Educating for creativity: A right brain perspective

Educating the creative workforce: new directions for twenty-first century schooling is a journal article which appeared in the British Educational Research Journal in 2008. While this article may seem a bit dated, its contention: are we providing today’s children with education that is adaptive and responsive to the rapidly shifting needs of the times?, remains timely, if not more crucial than ever, given that this issue is largely ignored, or is rarely tackled in depth and in earnest in the realm of education.

So how does Erica William and Sandra Haukka, the article’s authors, describe today’s workplace?  For one, where knowledge base and skill sets were once a priority, creativity in terms of finding solutions, ability to absorb setbacks, and the talent to think on the fly, is now the coveted trait. 

The article cites a Harvard Business Review outlook that a company’s most important asset is creative capital, an arsenal of creative thinkers whose ideas can be turned into valuable products and services.

Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind (2005), puts a monetary value to the creative industry: $6.1 trillion dollars over the next 15 years, or until 2020.  Pink further explains that the world is moving from the Information Age where knowledge workers are highly valued, to the Conceptual Age in which creators and workers with high concept/high touch aptitudes will be most valued as “creative” human capital.

Creativity at work

In real workplace settings, creativity in action may very well be the difference between closing or botching a deal, solving or prolonging, or worse exacerbating a workplace impasse, or satisfying or turning off a customer.  And we are not even talking about the creative individual’s power to think of new products, innovate old ones, or completely introduce a whole new line of products, even a market segment that was never there before.  The automobile, when first introduced was laughed at and ridiculed as critics called it an elaborate and expensive replacement for a horse.  The visionary that Henry Ford was, increased the salary of his workers so that they could afford the cars that they were making, thus becoming the first moving ambassadors for automobile.  The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

Critics, those who can’t see beyond what’s in front of them, have many things to say about things that were never there before.  Galileo lost his soul to eternal damnation when he tried to prove that the earth revolved around the sun, instead of the other way around.  Magellan and his men did not fall off a raging cliff when their ship ventured too far off to the horizon.  In fact, the horizon kept moving farther away as they sailed until they were able to circumnavigate the earth.  Of course, we know that Magellan lost his life along the way.  Critics said the TV can’t replace the radio in the center of the home, the personal computer won’t find two buyers, the MP3 won’t be a popular format for music because it compromises on the quality of sound, the iPad is not going to fly because it is neither a cellphone, a computer or a laptop, or that Anne Curtis cannot carry a tune. 

Creativity is not just about making new things, or being an artist, for that matter.  It is, more importantly, also about the resilience and fortitude to ignore critics to push for what one truly believes in; and when things don’t work out as planned, the ability to treat failure as merely a reason to look for another solution, or another pursuit to think about.

Everyone is born with the capacity for creative thinking.  Then he goes to school.

Left brain rules

The first thing that I learned in school was what a line was and what it was all about.  First, the line ensures that students can move from one place to another without unnecessarily bumping into one another, or tripping on a potted plant along the way.  Secondly, it is useful in guiding students how to write neatly on a sheet of paper.  Before I became a student, I was happy to move as I pleased, sometimes running, at times hopping, but often with no specific direction in mind.  And when I drew (I didn’t know how to write then), I blissfully ignored lines, or any conventions on what a writing material was.  I did not discriminate whether it was plain paper, book, leaves, dirt, or random objects in our house, where I discovered that pencils and crayons worked better on wood panels than chalk did, which worked best on concrete, but not on slick tiles or metal, which was perfect for marking pen and paint.

It is also in school where I learned that one notebook corresponded to one subject.  I initially thought that there was such a thing as a lucky notebook for the day.  To a teacher who was an expert on lines, I was a severely disorganized student.  To someone with a broader perspective and a more patient disposition, I was a freethinker in training.  Unfortunately, that kind of thinking is almost non-existent especially in the early grades.

High school was no better in fostering a creative mind and personality, at least in my school where most of the teachers, including my mother, had a reputation for being strict and rigid.  I distinctly recall in my practical arts class when we were assigned to make a design for a house, first on a sheet of paper, which we will then construct scaled-to-size in 3-D.  It was a major project, one that I was, uncharacteristically excited to do.  I have never seen a honeycomb before but, for some reason, I was determined to make every room in my house a hexagon, which meant that it was never going to look like any house whether from the inside or out.  I can still remember Mr Navarro’s bushy mustache quiver as he said in his deep, grovelly voice, “Ay pagkahirap gang kwentahin  ng materyales nyang bahay mo.  Ay gumawa ka ng iba.”  And so I did, a square house, with three square bedrooms, just like everybody else’s.  It’s not as if Mr Navarro was curtailing our ambitions.  If we wanted a grander house, then we could just make more and larger square rooms.  But that was not my ambition.

I finished high school with a reputation as that student who was good in sports, drawing, spelling and mischief.  I was the most intelligent student never to have made it on the honor’s list.  To my teachers, I was a major waste of talent.

How today’s learners learn

Today’s creative student can be as easily distracted and defiant of structure in the classroom, if not more so.  But that should not be taken against them given that that is how their environment has shaped their learning tendencies to be, but as a wakeup call for the educational system to really see learning from the perspective and milieu of the learners, and not from a traditional point of view trying to force teaching approaches that are increasingly getting dated with every app being introduced in the digital sphere.  The paper talked about today’s children’s learning environment, calling such system as the knowledge ecology, which consists of blogs, wiki sites, and other sources of instant links to knowledge including those shared on social media, which the learners curate for themselves without much prodding.  Educators thus should not treat the classroom as the Pandora’s box of learning because today’s learners have discovered their own, and it’s up to the teacher to tap into this inner learning drive so that he may be able to add depth, clarity and direction to all these available information.

I consider myself lucky that I survived 16 years of schooling with my creativity, and belief in myself and what I can do intact.  How did I do it?  By not taking school seriously.  Seriously.

Right brain or left brain, versus or and?

Though I am now a graduate student, a serious and committed one, I still often feel like an outsider looking in.  In class discussions, while classmates lucidly and calmly speak what’s on their mind in clear, measured tones, I often find myself speaking rather too passionately, using words that describe not only what I think but also how I feel.  That is also how I write. 

My first course in my first semester was Development and Learning under Dr. Koo, and I was, for obvious reasons, anxious to turn in my very first paper.  I only knew two things about academic writing for graduate school then.  First is that I haven’t done one.  And second is that I should not, under any circumstance, use profane language.  Before the paper on bullying was submitted, I asked a classmate if we could exchange outputs which she, with some hesitation, obliged.  Reading her paper, I was thoroughly impressed and utterly nervous for my work; her writing style was exactly the opposite of mine.  It was concise, organized and authoritative, like an expert wrote it, whereas mine was chatty -- drifting from one idea to another like a Quentin Tarantino movie, and had a tone that alternated between cocky, docile, authoritative and speculative.   She cited empirical evidences, used jargon and tidy words, and quoted big names.   I hinted on the Bible and accused Cain and the Pharaohs of Egypt as bullies.  I relied on anecdotes, some heart-breaking, others hilarious but all true, and strung together words that were raw and colorful, such as crackling knuckles, brisk action and zig and zag.  I also introduced a total unknown – Julius Yago, whom I considered as on top of the bully food chain in my time. 

I praised my classmate for her work and told her it was like reading a well-written academic book.  And she praised me for mine, saying that it was a fun read, and that she could hear my voice in the narrative.  I was not sure if that was a proper compliment for an academic paper.

After two weeks, Dr Koo was ready to return all the papers.  Before she did, she announced the best ones.  My friend’s was one, another was mine.  So what’s the point here?  That both left-brained and right-brained person can both do well on the same task, even while using different approaches.  The problem here is not every student can have a Dr Koo to appreciate both sides.  How many teachers will tell students that there should be a specific way of saying something? Or doing something?

Neon-lighted learning

As we were doing our research on the theses and dissertations compilation and began reading into some of them, which are by the way rich in information, logically written and deeply researched, one thing stood out in my mind:  these brilliant books are written in such a dry, dull and boring prose, no wonder then that they are gathering dust. 

When knowledge is treated as some holy relic, sanitized and bereft of excitement, and yet still expected to attract knowledge pilgrims just because they are valuable, then education is built on an outdated premise.  For me, knowledge should be treated like a commodity, an exciting one.  Most of today’s students try to learn only what they think they can use in their lives, they have no time for boring stuff, no matter how valuable that knowledge is.  Education should compete for attention, not merely demand for it.

Right brain rights

So how do I see an education fit for developing creativity in every student?  Though it would be a more exciting proposition for the creative types, I don’t see any urgency in adding more arts and humanity subjects to the general curriculum as this may only serve to reinforce the stereotype of the brooding-weird-artsy-fartsy-dreamer affixed to the creative type, which, then, reduces the right-brain learner into a caricature -- trivializing the matter all together.

What I see is an educational system not dependent on structures and standards; where teachers are trusted to facilitate and deepen learning, nurture self-reliance and prioritize learning goals over performance goals.  Carol Dweck, a noted brain researcher, argues that students who strive to look for different strategies and options are also more resilient, active and positive compared with performance goal oriented ones who shy away from challenging situations in fear of failing.  For the latter group, the battle cry is: If you can’t look smart, then try not to look dumb.  They become their worst critics.  And as I mentioned earlier, critics don’t see beyond what is in front of them.

I want to see teachers who are more relaxed, and not afraid to admit that there are a lot of things that they don’t know, so that students will realize that the learning process is not a one-way, dead-end street, but a busy thoroughfare with an infinite network of possibilities.

I want to see the heavily-crendentialized teaching profession opened to those who did not take up education or haven’t gone to graduate school, but have proven themselves in their chosen domain, and are willing to share what they so richly gained over the years.  They will bring the real world inside the classroom.  Let us not fool ourselves into believing that a 3-day seminar, or semester or two in graduate school can duplicate, let alone approximate the wealth of knowledge and experience the practitioner can bring to the teaching table.  One thing is sure, if the practitioner hears the calling to teach, it is not the sound of cash register making that persistent noise.

I want rubrics to be thrown away or at least modified to include the creative process, the overcoming of challenges, the discovery of realizations and breakthroughs no matter how big, small, trivial or inconsequential they may seem to others – they matter to the student and his learning.  This is heavily reliant on the teacher’s subjectivity, I know, but then didn’t I say that I want a system where the teacher is trusted to do the right thing?

Sure, we can make life better, easier and more convenient by doing the same things over and over again, and then we can convince ourselves that the security of our comfort zone is actually the reward of moving forward.  But if we genuinely want to create an environment where our children can learn, be creative and ready for the world, then we should be prepared to overhaul our mindset, and the way we dispense education inside our classrooms.  It is only when we dare to say, think and do something new can we really, truly, say that we are changing the world.

This is an article I wrote for Issues and Trends in Educational Psychology, for my graduate studies at UP Diliman.