The Purpose of Schooling: Imagination and Creativity

May 25, 2012Paul KuttnerPostCreativity, Education, Imagination, School Reform

We need a radical rethinking of the purpose of schooling.

It’s the longest-running debate in US education: What should be the purpose of school? To
train a skilled workforce? To sort people and reward the “smartest”? To help individuals
reach their goals? To socialize people into “American culture”? To build a foundation for
democracy? The answer has long been “all of the above” — although at different times in
our history one or another has taken prominence.
It doesn’t take more than a glance at the current presidential race to recognize that these
days the economic purpose of school is front and center. Proponents of this perspective
argue that improving education will boost the US economy. While this may in fact be an
appealing outcome, it is a partial and limited vision of what schooling can and should be.
With our rapidly changing and increasingly interconnected society, and so many dire social,
political, and environmental issues calling for solutions, we need a more robust and holistic
understanding of what schools are for.
I propose the following framework: The purpose of schools should be to develop
imagination and creativity.

Imagination
When I say imagination, I am not talking simply about fantasy or play, though these are
important pieces of the puzzle. As Merriam-Webster puts it, imagination is “the act or power
of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly
perceived in reality.” It’s about empathy: imagining how it might feel to be someone else in
another body, another situation, another culture. It’s about personal achievement: imagining
futures for yourself and how you might reach them. It’s about resilience: imagining what
obstacles you might face, and how you might leap them. And it’s about creating change:
imagining how your life, your community, or your world might be better.
Importantly, imagination must be built on a foundation of understanding. One cannot
imagine how the world might be if one does not understand how the world is. And nothing
fuels imagination like learning about parts of the world beyond our everyday experience.
This might mean learning about a culture on the other side of the world that works
differently than the one we know; or it might mean learning about atoms and quarks, things
that we all experience but are too small to see. So developing imagination encompasses
traditional learning areas such as history, anthropology, physics, etc. But these topics are
taught in the service of developing an historical, social, scientific imagination rather than as
separate pieces of information devoid of context.
Creativity
The related but distinct notion of creativity has long been connected with specific fields such
as art, and with individual geniuses. But creativity can take place in any arena, and on many
different scales. When I say a school’s purpose is to develop “creativity,” I mean very
simply the ability to create. To create a piece of technology from its component parts. To
create a theory about the world from pieces of existing theories and your own experiences.
To create community. To create new ways of being with one another. And yes — to create
art.
Understood in this way, creativity relies on many “basic skills” that we expect our schools to
teach. If we want to develop creativity across multiple fields (and we do) students need to
be literate in written languages, mathematics, visual languages, computers, health, and
more. To focus on creativity is not to put aside these skills for unbounded play time, but to
situate these skills in real, creative applications. And it definitely means focusing on the kind
of “higher-order thinking” that we say we want from schools, but that are rarely prioritized in
public education.
Creativity is often understood as a set of individual skills and dispositions that lead someone
to think “out of the box.” As such, it has been increasingly recognized as a “21st century
skill” that can help drive innovation (and thus the economy). But I am taking a broader view
of creativity not only as an individual characteristic, but as a system. As some theorists have
shown, creativity takes place not just within a person but in a larger system that includes
colleagues, audiences, the history of the field, and more. So developing creativity is also
about developing the ability to understand what has come before you, to connect and
collaborate with others, and to see yourself within a larger context.
What this would mean for schools
As I hope I’ve made clear, this framework does not throw out everything that we have been
doing in schools. Students still need to learn about science and reading and math. It doesn’t
even involve inventing new pedagogies — the tools we need are out there, even if not in the
mainstream. But it does call on us to shift our thinking in some fundamental ways.
Perhaps most obviously (particularly for this blog), this framework would mean a much more
integral role for the arts in schools. While some outcomes of arts education are hotly
contested, most people recognize that they are powerful tools for encouraging imagination
and creativity. Art should not be only a separate elective class but a set of practices
integrated across disciplines.

This framework also pushes us away from the common view that schools are filling students
up with something they are lacking (a deficit view). Instead we see our goal as supporting
the growth of something that is already there. After all, we know that all children have the
capacity for amazing displays of imagination and creativity. What they need is to have this
ability nurtured, supported, and broadened.

This framework also suggests the need for an education that involves making and doing
real things. Instead of only learning facts and writing papers, students should be guided
through the process of understanding, imagining, and creating. Project-based learning is an
excellent example of a pedagogy that takes this seriously, engaging students in projects
that draw on multiple skills and disciplines, require collaboration, and address real-world
issues.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this kind of focus has the potential to make schools
much more fun and engaging for students — no small feat.

Conclusion
Transformative teaching that encourages imagination and creativity is happening right now,
though not always in schools. It must necessarily look different across schools based on the
context — the particular students, families, communities, and teachers involved. But I argue
that this overarching framework could help to realign our thinking towards what is truly
important — and perhaps help us, collectively, improve our ability to imagine a better world
and begin to work towards it.
This post was inspired by Kay Merseth, who has the students in her school reform course at the
Harvard Graduate School of Education all write papers on what the purpose of schooling is — an
important and overlooked exercise. Here is my humble attempt. Thanks Professor Merseth.

http://culturalorganizing.org/the-purpose-of-schooling-imagination-and-creativity/

Creative Teaching

Let me say a few words about creativity. I’ve written a lot about this theme in other publications.
Rather than test your patience here with repetition of those ideas, let me refer you to them if
you have a special interest. In Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, I look in some detail
at the nature of creativity and how it relates to the idea of intelligence in the arts, the sciences,
and other areas of human achievement. In 1997, I was asked by the U.K. government to convene
a national commission to advise on how creativity can be developed throughout the school
system from ages five through eighteen. That group brought together scientists, artists,
educators, and business leaders in a common mission to explain the nature and critical
importance of creativity in education. Our report, All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture
and Education, set our detailed proposals for how to make this happen in practice and was
addressed to people working at all levels of education, from schools to government.

It’s sometimes said that creativity cannot be defined. I think it can. Here’s my definition, based
on the work of the All Our Futures group: Creativity is the process of having original ideas
that have value.

There are two other concepts to keep in mind: imagination and innovation. Imagination is the
root of creativity. It is the ability to bring to mind things that aren’t present to our senses.

How Emotional Connections Can Trigger Creativity and Learning

Creativity is putting your imagination to work. It is applied imagination. Innovation is putting
new ideas into practice. There are various myths about creativity. One is that only special people
are creative, another is that creativity is only about the arts, a third is that creativity cannot be
taught, and a fourth is that it’s all to do with uninhibited “self-expression.”

None of these is true. Creativity draws from many powers that we all have by virtue of being
human. Creativity is possible in all areas of human life, in science, the arts, mathematics,
technology, cuisine, teaching, politics, business, you name it. And like many human capacities,
our creative powers can be cultivated and refined. Doing that involves an increasing mastery of
skills, knowledge, and ideas.

Creativity is about fresh thinking. It doesn’t have to be new to the whole of humanity—
though that’s always a bonus— but certainly to the person whose work it is. Creativity also
involves making critical judgments about whether what you’re working on is any good, be it a
theorem, a design, or a poem. Creative work 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. Being creative is not just about having off-the-wall ideas and letting your imagination
run free. It may involve all of that, but it also involves refining, testing, and focusing what you’re
doing. It’s about original thinking on the part of the individual, and it’s also about judging
critically whether the work in process is taking the right shape and is worthwhile, at least for the
person producing it.

Creativity is not the opposite of discipline and control. On the contrary, creativity in any field
may involve deep factual knowledge and high levels of practical skill. Cultivating creativity is
one of the most interesting challenges for any teacher. It involves understanding the real
dynamics of creative work.

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. Many people have been put off
by mathematics for life by endless rote tasks that did nothing to inspire them with the beauty of
numbers. Many have spent years grudgingly practicing scales for music examinations only to
abandon the instrument altogether once they’ve made the grade. 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. You’ll find evidence of this process in great teaching in
every discipline from football to chemistry.

https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/40217/sir-ken-robinson-creativity-is-in-everything-especially-teaching

OTHER REFERENCES:

http://sirkenrobinson.com/pdf/allourfutures.pdf

https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/opinion/2016/08/08/developing-culture-
imagination/87706710/

https://psychcentral.com/news/2015/01/28/culture-influences-creativity/80494.html

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-conscious/201807/what-is-the-relationship-
between-creativity-and-culture

https://www.mei.edu/publications/cultural-creativity-catalyst-social-development

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259869351_Imagination_and_Education