Editorial

In the sixties and seventies there was a lot of interest around creativity. Of course, the times provided the context for and sometimes the impetus to this interest. Remember J.P. Guildford's model of the cube of human intelligences? It included a cross-section for both divergent and convergent thinking but when I was studying and teaching, at least, it was the divergent or creative thinking slice that we spent most of our time talking about.

Then in the eighties, through the nineties, and into the first decade of the twenty-first century, the context changed as had world politics and critical thinking became a central issue for educators. Those who work with graduate students in particular, now struggle to have them analyze critically a theory or research paper, find its strengths and weaknesses, and discover in the flaws a place where a new contribution to the body of knowledge is needed. Many universities offer tutorials and courses on critical thinking outside of the philosophy department and there are some interesting organizations one can find by browsing the web: among others, the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking (NCECT), The Critical Thinking Consortium, and the Justthink Foundation which is dedicated to encouraging children to think critically. The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory posits no less than 35 dimensions of critical thinking and the database AskEric, with the appropriate search terms, will give a long list of sample critical thinking lesson plans. New books on the topic keep appearing too, one very recent addition with the intriguing title, Black Ants and Buddhists: Thinking Critically and Teaching Differently in the Primary Grades.¹

All through these years, as many of the theorists on either side of the divide between creative and critical thinking, or divergent and convergent thinking, and many practicing educators have known, a polarization between creativity and critical thinking is more hypothetical than real. While creative thought seems to have received most attention in the decades immediately following the sixties and critical thinking seems to have dominated in the last decade or two, these interests been more a matter of emphasis than exclusion. The act of creation requires a critical analysis of prior created works and processes and the critical assessment of the emerging creative product in order to maximize the novelty and impact of the new creation. Critical thinking is an imaginative act when the thinker discovers a limitation and envisions alternative possibilities.

In a music education program, tensions and collaborations between creation and critique are of more than mere academic interest. Music-composing, music-making, and music-listening, in fact, the whole range of musicking activity, requires a balance of imagination and assessment, of intuition and criticism, of rule-breaking and rule-boundedness. A special section on the arts and the intellect, introduced by Elliot Eisner in Phi Delta Kappan in September 2005, is worth re-reading with this in mind. The sub-headings of the articles in this collection alone are suggestive: Process and Reflection, Qualitative Reasoning, Creativity Often Demands Uniformity, Conditions for Critique in the Arts, Art Meets Assessment, and so on.

The articles in this issue of Philosophy of Music Education Review, individually and collectively, also support the case for an inclusive balance of both sides of the creative-critical divide. Eleni Lapidaki leads the issue with a study of the creative processes of notable composers. By studying interviews with and the writings of these composers she finds some common themes which may inform music educators who want to encourage creative music composing in their students: intuition and individuality where innovation and personal freedom can flourish. By her critical analysis of the thoughts and words of the composers she was able to extract these themes.

On the other side of the divide, a symposium in this issue, Philosophy, Music, and World Engagement, has a critical edge. Randall Allsup deconstructs notions such as fundamentalism, liberalism, pornography, transformation, and metaphor finding static definitions fall short of capturing the world of experience when it is more closely analyzed. Estelle Jorgensen picks up on some of these themes and argues for the exercise of the kind of judgment that questions...