On Creativity

(Please click on the title above; it'll redirect you to a website.)

I hope every TII volunteer aggressively engages with what Ken Robinson has to say.

These are things that rarely get addressed in public debate, anywhere in the world. Certainly very few teachers talk about creativity in Indian classrooms. There, the teacher-student ratio is often something like 1:65 and teachers fear that if every kid is given the space to express his / her individuality, the classroom will soon grow impossible to control. It isn't common for teachers to have the training, the cultural capital, the energy or the motivation to encourage children on a daily basis. Many high school teachers are too insecure to deal with kids asking genuine or smart-alecky questions; their mindset is, if one kid is allowed to get away with that now, every kid is going to harass them on a permanent basis. We've all known those teachers -- but to be fair, knowing what brats some of us were, as kids, who can blame those teachers for trying to shut out individuality and creativity?

This much is obvious. More intriguing and worthy of debate is the assertion that so many of my engineer friends make in passing: that there is virtually no art to logic, and definitely nothing logical about aesthetics. They say there is no balance to strike.

To many, the word "creative" represents the feverish capture of emotions on some medium: canvas, paper, computer screen. When I see the word "creative", the first image that forms in my mind is this cartoon caricature in side profile of a man, who for some reason wears a brown jacket, a Fedora and the mask from V for Vendetta; he's excitedly making squiggles with a paintbrush on a canvas. As a practitioner of an art form, I should know better than to buy into the stereotype of the painter-in-a-perennial-state-of-thrall. It's also strange, in an interesting way, because I have an Master's in creative writing, not fine arts; you suppose I would instinctively connect "creativity" to the visual of a writer at his desk.

On the other hand my training and life experiences have taught me to be wary of connecting "creative" with "writing". Perhaps by creating a wedge between those two, I've tried to convince myself that I am not creative... in that way. In conversation, I sometimes self-consciously drop the "creative" and say "MA in writing". "Creative" people -- especially the ones who have cultivated a careful eccentricity -- get admiring looks and find themselves suddenly engaged in sexy conversations about the state of the world with attractive, well-dressed contemporaries. But outside those privileged social circles -- that is to say, among people like my engineer friends -- they are commonly dismissed as "arty-farty". The public generally conflates good writing with flair and large words; people are not as easily impressed by interesting ideas expressed in clear language. Presumably, if you don't fart you aren't arty enough.

For me the writing process does not involve outbursts of passion and a frantic expression of feelings. "Writing" summons the image of the Lego models that my parents bought me when I was a child. I did not grow up to be a technology expert; I nevertheless connect the process of writing to reason, logic, structure, order.

One is not a writer merely because one writes; one is a writer, by inclination, because one tries to think. Of course I believe in 'creativity', but the word strikes me as flaky. Frankly, its reputation needs some salvaging. We need to recognize that creativity is not limited to writing or pottery or advertising. It manifests equally in public administration, gardening, physical training or inorganic chemistry. Creativity is required, possibly demanded, in virtually any area (unless your job requires you to, say, enter numbers for the telephone directory, in which case you should stop reading this note now).

"Creativity" is the ability to apply a fresh perspective to a problem: sometimes, by taking a step backwards, at other times, by making a closer inspection of the problem. It should not be confused with unfettered freedom. Creativity demands energy; above all it needs to be harnessed. In this context, it might be useful to examine how creativity applies the inter-disciplinary context. A student with a Bachelor's in Mathematics will often have interesting insights to offer a graduate class in, say, ethnography (a method to study human societies, through prolonged fieldwork and interpretation). Even if this Math major has forgotten everything he ever learned about Bessel functions, he will recognize that his mind works in a particular way because of his training. Even if, at first, he asked "stupid" questions in the ethnography class -- things that are obvious to any anthropology major -- very soon you'll find that he can quickly re-calibrate his thinking. His structured approach will continue to inform the exhilaratingly "creative" questions that he has started to raise in class.

If you are inclined to think I am agonizing over semantics, and going on and on about something that seems be self-evident, you risk missing the larger point. Creativity, like critical thinking, demands steady, rigorous workout sessions -- it requires practice. Kids in India can be incredibly creative, but they have little or no exposure to concepts such as rigor. They aren't taught to think through issues; they are expected to conform. As a result, they tire themselves out before they are able to take any original idea to its logical conclusion.

In order to be productive, people need to support their creativity, like the way civil engineers use framing in building constructions. It is this framework that gives us the rigor to sequence our thoughts -- be more ambitious with our thinking, in the process learning to focus on larger patterns -- instead of congratulating ourselves for having come up with one or two isolated "creative moments".

Let me reiterate: obviously the idea isn't to throw complex ideas like "rigor" in the children's direction. Do refer to some of the discussions posted on our Google group for practical ideas; several members have made important contributions. I have offered suggestions elsewhere about how to approach a classroom session:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=43059787269

Through classroom sessions and its fledgling mentoring program, TII is trying to help children in the age group of 13-17 hit a threshold point of self-awareness; beyond that, those children will be in a position to start figuring things out for themselves -- although we would be glad to share our perspective with a few, hopefully over the period of a lifetime.