How to Encourage Creativity

Ken Robinson

The education secretary’s new national curriculum is a dead hand on the creative pulse of teachers and students alike.

“An essential first step in being creative is to question your own way of looking at things … perhaps Gove could start there.”

1 During a recent appearance on BBC’s Question Time, Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, extolled the importance of encouraging creativity in schools. He’s right. Creativity is essential to the success and fulfilment of young people, to the vitality of our communities and to the long-term health of the economy. The trouble is that his current plans for the national curriculum seem likely to stifle the creativity of students and teachers alike. So what is creativity, and how does it work?

2 I define creativity as the process of having ideas that have value. Creative work in any field often passes through typical phases. Sometimes what you end up with is not what you had in mind when you started. It’s a dynamic process that often involves making new connections, crossing disciplines and using metaphors and analogies.

3 Creativity is about fresh thinking. It also involves making critical judgments about whether what you’re working on is any good, whether it’s a theorem, a design or a poem.

4 There are various myths about creativity. One is that only special people are creative; another is that creativity is just about the arts; a third is that it’s all to do with uninhibited “self-expression”. None of these is true. On the contrary, everyone has creative capacities.

5 I imagine Gove would agree with all of this. But his conclusions about how to promote creativity are very wide of the mark. On Question Time he had a lot to say about what’s involved in being creative. He insists, for instance, that children have to learn the necessary skills before they can start to be creative. In English, he says, “creativity depends on mastering certain skills and acquiring a body of knowledge before being able to give expression to what’s in you … You cannot be creative unless you understand how sentences are constructed, what words mean and how to use grammar.”

6 Even if you’re musically gifted, he says, “you need first of all to learn your scales. You need to secure a foundation on which your creativity can flourish.” This all sounds like common sense. But like a lot of common sense it’s wrong or, at best, a half-truth.

7 Over the past four years, I’ve spoken with many people about their particular talents and passions and how they discovered them. In my new book, Finding Your Element, I draw together some of the lessons they can teach us. Hans Zimmer is an Oscar-winning composer, who has created the scores for some of Hollywood’s most successful films. As a child he loved to play the piano but had no patience for scales and rote learning. Whenever he tried to play or compose, his teacher would stop him and say: “Go and practice your scales!” He admits to being disruptive at school and was actually thrown out of eight of them. Finally, he arrived at number nine.

8 The headmaster took him to one side on the first day and said: “Look, I’ve read all these reports. How are we going to avoid this sort of trouble here? What is it you really want to do?” Hans said that all he really wanted to do was play music. With the head’s support, he spent most of the time doing exactly that. Slowly he became engaged in other work too. He remembers a particularly brilliant teacher who took the class for German studies.

9 “He’d be sitting on his piano stool and he’d be talking about something and then he’d whip around and play the music of its period. Suddenly all this stuff started to come alive. Learning wasn’t about learning things by heart and then regurgitating them like a bad cheese sandwich. He was fantastic.”

10 It was the flexibility of that school and the inspiration of a few teachers that helped set Hans on the way to his extraordinary career. You might object that Hans is an exceptional case, but in several ways he is not.

11 First, creativity, like learning in general, is a highly personal process. We all have different talents and aptitudes and different ways of getting to understand things. Raising achievement in schools means leaving room for these differences and not prescribing a standard steeplechase for everyone to complete at the same time and in the same way.

12 Second, creativity is not a linear process, in which you have to learn all the necessary skills before you get started. It is true that creative work in any field involves a growing mastery of skills and concepts. It is not true that they have to be mastered before the creative work can begin. Focusing on skills in isolation can kill interest in any discipline.

13 The real driver of creativity is an appetite for discovery and a passion for the work itself. When students are motivated to learn, they naturally acquire the skills they need to get the work done. Their mastery of them grows as their creative ambitions expand.

14 Third, facilitating this process takes connoisseurship, judgment — and, yes, creativity, on the part of teachers. One concern about the revised national curriculum is that it will be too linear and prescriptive. For creativity to flourish, schools have to feel free to innovate without the constant fear of being penalised for not keeping with the programme.

15 Oddly, Gove seems to think he can improve schools by demeaning teachers. He can’t. The evidence of high-performing systems around the world is that genuine school improvement depends on positive engagement with the profession. When for the first time in their history two major teaching unions pass votes of no confidence in the Secretary of State, he might pause a moment.

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1 教育部长迈克尔•戈夫最近一次参加英国广播公司的《提问时间》节目时，宣扬了在学校教育中激发学生创造力的重要性。他的观点是正确的。创造力对于年轻人实现自我并获得成功、社会充满活力、经济长期健康发展来说，都至关重要。但问题是戈夫目前提出的全国课程体系方案可能会禁锢学生和教师的创造力。到底什么是创造力，创造力又是如何实现的呢？

2我认为创造力是获得有价值的创意的过程。任何领域内的创意性工作都会经历一系列典型的阶段。最终得到的结果有时并不是你初始的想法。这一动态变化的过程常涉及建立新联系，跨越不同专业领域，运用隐喻和类比思维。

3创意即立意新颖。创意也意味着权衡判断，判断你所做的事是否有价值，理论模型是否合乎逻辑，设计方案是否合理，一首诗是否有诗意。

4 关于创造力有着各种错误观念。一是认为只有特殊的人才具有创造力，二是认为创造力只与艺术有关，三是认为创造力只跟天马行空的个性表达有关。这些看法都是错误的。与此相反，所有人都具有创造力。

5我想戈夫会同意我所说的，但他关于如何提高创造力的结论却是离题万里。在《提问时间》节目中，他就创造力所需的条件讲了许多话。例如，他坚持认为儿童在具有创造力之前应学习必要的技能。就学英语而言，他说：“创造力是基于掌握了某些技能以及获得了大量知识之上的，这样你才能表达心中想说的内容······只有当你知道了造句的方法、词的意义、使用语法的规则，你才能创造性地使用语言。”

6 他说，就算你有音乐天赋，“你也必须先学会音阶。只有打好基础才能让你的创造力蓬勃发展。”这话听起来都是常理，但是像很多常理一样，它是错的，顶多也就对了一半。

7 在过去的四年当中，我跟很多人聊过他们特殊的天赋和热情以及他们是如何发现这些天赋和热情的。在我的新书《发现适合你的环境》中，我总结出了他们的经历能带给我们的一些启示。汉斯•季默是一位获得奥斯卡金像奖的作曲家，他曾经为一些好莱坞最成功的影片配乐。小时候，他热爱钢琴演奏，但是却对音阶和死记硬背没有任何耐性。每当他试图演奏或者谱曲的时候，他的老师就会制止他说：“快去练习你的音阶！”他承认自己在学校爱捣乱，以至于被八所学校赶了出来。最后，他到了第九所学校。

8 入校的第一天，校长把他叫到一旁，对他说：“你看，我已经看过所有关于你的报告了。在这所学校我们要怎么样来避免这种麻烦呢？你真正想做的是什么呢？”汉斯说他真正想做的不过就是演奏音乐。他得到了校长的支持，大多时间都用于演奏音乐。慢慢地他也能集中精力在其他功课上了。他对一位教德国研究的特别棒的老师还记忆犹新。

9 “他常常会坐在钢琴凳上，谈着某件事，然后他会突然转身，弹奏当时的曲子。忽然这一切都灵动了起来。学习并不是要背诵，然后机械地重复，就像把吃下的一块变质奶酪三明治吐出来。他太棒了。”

10 正是那所学校的灵活性和几位老师的鼓舞帮助汉斯走上他非同寻常的职业之路。你也许会辩驳说汉斯是个例外，但是从很多方面来说他并不是一个例外。

11 首先，创造力如同普通的学习一样，是一个高度因人而异的过程。人都有着不同的天分、资质和理解事物的方式。提高学习成绩意味着为这些不同方面提供发展空间，而不是制定一个标准的障碍赛跑，让学生在同一时间用同一种方式来完成。

12 其次，创新并非循序渐进的过程，不一定非得学会所有必备的技能方才开始。的确，所有领域的创造性工作都需要我们不断地掌握技能和概念，但并不是只有掌握了这些技能和概念之后才可以开始创造性的工作。单单关注技能会扼杀兴趣，无论哪个领域都如此。

13 创造力的真正动力来自探索的欲望与对所从事的工作的热爱。当学生具有学习动力时，他们就能自然而然地掌握完成任务所需的技能，而且掌握的程度也随着创造欲的扩张而提高。

14 再次，推进这个过程需要教师具有伯乐的眼光和判断力，当然，还得有创造力。对于修订后的全国课程的一个担心就是课程会过于直线化和规范化。为了使创造力蓬勃发展，学校应该能够大胆创新，而不用总是担心因没有实行国家大纲而受到惩罚。

15 不可思议的是戈夫似乎认为他可以通过降低教师的作用来提高学校教育。这是行不通的。全世界范围内表现优秀的教育体系都证明：学校真正的发展取决于教师的积极参与。当有史以来第一次两个主要的教师工会都对该国务大臣投不信任票时，他也许会消停一会。