Creativity and Education: Some Critical Remarks

Leonardo. Vol. 17. No. I. pp. 35-39,1984. Printed in Great Britain. 0024-094X/84 $3.00+0.00 Pergamon Press Ltd. CREATIVITY AND EDUCATION: SOME CRITICAL REMARKS* Joseph Abinun** "Asking questions clearly and asking only one question at a time, seem to be elementary precautionary rules. Nowhere have these rules been more wantonly flouted than in contemporary investigation into creativity" [I]. Although these words were spoken more than twenty years ago, they are no less relevant today. Creativity is one of the vaguest and most fashionable terms in pedagogical discourse. As used in recent literature. the word appears to have at least five different meanings in different contexts. 1. "The ability to produce something new which did not exist before." Does this meaning render the issue clearer, more understandable, or more significant? Or. as I would suggest. does it perhaps merely exchange one vague and complex term (creativity) for another no less vague and complex one (novelty)? We may, in other words, have been given little more than a circular definition. "Words like 'unique' and 'original' [and we may well add 'novelty'] simply do not belong in the definiens of 'creative'," [2] says D. Morgan. What, moreover, is the meaning of "did not exist before"? R. C. Willson and others [3] have addressed this question as follows: (a) In a strict and narrow sense, "did not exist before" means "has never previously been thought of by anyone who has ever lived." This raises the question whether something like this is possible at all or, more importantly, how we can know about it. since we cannot examine the ideas of everyone that ever existed. In addition, what about the same idea occurring independently to different persons. for example, to two or more scientists working in different parts of the world? This sometimes happens within a matter of months, weeks. or even hours (Leibniz and Newton, Darwin and Wallace are examples), yet we would probably not want to regard the scientist who produced the idea later as unoriginal merely for having been preceded by someone unknown to him. (b) In a wider and weaker sense, all human behaviors are unique. They are 'new' by virtue of being never duplicated or repeated precisely, not even by the same individual. But surely, this is a very trivial sense of 'novelty', one that would designate almost everything as new. It also is not a fruitful sense, since it does not supply a basis for distinguishing degrees or levels of novelty. 2. "What is produced as a result of a sudden and unexpected cognition or perception and causes surprise or wonder." This meaning has supporters among the adherents of the psychoanalytic approach to psychology (Freud, Wallas, Klein, Ross, Kris) on the one hand and among the mystic-metaphysic school in philosophy (Plato, Plotinus, Augustine) on the other. On this account, 'creativity' is a matter of letting the mind play with a topic, of 'incubating' ideas, and of leaving it to the unconscious to make the connections between ideas that count as 'inspiration' or 'insight'. In A. Klein's words, creativity is *This article originally appeared in The Journal ofAesthetic Education IS (1981), published by the University of Illinois Press. © 1981 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 0021-8510/81/04000017 $1.30/0. **Lecturer in philosophy of education, Technological Institute of Education, Halon, Israel. "the ability to find out new and unpredictable connections through a free play of symbolic and pre-conscious processes" [4]. This meaning raises a few problems. (a) Its connection with reality and practice is very weak. As it is characterized by mysticism and vagueness, the possibilities of its application can be translated only with difficulty into the language ofeducation. (b) It makes it difficult to distinguish between real and fruitful creativity resulting from a successful inspiration (Rilke) and pseudocreativity or error resulting from an abortive inspiration (Kepler), since 'inspiration' is the sole criterion for both cases [5]. (c) It, too, leaves no possibility for differentiating degrees or levels of creativity. Added to these difficulties is a principal question: To what extent is the definition or the use of psychological terms relevant. from a logical point of...