Creativity Can Be Learned

Man is born creative, but society forces him to stop being. Creativity questions what has been established as “normal”. It is a kind of chaos, without a defined direction, which makes all the alarms sound and raises many questions about our “certainties”.

Creativity, absurdity and madness are genres of the same kind: divergent thinking. Therefore, traditional education assumes that this issue must be repressed to a greater or lesser degree. If the child says: “the moon smiled at me”, the adult immediately responds: No dear, the moon is a satellite that revolves around the earth and cannot smile.”

It seems that educating does not include the task of teaching how to be creative. On the contrary, it aims to instill in the student the knowledge already established, and on that basis to produce creation. This ultimately fails to develop creative thinking. We need to value this creative process more, transforming schools into places where children can develop their skills.

Types of intelligence and creation

There is more interest in researching how intelligent a person is than finding out what kind of intelligence they are. Our educational system doesn’t care about that; is focused on training people who can build and operate a dataset in the best way possible. He has an industrial spirit and his goal is to produce more technical individuals.

In this environment, creativity is reduced to an exercise in innovation, which has precise limits. For example: lots of applause for anyone who manages to present a robot at the science fair. Everyone will tell you: “you will be a great engineer” . On the contrary, a student who has tried four or five ideas and has not solved any will fail. “The world also needs workers” will say the teachers.

It seems that, in the world, there is only place for one type of intelligence: one that adapts perfectly to scientific and technical thinking, and is useful for production as it is established. Talent in other areas, such as the arts, for example, is also encouraged by this type of logic. There are curators who analyze works of art to say if the work is good or not. There are literary critics who can make or break an author with their criticism. Power, always power.

Creativity and emotions

What happens to the precocious genius who succeeded in school? The pats on the shoulder and the acceptance of the whole society give you self-esteem and confidence; your converging intelligence helps you reach the world of success.

The student who has not been able to develop all of his ideas  has a divergent intelligence, he thinks differently, his thoughts and speculations take another turn. He knows that many unexpected discoveries at first seemed absurd, but unfortunately he was hindered by social censorship and was unable to succeed.

The West has a bad habit of separating reality into distinct parts to make it more understandable. They say you are “emotional” or “rational”, as if emotions and intellect were fruits of different baskets. In fact, although they are different, thoughts and feelings are intertwined.

Through this disapproval, the student can become a closed, blocked, and fearful person. “Give me a blank,” these frightened and wonderful rebels say to explain their failure at school.

Even experts agree that creativity is learned in the most paradoxical way: making mistakes. Creativity can be improved on a daily basis: find new solutions to daily challenges, take the opposite path and dare.