Can you learn creativity? A book review

I believe that one of the most redundant things that continues to happen in the educational field, extending up into the workplace environment, is the fixation of doing things in a linear way. The book I am about to talk about helped me realize that among many others I am not alone in thinking that schools should be severely modified in order to adapt to what people and society need in the upcoming decades. I dare to say that most schools and workplaces should be demolished and rebuilt.

Sir Ken Robinson reveals in his book Out of our minds. Learning to be creative how eons of doing things the old way have significantly brought people on the precipice of insanity after going through what others see as a path to evolution: education. I would lie to say that I did not feel immense satisfaction seeing the mass education system being basically roasted, with scientific arguments.

Why did someone at a point in history decided that education is so good? Robinson takes us on a brilliant journey back to history revealing how it all began since the Industrial revolution, when the masses had to be educated in order to fit into the factory environment. So education wasn’t a thing given out of the pure noble heart of the aristocrats. Imagine that! As the author mentions “mass systems of public education were developed primarily to meet the needs of the Industrial Revolution and, in many ways, they mirror the principles of industrial production. They emphasize linearity, conformity and standardization. One of the reasons they are not working now is that real life is organic, adaptable and diverse”

Another pivotal idea from this book is about debunking chunky myths about creativity. We are all sold this illusion that creativity belongs to only a select few, usually the poor disheveled artists who roam around freely with a head filled with divine visions that we mortals can only dream to access. This is false. Anyone can be creative. All of us are. If you are willing to put in the work you can learn to be creative: “being creative is not only a matter of inspiration. It requires skill, craft in the control of materials and a reciprocating process of critical evaluation. These are abilities that can be taught”. It is up to the environment in which we are put to help us flourish or to wilt us to death in this matter. Schools and universities are predominantly environments where creativity gets stifled as they are still functioning on the principles used in a factory: “from the outset, education systems in Europe and North America were designed to meet the labor needs of an industrial economy based on manufacturing, engineering and related trades, including construction, mining and steel production”. This extends further into the working places where employees feel a lack of vitality and frustration. They get easier accustomed with as they have been primed since kindergarten that sitting in such toxic environment is just how life is. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Ignoring the human factor and seing emotions as something disposable in the educational process is what has led to a massive loss of interest from the students’ perspective. Moving students through this system based solely on their age (“typically they move through the system in age groups: all the 5-year-olds together, all the 6 year-olds together and so on, as if the most important things that children have in common is their date of manufacture” as the author says) shows a lack of awareness and an emotional bluntness typical to the educational environment. Unfortunately Sir Ken Robinson speaks the truth when he says that these facilities focus solely on academic results, ignoring the feeling part. In the same manner the disciplines are being regarded as useful or not useful based on what the school and society deems as being rewarding to do: mathematics and science are on the top, while theater or dance is at the bottom. Looking at human nature as being somehow separated from the arts in the educational system has led to the destruction of millions of creative minds who would have benefited immensely from a broader curriculum during their studying years. We still believe that “making music, painting pictures, involvement with drama and writing poetry are not associated with academic ability” .If an institution would have such low satisfaction feedback and the results of its work would be so catastrophic most people would want it demolished yet we keep the same buildings as schools and allow them to function based on some factory – friendly principles that were used decades ago. How on earth did we agree on this?

Enhancing creativity is also about the medium. One would have to have the right environment in order to bloom. Great seeds produce great trees because they are planted in the right soil: “when people find their medium, they discover their real creative strenghts and come into their own. Helping people to connect with their personal creative capacities is the surest way to release the best they have to offer”.Being creative implies doing something. We need to encourage children to do things that make them feel joyful and this does not imply sitting still for hours at an end listening to lectures. We have to take into account the different learning styles and redefine creativity as a process or as how Sir Ken says “applied imagination”. How do schools spark children’s imagination? This is one question that every institution that wants to work with a child’s mind should answer before even being approved to function.

Creativity is also about collaboration. We have build schools in such a way that collaboration is frowned upon and children become individualistic and lonely. We need to change the architecture of these buildings , the furniture, the curriculum and the evaluation style so that they support collaboration: “The traditional design of office buildings and spaces is rooted in the nineteenth-century model of industrial work. When the emphasis is on efficient processing of tasks, the principal considerations in the workplace become productivity, maximum occupancy and uniformity. These are hardly the right environments for stimulating imagination, creativity and innovation”. The myth of the lonesome genius has to be crushed as many people still think that in order to get a genius idea one has to ruminate in solitude and isolation from the peer group. Sir Ken Robinson says this brilliantly in his book: “but the image of the lone genius can be misleading. Original ideas may emanate from the creative inspiration of individual minds, but they do not emerge in a cultural vacuum. Only in the most exceptional circumstances do individuals live apart from and wholly unaffected by culture. Individual creativity is almost always stimulated by the work, ideas and achievements of other people. As Isaac Newton famously said, if he saw further than others, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants”.

In order for schools to change we need to change the teachers. We have to give up the model of hiring people based solely on academic skills. The most important factor that should matter is how well they deal with children and how much they really enjoy teaching. God knows that we all had our share of academically brilliant mathematics teachers that were emotionally blunt as a mountain rock and destroyed the self -esteem and the love for the exact sciences for millions of children. We need teachers that are good creative leaders who want to instill a culture of innovation. And a leader can be taught how to be a good leader. According to Robinson, being a creative leader involves strategic roles in three areas of focus: personal, group and cultural. Another role that a creative leader should strive to achieve is to “form and facilitate dynamic creative teams”. Schools should be places where it is fun to be at and where you feel inspired to be your truest self, almost like the best organization on the block. “Consequently, a creative organization, as Peter Richards puts it, ‘ is first and foremost a place that gives people freedom to take risks; second it is a place that allows people to discover and develop their own natural intelligence; third it is a place where there are no ‘right’ answers; and fourth, it is a place that values irreverrence, the lively, the dynamic, the surprising, the playful”. If what teachers value is compliance and obedience, we cannot have playfulness and originality as children will live in a fear of failure and a fear of the consequences of their actions of not complying to the norms. Great leaders inspire by attitude, they do not rule by instilling fear and blind obedience. Teachers should encourage group collaboration and learning by sharing, not putting children to compete against each other and making them feel like if they have a lower score they are somehow under the desired standard as if the grade says something about them as a human being. A great leader “knows who to put in a team, what work to give each person on the team and when it is time to move onto something else” and is willing to “promote a general culture of innovation“. It should be mandatory for every teacher to comply to these standards before holding any fancy certifications of how good their equation solving skills are as “no school is better than its teachers”, as Sir Ken Robinson puts it. It is an uncomfortable truth to read for many professionals out there and I am glad that someone had the courage to state the matter of facts as it is : “too many teachers are hired for knowledge of their discipline rather than their interest in students”.

The educational system has to be demolished and rebuild as the current way of doing things is destroying the love for learning of so many individuals. We also need to do the same with the working environments if we are to adapt to the rise in digitalization and the demand for more creative jobs. We can’t continue to function on the principles of an industrial society when we have entered the digital realm for quite a while. We need to rebuild if we want a better world.