Why aren’t we more creative?
In Orbiting The Giant Hairball, Gordon MacKenzie’s 1998 classic take on maintaining creativity in the workplace, the author discusses how creativity is being suppressed as early as grade 2 in schools. As an amateur metalwork sculptor, he is asked by a friend to talk to a class of grade 1 kids about art. He starts his lesson by posing the question “how many artists are in the room?”. All the grade 1 kids jump up with their hands raised. As he continues to give this same lesson to older kids, he finds to his dismay that there are fewer and fewer of them who consider themselves artists. By the time he gets to grade 6 only 1 or 2 kids are brave enough to raise their hands.
Jason Gingold at DDB in Seattle pointed me to a similar theme raised by Sir Ken Robinson at last year’s TED conference, where among all the amazing displays of new technology, he gave a simple, poignant speech about the wonder of creativity and how it is being taught out of our children. In his speech, Sir Ken suggests that kids start off life more creative because they are not afraid of being wrong - “kids will take a chance,” he says. He goes on to utter one of the most important truisms of innovation. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original”.
I have the privilege of working with some of the most innovative people in business, who create new products at the world’s biggest companies. Yet, the one thing that I consistenly see is an absolute fear of being wrong. Being wrong is not the same as being innovative, but being prepared to be wrong is the only path to breakthrough.
July 13th, 2007 at 11:57 am
I think it’s not as much that we’re “educated” out of being creative by an institution, but rather we’re taught to associate creativity with a profession rather than to see it as a trait that we all posses. After all, there are “math people” and then there are “creative people,” right?
The best companies, like the best schools, find and develop the creativity that is within everyone. It takes a great deal of creativity to solve a fluid dynamics equation, to balance a company budget, or to design the next great UI concept for a client.
July 13th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I totally agree, it takes a tremendous amount of visual imagination to be successful at solving a math problem, particularly after the rote learning of algebra gives way to real problemsoving. Without creativity higher level math is an impossibility.
But I have a question/comment:
Is the lack of creativity in your average 4th grader a product of the institution, or is it a product of pre-adolescent peer pressure, where fitting in is rewarded and creativity is squashed by the herd? I think we might be too hasty in condeming the education, and might want to look to the cultural influences as well.
July 16th, 2007 at 7:14 am
I agree with you, Alison. If being willing to fail is a prerequisite to being creative, it implies that a certain level of self-confidence is also necessary to be creative. Confidence that says, “if I fail, I’m still okay as a person.” I think that this lack of confidence, along with a fear of failure (theories of causes abound), are as much to blame for a lack of creativity as any other reasons. Obviously, this is a much bigger topic than a few paragraphs, but thank you very much for bringing up the subject.
July 17th, 2007 at 12:04 am
I think there’s an important distinction to be made between creativity and artistry. While I absolutely agree with the discussion, that it takes great creativity to solve dynamic equations or engineer a BMW, I think the school/institution-based argument focuses around the idea of the creativity of art, which I believe to be instrumental in the development of confidence, self-expression, abstract thinking, and cultural depth.
The fact is that teachers are valued when they are able to reach that “creative” potential in their math students, or coming up with lesson plans that unlock scientific concepts to help students analyze or problem-solve. That kind of creativity is still very much encouraged, the potential access to it can be found in any school stystem in the world.
However, on the other side of the coin, the “creativity of art” is, in fact, accurately being described as becoming educated out of students, in that they are simply not being given opportunities to develop those skills. Art programs are, (as we have heard ad nauseum) the first to go when a school needs to cut programs. For many students who might have raised their hands in first grade with papier mache and water colors still serving as a portion of the day’s activities, it is not surprising that by high school that same student, who hasn’t seen as much as a colored pencil (a #2, certainly) in half a decade, wouldn’t remotely consider herself an artist. To say nothing of drama or dance - subjects which are almost punchlines at this point - to imagine as a part of any school’s mandatory curriculum.
Creativity still exists, artistic creativity is dead.