Forming Creativity

A century ago, there was a man with white, frizzy hair. He liked to sprawl out on the bed, enjoying his world which he was the ‘Creator’ of it. Nothing seemed impossible in that world, and he let everything be as he conceived. On one typical day, he was wandering about in ‘his world’, dream, wildly. In the dream, he was in this marvelous spaceship. The spaceship sailed across the space at the speed of light. Swishing by billions of stars, he reached the point he couldn’t go any farther. He had reached the end of the space! Awakened by his own raptures, he drew inspiration, and eventually, set up a new milestone of human history. His name is Albert Einstein.

People who explain the importance of ‘education’ in developing creativity uses this example over and over again. They say if Einstein didn’t have understandings on ‘physics’, ‘mathematics’, ‘astronomy’ or whatsoever, he wouldn’t have been able to draw the theory of relativity. Surely, this is true. Without his brilliant understandings on science, he wouldn’t have been able to understand the theory of relativity, even. However, it just seems to me that these people are actually the one who got their creativity completely killed by ‘education’. Or they’re just too lazy to think any further.

Let’s just replace the name ‘Albert Einstein’ with ‘Steven Spielberg’ and read the first paragraph again. Even if we put another great man’s name instead of ‘Albert Einstein’, the first paragraph makes perfect sense. Steven Spielberg could have startled the world by creating a marvelous SF film with the same dream. Fryderyk Chopin could have made the greatest impromptu piano song with the same dream. Pablo Picasso could have envisioned a fantastic painting, consonant colors floating on canvas, with the same dream. All these great men have one thing in common: they were all summits in their field. When a melody, image, or scene popped up in their head, they had the ability to make those into a masterpiece. This is why we definitely need education in order to develop our creativity.

There are millions of schools in the world. There are millions of kinds of education in the world. Among those ‘millions’ of schools and education, some might be unhelpful to our creativity. Children learn how to write letters neat, how to choose the right answers in multiple-choice questions and how to memorize certain facts in public elementary school. They learn how to organize one’s essay into the ‘five-paragraph, introduction-body-conclusion’ format in middle school. They learn how to get high scores in SAT and other tests in high school. It seems like standardized public education simply kills creativity, but it really doesn’t. Public schools don’t ask us to have all same handwriting. They only ask us to memorize important concepts in the textbook. ‘Five-paragraph, introduction-body-conclusion’ format is the basic format of essay that we should learn first, and getting high scores in SAT doesn’t mean we have to have all same essay writing style. Even public schools respect creativity inside their standardized face. Needless to say, individualized learning contributes to creativity definitely. They respect our ideas even more, and raise our ability to a higher level, so that we can throw our ideas into shape.

We all have a lump of clay, and we shape our own feature in our life. We learn how to make certain shapes with clay in public schools. Then, individually, we learn how to make certain features specifically. What feature do we shape? That’s the part we have to choose. If one chooses to shape a banal figure just by using basic skills he/she learned from public education, the clay would just be a hackneyed piece. Without education, we won’t be able to shape our clay creatively. We won’t be able to feature our inspiration.

Children often amaze adults with their new, absurd (and sometimes whimsy) ideas. They view this world in their own way. But this isn’t the whole part of creativity. On the potential of creativity, we have to build up knowledge and develop our ability. This is when the potential of creativity turns into actual creativity.