What is Creative Thinking?

Creative Thinking for me is perhaps even more important than Critical Thinking, although perhaps that's something akin to saying that education is preferable to common sense, sure you can get a job without common sense (although you'll annoy all of your work colleagues a great deal), but you'll probably get rundown the next time you cross the street.  In my opinion (which doesn't count for much I'll admit) creative thinking is the primary skill that allows entrepreneurs to do what they do, sure they have critical thinking in spades, they need to take everything they've learned and experienced throughout their lives, to solve the problems that allow them to capitalise on the next big thing.  But it's the creative thinking that separates the unique ideas from the "me too" ideas.

If you're not clear on how critical and creative thinking differ from each other, here's a quick reminder from University of Michigan:

Critical Thinking is the process we use to reflect on assess and judge the assumption underlying our own and others ideas and efforts. 

Identifying and challenging assumptions.Recognizing the importance of context.Imagining and exploring alternatives.Developing reflective skepticism. 

Creative thinking is the process we use to develop ideas that are unique, useful and worthy of further elaboration

Creative Thinkers:
Consider rejecting standardized formats for problem solving.
Have an interest in a wide range of related and divergent fields.
Take multiple perspectives on a problem.
Use trial-and-error methods in their experimentation.
Have a future orientation.
Have self-confidence and trust in their own judgment.

For me these two concepts seem to go together very well, and have a very close relationship, for me, Critical Thinking is about building ourselves a judgement methodology that we can have self-confidence in, and to be objectively self-critical.  Ot might also be tempting to try and nail down the order of the process that we use, for example to say that Creative Thinking comes first followed by Critical Thinking, but it's exactly preconceptions like these that we tend to use that box us in.  The truth is that that either could come first.  Take a look at the lists above, for my own personal set of standards, the above skills, are certainly skills I'd like to see my own kids develop, but teaching to test, however you'd like to look at it, doesn't have the scope to allow kids to explore alternatives, or encourage multiple perspectives on a problem in free form fashion, to indulge a kids natural curiosity and wonderment about the world.

Linchpin by Seth Godin

Lots has been written about Seth Godin, and much has been written by him; some people love what he has to say, others have a favourite book and find his other works "very similar".   Whether you love him or not, one of the key principles in his books is creative thinking, perhaps more colloquially refered to as "thinking outside of the box".  Many of the ideas he presents are controversial, although less so more recently; and one of my favourite topics is when he talks about schools and universities as they exist today being rooted in the premise that we need to create lots of little cogs that make the big machine work as whole.

Here's an excerpt from the book (reproduced with permission, thanks Seth),

Does School Work?
If I drill and practice and grade and reward you for years on doing math with fractions, what are the chances that you’ll learn fractions? School does a great job of teaching students to do what we set out to teach them. It works. The problem is that what we’re teaching is the wrong stuff.
Here’s what we’re teaching kids to do (with various levels of success):
Fit in
Follow instructions
Use #2 pencils
Take good notes
Show up every day
Cram for tests and don’t miss deadlines
Have good handwriting
Punctuate
Buy the things the other kids are buying
Don’t ask questions
Don’t challenge authority
Do the minimum amount required so you’ll have time to work on another subject
Get into college
Have a good résumé
Don’t fail
Don’t say anything that might embarrass you
Be passably good at sports, or perhaps extremely good at being a quarterback
Participate in a large number of extracurricular activities
Be a generalist
Try not to have the other kids talk about you
Once you learn a topic, move on 

Now, the key questions:
Which of these attributes are the keys to being indispensable?
Are we building the sort of people our society needs?
The problem doesn’t lie with the great teachers. Great teachers strive to create linchpins. The problem lies with the system that punishes artists and rewards bureaucrats instead.
Here’s what Woodrow Wilson said about public education:

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

After retaining brutal Pinkerton men, trainloads of strikebreakers, and even the National Guard to violently put down strikes, Andrew Carnegie decided that the answer to worker unrest was a limited amount of education. “Just see, wherever we peer into the first tiny springs of the national life, how this true panacea for all the ills of the body politic bubbles forth—education, education, education.”
The model is simple. Capitalists need compliant workers, workers who will be productive and willing to work for less than the value that their productivity creates. The gap between what they are paid and what the capitalist receives is profit.
The best way to increase profit was to increase both the productivity and the compliance of factory workers. And as Carnegie saw, the best way to do that was to build a huge educational-industrial complex designed to teach workers just enough to get them to cooperate.
It’s not an accident that school is like a job, not an accident that there are supervisors and rules and tests and quality control. You do well, you get another job (the next grade), and continue to do well and you get a real job. Do poorly, don’t fit in, rebel—and you are kicked out of the system.

Seth's book proposes treating our endeavours, work, jobs as art, to work creatively, and encourages creative thinking to make your work, more inspired, more fulfilling, not just for yourself, but to affect those around you too; to be inspired and be inspiring to others. To think creatively about what you do, see it objectively and ask yourself is this the best way to approach the situation or is the fundamental approach flawed due to dogma, staid, simply because "we've always done it this way".  As the Buddhists say, "there is no good work or bad work, there is only work; and our prejudices, biases and thoughts colour it so". Seth challenges you to challenge yourself.  Buy a copy, and challenge your own status quo; decide for yourself if you want your kids growing up to be Linchpins, or Cogs?

Teach to Test

I have some very strong views about education and teaching.  First off, I think it's important to point out that I'm not an education professional; I a parent with school aged kids first and foremost. Secondly I'm a recent import to the USA, I was educated in the UK originally, so I probably have a different set of benchmarks to work within than perhaps other parents in a similar situation to me.  This should prove to be an excellent starting point for professional educators to question my validity of my personal opinions on the subject.

I called this blog "Teach to Test" because it's one of the frustrations I currently experience as a parent and a great example of many of the things that are wrong with education today.   I don't believe the title is as important as the content, so I'm not that concerned about it.

When I was looking at schools to teach my children, one of the most important things for me, was that they taught critical thinking and creative thinking, both of these things are extremely important to me. In my professional life I've found that having the ability to create mental models, apply those models to different situations and thereby solve the problems has proven to be key in some of the most successful people I've met (and I've met a lot).  Success doesn't mean monetary success, although admittedly many of the successful people I've met have also been wealthy; what I actually mean is becoming extremely adept at anything you choose to pursue, and to stand out amongst others in the same field.   Creativity plays a huge role in this.

My disappointment is that despite searching extensively and finding a school for my kids which said all of the right things and made all of the right noises, I find after placement that they still teach to test, and testing is the most important thing for them.  Now I don't agree with this, but I do understand why they do it.  Obviously the better the grades that are achieved by the school, the better the quality of students they attract, they become "the school to get your kids into" because they're the best test scores in town, and with that recognition (I'm assuming) it becomes easier to secure better teachers and more budget, etc.  I'd opine that the knock-on effects are manifold.

All of this is wonderful, assuming you want your little one to grow up being able to pass tests, and regurgitate information on queue, to go on and become a 4.0 student with awesome test scores that is potentially useless to future employers.  For them to go to a great university and gain an awesome degree packed full of information they'll never use, and carry a student debt for a large chunk of their adult lives.  To be a carbon copy of their parents, perhaps?

I understand that this is a very contentious and inflammatory remark and will ruffle many feathers. That's kind of what I'm hoping for, since nobody ever paid a second thought to a point of view that they agreed with, they simply nod politely and go on their merry way.  I have many opinions (and that's exactly what they are, my opinions), that I will assert here, and my hope is to, maybe, make people think and challenge their comfortable cotton-wool-wrapped-reality with some things that maybe they don't agree with.

You be the judge.  Watch this space.