potentially, beyond, the traditional four-year degree program? The question introduces the notions of creativity, foresight, learning, and broad rather than narrow study.
- What if we established a test sample [a cohort of students] that leveraged the principles of social entrepreneurship and problem-based learning methods whereby students were encouraged to solve real societal problems rather than being trained to land an [entry] position within industry? The question introduces two concepts – experimentation to determine potential value, and, realigning higher education’s purpose.
- What if students were able to learn within a multidisciplinary environment, with peers from various programs, across schools, to address social AND commercial [for profit] endeavors?
The question challenges existing infrastructure and boundaries to provide learners with a much broader opportunity to learn.
- What if a four-year program evolved from foundational, disciplinary course work (Year 1), through interdisciplinary (Year 2), multidisciplinary (Year 3), and post-disciplinary learning opportunities (Year 4), leveraging resources as a whole, and interacting with other schools, governments, institutions and not-for-profits? The question acknowledges the need for a traditional learner to be weaned off direction and replaced by self-direction.
- What if we simultaneously eased our evaluation methods away from grades over the four years, and introduced alternative methods? Traditional grading schemes have limited value within the overall revised approach.
- What if college professors eliminated their current middle person/wholesaler status? What if professors interacted directly with learners, rather than through the current institutional infrastructure? The questions speak to a key irritant in moving forward – addressing a historic tribal arrangement which no longer adds value.
These ideas are consistent with what I can glean from Dr Paul Browning OAM et al’s efforts in reimagining education. Paul notes how for years, educational authorities have only paid lip service to “general capabilities: critical and creative thinking” in the Australian curriculum. He, as do many others, believe that it’s now essential to teach and assess the skills necessary for creative, innovative and entrepreneurial thinking. A failure to change impacts children’s abilities to thrive in a world of accelerating change. Similarly, the same notion applies to young adults.
I contend that we, the believers, need to employ, not just talk about creativity. I believe that we need to speak a common language, particularly when it comes to education and learning. I cringe when I read so many authors refer to a labyrinth when in fact they mean a maze. The two are so different, yet unfamiliarity (a polite phrase) should not be an excuse. Education is the old way. It’s the uncreative way. It’s educare. What we need, at every level of education – from primary to higher levels, is educere – creative learning.
We need a strategy that ignores geographic boundaries, religious boundaries, institutional boundaries, to enable a radical rethink of how we are best going to prepare our students for the changes we see already. We need effective, cross disciplinary problem solvers. We don’t need more rote memorization. Let’s craft a creative educere movement.
