Creativity Myth No. 7: Schools Kill Creativity

Posted on June 24, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

As I’ve studied Creativity over the past ten years, I’ve learned many things that surprised me. Each day for a week, I’m debunking one “Creativity myth” that I believed before I started studying in earnest.Yesterday I wrote about Myth No. 6: Creativity Requires Large Chunks of Uninterrupted Time.

Schools do not kill Creativity. They direct towards or away from Creativity.

Public schools and others modeled on industrial production methods tend to oversocialize. Students spend 12 years, during a time of rapid brain development confined in small, environmentally unhealthy classrooms. Prolonged mass instruction, with minimal individuation, keeps the middle-class mired in busy work, but uninspired for Creative work.   Studies show only 10% of highly Creative people are suburban-living, comfortably middle-class.

Still, the overwhelming majority of Creative people today have spent thousands of hours in school. French philosopher Ernest Renan said:

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have given his life.

In any case, highly Creative people seem immune to the perils of schooling. Creativity scholar Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi says:

It is strange how little effect school–even high school–seems to have had on the lives of creative people.

This immunity is partly due to feelings of marginality.  Csikszentmihalyi says

Nostalgia for the teenage years is almost entirely absent. Marginality–the feeling of being on the outside, of being different, of observing with detachment the strange rituals of one’s peers–was a common theme.

The right kind of formal schooling is essential for big time Creativity. Researcher R. Keith Sawyer says:

No can be creative without first internalizing the domain, and this is why scientists now believe that formal schooling is essential to creativity.

Csikszentmihalyi found,

In mathematics and the sciences, the exposure one gets in high school in necessary for further advancement

…but, performance in high school is a poor indicator of future creativity in the arts and the humanities.

So, Art School for sculptors, Design School for architects and Music School for cellists.  Some formal schooling is essential.  But, Sawyer says:

after a certain point, additional formal education begins to interfere with creativity…this pattern shows there is some truth to the idea that schooling can get in the way…further training can oversocialize a person, resulting in a rigid, conventional way of thinking.

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Creativity Myth No. 6: Creativity Requires Large Chunks of Uninterrupted Time

Posted on June 23, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

As I’ve studied Creativity over the past ten years, I’ve learned many things that surprised me. Each day for a week, I’m debunking one “Creativity myth” that I believed before I started studying in earnest.Yesterday I wrote about Myth No. 5: Creativity Favors Youth.

Half wrong. Creativity is incredibly time-consuming.  At least 10,000 hours must be logged in a single domain for the Creator to even have a platform to stand on.  But not all Creations begin with luxurious stretches of quiet time.  Some Creators have responsibilities complicating,  even almost squashing, the Creative process. Below are three notable examples:

  • Einstein held a desk job at the Swiss patent office while working on the Theory of Relativity.
  • Mother of twelve, Lillian Moller Gilbreth, of Cheaper by the Dozen fame,  wrote dozens of management books.  She also patented enough inventions to become Woman Engineer of the Year in 1952 and appeared on a US postage stamp as a “Famous American.”
  • J.K Rowling famously wrote the first Harry Potter book in various London coffee shops while her small daughter took a nap in the pram.

The 10,000 hours rule for Creativity stands firm. But some Creators must find a way to Create, against almost insurmountable odds.  You put in the mental time and chip away at your Creative work any way you can.  Until one day, you have a lovely room with a view to work from.

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Creativity Myth No. 5: Creativity Favors Youth

Posted on June 22, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

As I’ve studied Creativity over the past ten years, I’ve learned many things that surprised me. Each day for a week, I’m debunking one “Creativity myth” that I believed before I started studying in earnest.Yesterday I wrote about Myth No. 4: Creative People are Disorganized.

I can hear them play, building tall Kapla block towers, in the next room over.  Six children, four of them mine plus a friend and my new baby watching from her recliner. Children can be so creative, so unbound by notions of what a proper building needs to stay upright. I walk over and see. The buildings are nothing to gawk at today.  Just plain towers happening.  You wouldn’t know it, though, by listening to what the children say.  They speak  like architects brainstorming a major project.  Then several minutes of quiet.  No laughter or goofing-off.

Children at creative play are not being Creative. They are playing at being Creative. Creativity scholar Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi says:

Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one.

And,

The definition of a creative person is:  someone whose thoughts or actions change a domain, or establish a new domain…a domain cannot be changed without explicit or implicit consent of a field responsible for it.

A Creative Life may begin in childhood, but must also go beyond our early years because it is complicated, multi-factoral and especially, time-consuming.  At least 10,000 hours must be logged in a single domain for the Creator to even have a platform to stand on.

Childhood is the time to master divergent thinking, coming up with many potential answers, because the human brain is set up to learn in mad and disorderly ways in childhood.  Divergent thinking is essential to Creativity and must remain alive and well throughout a Creative Life.  But, as Creativity researcher, R. Keith Sawyer says, Divergent thinking is not the same thing as creativity.

Once adolescence takes hold, major pruning of  brain communication pathways begins.  The window of opportunity to master the basics of divergent thinking closes and you are ready to play at convergent thinking, coming up with the one right answer.  Sawyer says:

Creative achievement requires a complex combination of both divergent and convergent thinking, and creative people are good at switching back and forth at different points in the creative process.

Playful thinking is essential to Creation, but Csikszentmihalyi says, This playfulness doesn’t go very far without its antithesis, a quality of doggedness, endurance, perseverance.

Lucky children who build block towers with no one telling them how to make them better are mastering divergent thinking. Still, they could not design another wonder of the world without a heck of a lot more experience, study and devoted hours.

Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, when asked how he solves physics problems, said,

Two things are required.  One is a brain.  And a second is the willingness to spend long times in thinking,  with a definite possibility that you come out with nothing.

Playful/Divergent and Disciplined/ Convergent.  Both types of thinking are needed…and of course, a healthy brain.  So, a very old person with decreased brain function will not be a her Creative peak,  but a young person won’t be either, simply because he lacks the mental processes and time (10,000 hours) requisite for Creativity.

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Creativity Myth No. 4: Creative People are Disorganized

Posted on June 20, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

As I’ve studied Creativity over the past ten years, I’ve learned many things that surprised me. Each day for a week, I’m debunking one “Creativity myth” that I believed before I started studying in earnest.Yesterday I wrote about Myth No. 3: Creators are Rebellious.

Last January I piled a stack of documents on to my accountant’s desk.  I scanned the pile and said,  I forgot the other receipts at home.  I’ll get them to you tomorrow.

She let out a little laugh and said, Don’t worry about it, I know you’re the creative-type.

I liked her comment and thought about it for months.  I wondered, What made her think I was creative? and Why would creativity excuse absentmindedness?

Creative people are often portrayed as absent-minded in movies and television.  There is some truth to the absent-minded professor icon because Creative people severely limit their time to almost anything but their creative work.  They read for pleasure.  They love.  They do laps at the pool and hack at the piano for awhile.  But the bulk of the day is devoted to The Work.

Financial genius Peter Drucker, when asked for an interview by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, responded:

I am greatly honored and flattered by your kind letter…for I have admired your work for many years, and I have learned much from it. But …I am afraid I have to disappoint you…

I hope you will not think me presumptuous or  rude if I say that one of the secrets of productivity…is to have a VERY BIG waste paper basket to take care of ALL invitations such as yours—productivity in my experience consists of NOT doing anything that helps the work of other people but to spend all one’s time on the work the Good Lord has fitted one to do, and to do well.

Highly Creative people lose car keys, but not so often that looking for them takes time away from Creative work.  Composer Igor Stravinsky wrote about the importance of honing in on Creative work by dropping all else:

My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned to myself for each one of my undertakings…My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles.  Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength.  The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the claims that shackle the spirit.

Creative-types– like myself, haven’t mastered the art of cutting the urgent but unimportant from daily routines. We straddle worlds and do both. And accountants excuse us.

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Myth No.3: Creators are Rebellious

Posted on June 18, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

As I’ve studied Creativity over the past ten years, I’ve learned many things that surprised me. Each day for a week, I’m debunking one “Creativity myth” that I believed before I started studying in earnest.Yesterday I wrote about Myth No. 2: Creativity is Spontaneous Inspiration.

Often stereotyped as rebellious and independent, highly creative people must, in reality, internalize a domain of culture. Creativity Scholar Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says:

A person must believe in the importance of such a domain in order to learn its rules; hence he or she must be to a certain extent a traditionalist.

Adding to a domain first requires 10,000 hours within it.  Constantly rebelling against conventions, to be different, has little to do with Creativity. Artist Eva Zeisel says:

Wanting to be different can’t motivate your work…being different is a negative motive, and no creative thought or created thing grows out of a negative impulse.

Deep knowledge of conventions are crucial because Creation never occurs in a vacuum, but within an environment, a cultural context. The new is built upon the old. Creativity Scholar Mel Rhodes says:

History proves that great inventions are never, and great discoveries seldom, the work of any one mind. Every great invention is either an aggregate of minor inventions or the final step of the progression.

But a willingness to take risks and part with tradition must be part of the Creative process as well.  Csikszentmihalyi says,

So it is difficult to see how a person can be Creative without being both traditional and conservative and at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic.  Being only traditional leaves the domain unchanged; constantly taking chances without regard to what has been valued in the past rarely leads to novelty that is accepted as an improvement.

Creators are portrayed as rebellious, but rebelliousness is not their goal, Creation is.

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Creativity Myth No. 2: Creativity is Spontaneous Inspiration

Posted on June 17, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

As I’ve studied Creativity over the past ten years, I’ve learned many things that surprised me. Each day for a week, I’m debunking one “Creativity myth” that I believed before I started studying in earnest. Yesterday I wrote about Creativity Myth No. 1: Anyone Can Be Creative.

Spontaneous inspiration is certainly part of the Creative process, but it is not the process.  Often crucial to making connections and moving forward on a project grand inspirations are the shining moments of Creativity.  Ordinary people experience spontaneous inspiration, but not everyone is Creative.

Louis Pasteur said:

Chance favors the prepared mind.

You cannot be Creative without an end product.  Einstein had an equation.  Anne Leibovitz has a million photographs. Creativity by definition embraces execution, work and lots of time.  One moment, no matter how enlightening  does not Creativity make. Thomas Edision said:

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident. They came by work. Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.

Scott Belsky, author of Making Ideas Happen says:

While the tendency to generate ideas is rather natural [for creative people], the path to making them happen is tumultuous.

Noble laureates publish twice as much as other highly respected scientists within their field.  Creativity scholar, Keith Sawyer says,

Among acknowledged geniuses, it’s hard to find one who was not highly productive.

Still, the inspiration must be embraced.  It is the fuel for the perspiration ahead.

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Creativity Myth No.1: Anyone Can Be Creative

Posted on June 16, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

As I’ve studied Creativity over the past ten years, I’ve learned many things that surprised me. Each day for a week, I’m debunking one “Creativity myth” that I believed before I started studying in earnest.

The idea that anyone can be Creative is closely related to the democratic ideal that anyone can become U.S. President.

Yes. You (any You) can be Creative if:

  1. You have virtuoso skills within your domain.  You’ve put in 10,000 hours to get good at whatever it is you do.  Anyone who has ever contributed Creatively to humanity has put in the time.  Jonas Salk went through 25 years of schooling, from K-Medical School, then more academic training. Then he worked in a University lab for another decade.  Salk knew viruses inside and out and was well-versed in research methodologies before discovering a vaccine for polio.
  2. You were not born middle-class.  Studies show only 10% of highly Creative people are suburban-living, comfortably middle-class. It is much better to be born of highly-educated parents, who read a lot in their spare time and have lots of resources to invest in you.  It is also better to be born of undereducated immigrant parents who want a better life for you and encourage you every day of your young adult life to try harder.  Thirty-five percent of Highly Creatives belong to this last category.
  3. You manage your energy (or someone else does for you) to live for your ideas and projects. As a mother of three small children, Pulitzer-Prize winning author Anna Quidlen sent the kids off to school in the mornings. Then after spending an hour chatting on the phone with a friend, she sat at her computer to write for five hours. Creativity Scholar, Howard Gardner found  Sigmund Freud‘s

    family members organized much of their daily regime around the talented boy’s needs: He was given his own room and his own bookcases, he did not have to dine with the rest of his family but was provided with his own eating chamber;  and when his sister’s piano practicing annoyed him, the piano was removed from the house.

  4. You enjoy working alone, with little distractions.   Gaining full competence in your field can rarely be done without massive amounts of alone-time.  Albert Einstein liked to work in the country.  He said

    I noticed how the monotony of quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

  5. You have community; friends or colleagues to banter and refine your ideas and also a field to present the ideas to. Your creative gifts will wilt and die without a community to review and accept ideas as appropriate. Creativity researcher, R. Keith Sawyer writes of a quirky composer whose compositions were not disseminated because no one could play them:

    Harry Partch (1949) spent his career…inventing and constructing his own unique  instruments to perform his compositions. Because [his compositions] don’t meet the appropriateness criterion, it’s almost impossible to perform.

  6. You have spent a lot of time free-thinking and playing alone, as a child. Einstein explored his native Ulm, Germany, by himself, at the age of 4.

Theoretically, anyone can be Creative like anyone in the U.S. can become President.  But, in practice a whole lot is required to contribute Creatively and  not everyone can do or does what it takes.

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