How creative are you? How creative are the people you work with? How about your friends? Next time you are at a social event, ask them. You may be surprised by what they say. I have worked with people and organizations all over the world. Everywhere I go, I find the same paradox. Most children think they are highly creative; most adults think they’re not. This is a bigger issue than it may seem.
That’s the first paragraph of Ken Robinson’s book Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative that was recently updated and rereleased. In his book, Robinson focuses on three fundamental themes:
We are living in time of revolution.
If we are to survive and flourish, we have to think differently about our own abilities and make the best use of them.
In order to make the best use of our abilities, we have to run our organizations and especially our education systems in radically different ways.
He argues that the model of education we use is based on a 19th century understanding of the mind. It was built on the theory of the Enlightenment and on the principles of the Industrial Revolution. Thus, we have ringing bells, standardization, grouping based on age, and separate facilities. These, he argues, are from the production line mentality. Rather than treating students as individuals, we treat them as a product being manufactured. And for many years, this model of education worked. If you worked hard, did well in school, went to college, you got a good job.
What Robinson explains is that this is not true of today’s world. We are living in a revolutionary age. Education today is failing millions of kids. Our children do not believe that they will succeed with a college degree because it is not the passport to success it once was. What we need to be focusing on is academic vs. nonacademic thinkers. Robinson thinks we need to cultivate “divergent thinkers” – thinkers who see multiple possibilities, thinkers who see multiple answers, not one.
And, that’s where creativity comes in. In order to foster divergent thinkers and to people who can adapt to the changing world around us, we need to value and teach creativity. Actually, Robinson mentions a study in which people were asked how many different uses there are for a paper clip. Kindergarteners were able to come up with hundreds of uses, but as they got older, the same children thought of fewer and fewer answers. What was the difference? The children had gone to school and been taught that there are “right” and “wrong” answers. They were no longer prepared to be wrong, which stopped them from coming up with anything original. They had been implicitly taught that creativity and divergent thinking are not valued.
While Robinson is firmly against the educational systems we have in place, I believe there is definitely value to what we do today. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. And, that’s where creativity comes in.
Being creative isn’t just about the product that you create. It’s about the way you think – we can encourage creative thinking through the use of analogies, metaphors and visual thinking. Teachers can get children on their feet in the classroom. They can have them walk the number line and build an ecosystem. Students can work in groups, pairs, or individually. When we allow space for different types of intelligence, we free up room for creativity and innovation.
Another great way to foster creativity is in Danny Gregory’s beautiful and informative book Art Before Breakfast. In it, Gregory writes,
Making art will make you saner and happier.
You don’t need to think you have “talent” to make beautiful art.
Art making can fit into the craziest, busiest, most hectic and out of control lives – even yours.
And it’ll take just a few fun minutes a day.
Gregory argues that in an ever-changing world, art is a way to mold the world to our specifications – to make sense of it. “Creativity isn’t a luxury. It’s the essence of life. It’s what distinguishes us from the mush. And it’s why our ancestors survived while other less adaptive critters perished. They responded to change by being creative in some way, by inventing a new answer to the chaos.”
Another benefit to creativity other than finding a job that you love and being successful? In 2010, the American Journal of Public Health published a review titled “The Connection Between Art, Healing, and the Public.” In that article, Drs. Heather Stuckey and Jeremy Nobel review one hundred studies that analyze the relationship between creativity and both mental and physical health. The overwhelming conclusion: art-based interventions are effective in reducing physiological and psychological outcomes of health issues. That means that according to medical science, art can have a positive effect on your health.