Creativity and the Moldovan Situation

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.

John W. Gardner

I have asked my students what that light is, where it comes from and how and when is it blocked. Answers have ranged. Diogenes jealously guarding the spotlight of fame, loathe to share it with rulers of the time; the path we choose to follow in our life and the people around us - friends, family, teachers - who either quietly dissuade the cultivation of it or overtly extinguish the flames that light this path; the inner light that we all possess and that, ultimately, depends on us to stay lit or to be blown out.

These responses reflect, I think, the Moldovan situation in a rather illuminating way and show the intellect possessed by its youth that all too often goes ignored. Lately I've been struck by the question:

What role does Creativity play in Moldova and what role should it have?

I frame it as such, though I am sure it has global implications.

All such things must start out with a motivating paragraph that gives some glimpse into why the situation made need to be addressed. Something to capture the attention of the gentle reader and trick her, if only for a little while, into reading further.

• In 2004, Moldova ranked 5th in consumption of alcohol. In comparison, Russia ranked 19th, the US ranked 41st.
• 25% of Moldova's 4.4million natives are working abroad. Of those it is estimated only 80,000 are doing so legally. Many of those who escape legally do so through qualifies for international exchange and work programs, leading to significant brain drain. Those who do not qualify do so in the black, exposing them to the highest rates of trafficking in persons in Europe.
• The economy is stagnant; the population is disenchanted with the political system left to them after the fall of the Soviet Union.

These are not the statistics of a healthy and functional society or of a population trained and eager to rise to the challenges of the future. In a land where the phrase "Hope dies last" is heard daily, people spill across the borders searching for that hope elsewhere.

The roots of these problems are legion and it will take a legion of bright minds to overcome them. One of the greatest barriers towards that progress was being created while Moldova was still a part of greater Romania during the industrial revolution.

At that time also arose, in much the same form, our current system of education. People were educated in order to meet very specific and limited needs in arising industry and one can still see that reflected in how parents react to the grades their children bring home. The classes thought most important are mathematics and the hard sciences. After those follow the humanities, and laughably bringing up the rear are the arts - if they are offered at all.

A factory manager has little need for a workforce that is able to competently express the human condition through poetry or of one that can gracefully carry itself across the dance floor. In fact, too much time thinking about poetry or dancing between rotating gears is a fairly efficient way of trimming one's workforce of appendages. Certain divisions of labor need to be filled and it is the job of education to prepare citizens to fill them.

That may work, to some degree, when the intellectual demands placed on a worker are limited. However, the amount of human knowledge today is said to double every seven years. Manual labor is being transferred from industrialized nations to industrializing nations leaving economies that depend heavily on the individual's ability to work with a rapidly progressing set of technological standards. Citizens are also being confronted with increasingly difficult moral problems as the limits of science are pushed back and culture and religion react to the newly opened doors.

This system of education, in which students are required to learn and recite lists of information while neglecting the cultivation of their creative faculties, fails in several ways:

1. Information is being updated at such a frantic pace that by the time it is published it is out of date, leaving our youth clinging to incomplete theory as scientific gospel. It is rare to find teachers who teach students to question instead of find concrete answers and this inability to question effectively leaves obsolete dogmatists in its wake.
2. The emphasis on learning facts over promoting the creative self cripples student ability to think and work critically with the problems that are confronting us.
3. The inner death suffered by children as they learn that it's better to not call attention to themselves rather than risking being wrong and actualizing themselves limits their chances for a fulfilling and happy life, increasing rates of detrimental coping mechanisms which only further complicate efforts or social reform.
   

We, as parents, community members, and educators have very few years to prepare our youth for the rest of their lives and we are failing.

Any solution to a problem consists of two main parts. One is using existing knowledge in order to create a platform from which to launch a solution, the other is the ability to combine old ideas in new ways and view issues from a different vantage point in order to resolve them with any sort of finality (in so far as this is possible for the given problem). Moldova is in a particularly precarious position due its economic standing and inheritance of unresolved political questions from the former USSR. Still, there seems to exist the idea that the same thinking which has gotten us into this mess will eventually get us out of it if we just have patience.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

Such logic is silly.

A drastic shift in curriculum and educational system in Moldova (or anywhere, for that matter) is unlikely. It is, therefore, left up to parents and teachers to encourage the minds of our children to develop in their creative faculties. In order to do this with any sort of emotional honesty, we ourselves have to begin taking the same steps we would require of our students.

Activity: Rushed artistry
-Prepare the room with a blank piece of paper, pencil, and a writing surface for each participant.
-Ask each participant to look at their colleagues and then, in 30 seconds, draw a picture of them. If they protest, remind them that they now have just 25 seconds.

Debrief:
"Done? How did it come out? I hear lots of laugher, a couple of apologies. Are you enthusiastic to show it to the person you drew?

"This is a fairly good demonstration of our fear of judgment by our peers. This activity always ends the same way in groups of adults and adolescents who do not know each other very well (and in many cases even those who are quite close). The interesting thing to think about is how children of a much younger age would take to this. No hesitation to show what they have drawn, mangled though it may be. Picasso said that all children are born artists, the trick is to remain so as we grow old. We learn that it is not permissible to be artistic (unless it involves the skilled imitation of a work contemporarily thought of acceptably artistic). The rather melodramatic fact of the matter is that most people are dead long before they are buried or have even stopped eating.

"These barriers to expressing our pictures, ideas, thoughts, sentiments are learned through a rigorous assault of laughs, smirks, criticism, lack of appreciation, indoctrination of manners and etiquette, and the unintended violence of well-intentioned advice to the point that by the time children reach adolescence many of them have been convinced that their best hope and only realistic shot in life is working in low-skill, low-creativity entry-level positions. I have worked these positions. I have worked these positions drunk. The latter is preferable. It might be said, as it so often is here, "Asa e viata" - such is life - but such a life does not leave much room for actual living."

Well-intentioned advice is, quite possibly, far more destructive a force than any malevolent mockery. "Don't worry about singing, you'll never be a singer. You can't go dancing until you finish your math, you'll never be a dancer." It gently dissuades our youth for using their innate talents and shies them from those things they love to do. I am not here proposing that mathematics be removed from the curriculum, but that students be guided into improving their strengths and passions, wherever they may lie and whatever obvious opportunities to paying the bills we may (or may not) see in them.

The truth of the matter is that no person learns, thinks, or understands the universe in the same way. We now talk in terms of multiple intelligences, people who think kinesthetically, visually, verbally, logically, musically, interpersonally, intrapersonally and naturalistically. Our system trains us and our students to believe that only those who function at superior levels of logic and linguistics are truly intelligent. Others are simply amusing detractions from serious work and this is, I assert, a serious mistake.

Our system is designed to teach to the test, to get our youth from high school into college with the highest grades possible. We run our classes and our businesses with the idea that to be mistaken is the worst possible thing we can do. This does not have the effect of making us right more often, but of encouraging us to exercise our powers less out of fear of punishment. By teaching such a value our children retreat into themselves and forfeit any chance at greatness. We as a culture must learn to love our mistakes for what they are. I am not here saying that mistakes are equivalent with creativity, but that we must be ready to make mistakes in order to take the chances needed for creating something truly great.

Activity II: Circles
-On the flip side of the paper given to each participant for the first activity, have drawn 30 circles roughly the size of a quarter.
-Instruct them that they must complete the circles by transforming them into objects - give them the examples of a happy face or a sun.
-Quantity is what is important here, not quality. They need fill out as many as they can in 1 minute.

Debrief:
-Who had more than 5? 10? 15?
-Who used the examples I gave?
-Who used variations on a theme? Happy face, sad face?
-Who tried to combine several of the cirlces into one?

-Who didn't use my examples?
-Who blocked up and couldn't think of anything?

-Why?

The responses I have gotten here have generally been of the flavor that they weren't able to draw nice things quickly, that they didn't think they were allowed to use my examples, or that doing just small changes (or the same image repeatedly) wasn't sufficiently original for the exercise. I have amusingly even had students argue with me that I told them that each circle had to be unique, even after stressing several times that quantity was all I cared about. This beautifully illustrates just how indoctrinated we become to the idea this activity hopes to show:

We learn a hesitation to take even the smallest steps towards a goal due to the belief that our actions or their results will not be creative enough to be worth pursuing. This effectively freezes us in place and prevents any attempt whatsoever. While brainstorming may not be the pinnacle of creative outlet, it can be incredibly useful in its proper context. The theory behind it says that from quantity can come quality. With enough freely spoken ideas, some sparks may grow into a fire with the proper direction and cultivation. The key is creating an atmosphere in which all participants feel free to say whatever comes into their minds. The immediate rejection of ideas or impatience shown at not finding the best answer immediately closes students (and adults) within themselves and kills the attempts before they have begun in earnest.

Evolution does not happen over a short period. Evolution does not always (or even usually) produce changes that are immediately apparently useful to life. Many changes which lead to nothing and may or may not be passed on occur before something of wonder appears. Through selection of vast variety of mutations cells that began as merely light sensitive grow to have the power of spotting a mouse from several kilometers overhead. Were the hawk to sit in the factory of God and refuse to hunt or eat until he was given these perfect eyes, he would die before they were ready. We must lose this fear of not creating a masterpiece. Not every show will be to a sold-out crowd and to work only with the assurance that it will is to never work at all.

Children, and indeed all people, are creative in much the same situations in which they feel free to play. It must be productive play, it must be play inspired by certain laws informed by science or the human experience, but it is play. To be afraid to play, to create, due to fear of judgment of others or worry that it won't floor people with its brilliance is to stifle the creative spirit and deprive the world of solutions to those problems which plague us.

In fact, no country in the world can afford to douse its bright minds, but Moldova is in a particularly hard position and has more need of innovation and progressive thought than most. The global school system is well-entrenched and unlikely to chance in the foreseeable future, and so parents and teachers carry the responsibility of encouraging creative thought and fostering a supportive atmosphere for students to explore their faculties.

We must learn to see our creative capacities for the richness that they are and our children for the hope that they are.

What I have written here is a rough outline for lectures on Creativity in Schools. I'm using this as my chalkboard to line up the points I want to hit and tone I want to set. I have pulled heavily (or ripped wholesale) from the following sources. Any misunderstandings or inconsistencies in application of theory are my own. I highly recommend both the linked videos.
Ken Robinson: Schools Kill Creativity
Tim Brown: Creativity and Play
Sidney Hook: Education for Modern Man