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I was reading our Sunday paper and I happened to look at the "Parade" insert. They had an article called "Do you have a better idea?" Creativity. What caught my eye was a section called "How to think outside the box". The first item was called:
"Open your eyes and 'plagiarize.'"
"Inspired by the Tom Lehrer song, the idea is to look around you and see how things are done in other countries and contexts. What smart solutions already exist, and how can they be adapted for your problem?"
Amazing. More knowledge and skills improve creativity!
The problem with ideas is that they are a dime a dozen. I have many of them a day. Some of them are probably extremely good. Some of them are probably extremely bad. The problem is that I can't always tell the two apart. Besides, I'm busy right now.
Creativity is not a problem. Lack of knowledge and skills is the problem - and time and opportunity and motivation and the ability to work really, really hard on something that isn't always going to be fun. Drive, ambition, taking risks, knowledge, and skills get the job done, not creativity. Creativity is a vague and cheap commodity. Schools should focus on knowledge, skills, high expectations, and hard work. Creativity will take care of itself.
Everyone is creative and has ideas. The problem is whether you have anything else to back it up.
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9 comments:
You sound EXACTLY like the scientist I worked with at NAAR.
He was a major, major researcher.....
He told me that the problem with a particular person who was working in autism funding was that, "He/she thinks his ideas are good."
Then he said, "I have probably 40 or 50 ideas a day. I'm lucky if even one of them is any good."
That's the difference between a brainy amateur and an expert.
Creativity isn't the issue.
Expertise is the issue.
Wonderful!
It isn't just expertise vs. creativity. A big part of success is also "follow through." The willingness to do the "grunt work" as well as the fun "creative" work. I've observed that most people not only don't want to do the grunt work, but often are unwilling to do so. Unless they have so much charisma that they can get other people to do it for them, it doesn't matter how creative they are ... nothing is going to get done.
-Mark Roulo
A big part of success is also "follow through."
Absolutely.
The words "creative" and "creativity" have always bugged me. Solving problems, no matter how mundane the problem or the solution requires creativity. But many people have the idea that creativity is synonymous with innovation. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. When I was at school, I was involved in a bit of writing; when people found out I was a math major, I would frequently be asked "How could anyone as creative as you major in something so dull?" I never know what to say.
One time a young woman of artistic aspirations asked me that. I was a senior at that point and had had it up to here with that question. So I said "Oh, math is VERY creative. For example, I'm working on a theory right now that there is a highest number. We all know that saying the sun rising every day is based on scientific induction--it's always happened before, so we induce that it will happen tomorrow. It's the same thing with numbers: we've always been able to add 1 to a number, and that has sufficed to prove that they are infinite. But suppose we assume that this induction will not hold, just as it is possible that the sun will not rise tomorrow. What does this assumption do to the structure of the real number system?"
Well, this is pure BS of course, but her eyes got real big and she said "Wow, I never realized how creative math could be!". I feel bad about this, and in thinking about it the other day I got somewhat nervous and scoured the NCTM web site to make sure her name didn't pop up as some executive director. It didn't, fortunately. Then again, she may be a math teacher somewhere. And probably right at home with what's going on.
you're awful!
you're awful!
Yes, you're right. Then again, she may have been so enthused that she changed her major and got a PhD in math and is the chair of some department. And her dissertation was on "highest number theory".
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