the ghost of creativity in art education

National Art Education Association

The Ghost of Creativity in Art EducationAuthor(s): Robin R. AlexanderSource: Art Education, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Jul., 1981), pp. 28-30Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192549 .

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The Ghost of

Creativity in

Art Education

"The Overuse of the Term Creativity Lies In the Texture of Our Lives."9

Robin R. Alexander

Creativity is the ghost that haunts art education. Why call creativity

a ghost? Ghosts come back to haunt us, not just at night but during the day. Ghosts walk in uncomfortable rest- lessness, accompanied by squeaks and clanks and other mysterious sounds. They cause chairs to move by themselves. What does that have to do with art education? Creativity seems never at rest. Creativity is sur- rounded by mystery. Like a ghost, it is not easily banished. Although you may not believe in it, many potential classroom teachers believe firmly in the ghost of creativity.

I first noticed the ghost five years ago in an elementary art education

class. I asked the students about the role that teachers play in the art education of children. About three fourths of them responded "fostering creativity in or through art education." Art education for most of those pre-service classroom teachers centered not on what could be taught in art education but on how children's creativity could be enhanced through art. The perspective I strive to engender-the compe- tent, sure, skill-learning, skill-teaching teacher in art education-was foreign to these believers in the ghost of creativity. In trying to find the form of the ghost of creativity, I sur- veyed six classes of future classroom teachers in art education over a three-year period in three states. In written questionnaires most of the teachers-to-be included creativity as a goal. I tape recorded lengthy classroom discussions on art education and creativity. The elementary teachers-to-be had no consistent definition but had instead a miscellaneous set of images and rough ideas about creativ-

Art Education July 1981

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ity. A variety of assumptions emerged:

1) that children are more creative than adults,

2) that schools systematically attempt to squelch children's creativity,

3) that all children have creativity, 4) that creativity can be learned, 5) that art skills hinder creativity, 6) that children usually lose much

of their creativity by the age of 11 or 12

7) that creativity in art education is transferable to other subjects,

8) that it is bad to interfere with children's creativity,

9) that creativity is good. These beliefs constitute the "ghost." Let's examine them one by one:

1) Children are more creative than adults. The untainted child, the infant savage, is a nice myth. It is society that corrupts, but it is also society that nurtures. Adults point to children's creativity because most children pro- duce art work that looks "creative," i.e. fresh and imaginative. However, what we take for creativity may only be the result of different levels of maturation. Their works of art often acquire a whimsy because of an unconcern that is absent in adult art work. Adults attempt different things in their art work, and adult creativity attempts to break bounds that children do not realize exist. Shapiro (1975) points to differences in adult and child creativity. The point is that children's creativity probably is qual- itatively different from that of adults. The two cannot be compared. It is not a case of more or less.

2) Schools systematically attempt to squelch children's creativity, especially in art. Dudek (1976) reminds us that squelching creativity is a charge easily made about schools. Rather, schools have other goals than fostering creativity. Right now the "back to basics" issue holds us in its clutches; five years ago accountabil- ity and behavioral objectives made up the tail that wagged the dog. The climate of the schools must be con- sidered in general terms before we accuse schools of squelching creativity. Sidestepping or ignoring is more to the point. Art also is part of the

ecology of the school. Concerns of art educators focus on maintaining art in the face of declining enroll- ments and budget cuts. Justifying art as a basic subject, examining art as a symbol system, and understanding how children "read" visual images are the concerns of many art educators. Squelching is not the issue at hand.

3) All children have creativity. There are two schools of thought regarding the universality of creativity. One, the elitist view, originated in the Romantic period of the 19th century and was perpetuated by the Freudian concept of creativity. Those who hold this view believe that creativity is relatively rare, is related to our personality and sexual development, and therefore cannot be taught. A competing view grew out of the Armed Forces' interest in creativity during World II. The belief is that everyone has creativity (or at least some of it), that creativity can be tested, and that it can be taught or at least encouraged. Maslow (1954), and Torrance (1962, 1965) are the psy- chologists most often cited in connec- tion with this egalitarian view. Unfor- tunately, there seems no middle stance between these two positions.

4) Creativity can be taught and learned. As a corollary to the view that all children have creativity, many elementary teachers believe creativity can be taught and learned. Many sub- scribe to Learning: The Magazine for Creative Teaching. Although future classroom teachers have only vague ideas about what creativity is, they are convinced that it can be taught in their classroom, particularly in art sessions, and learned by their students. Another opinion is offered by Ritson and Smith (1975), who say that creativity cannot be taught; only that situations can be arranged which encourage its growth.

5) Art skills hinder creativity. A "do-what-I-say, not-what-I-do" problem exists here. Future classroom teachers, often frustrated by their own low level of competence in art, are hungry to learn skills which give them more confidence in teaching art to children. Yet many deny those same skills to children because

they feel children need to be relaxed and have fun in art class. Such teachers believe that art is the only oppor- tunity for non-cognitive or non-academic activity during the school day; I would argue, however, that art is both cognitive and academic. It also may be that children might be ready for skills which the elementary teacher has not yet been able to develop so that teachers experience a real bind in this situation.

6) Children usually lose much of their creativity by the age of 11-12. Children's artistic styles change due to maturation. Realistic, detailed por- trayal of the world replaces the whimsy of different sizes and unlikely colors in the same picture plane. Piagetian stages might account for these changes. Many teachers interpret this as a loss of creativity rather than a change in conceptual development that comes with age and parallels changes in other thinking systems as well.

7) Creativity in art education is transferable to other subjects. Art educators of the late 1950's and early 1960's often stated that creativity in art fostered creativity in other subjects. This proposition is largely untested. It is similar to the argument that learning Latin improves spelling in English. Furthermore, research in creativity suggests only that creativity in art leads to more creativity in art, not necessarily other subjects. Even in art, Eisner (1962) found that the correlation between creativity in sculpture and painting was low. We presume from that evidence that the amount of transfer of creativity across subject matters is negligible.

8) It is bad to interfere with children's creativity. According to this assumption the adult world has little to offer the child's, especially in art. Lowenfeld and Brittain (1955, 1964, 1970, 1976) warn against interfering with children's creativity or their art. Few teachers-to-be encounter the works of Lowenfeld before art education classes, but the pervasiveness of this caution now extends to child psy- chology books. Teachers-to-be assume that children have a blank slate of visual images and that adult interference with children's images

Art Education July 1981 29 This content downloaded from 185.44.77.128 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 22:11:50 PM

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will stunt their intellectual and artistic growth forever. That the infant savage has been corrupted by Ses- ame Street since eighteen months and is bombarded daily by images is ignored. Pre-service teachers may fail to realize that abdicating all authority in art education leaves the door open for stereotyped images from comic books and coloring books. If a teacher assumes no interference with children's creativity, the next step is non-intervention of any kind; the teacher need not provide motivation, make suggestions, or teach skills. This is a comforting assumption for many elementary teachers; it leads to a logical justification for a "hands off, distribute materials, and don't actively teach art" policy.

9) Creativity is good. This assumption is fairly circular, but it proceeds something like this: "I am not a very creative person myself, but I know I would be better off if I had a few more creative bones in my body because creativity helps solve all these problems; therefore creativity must be good." The argument should be that creativity is neither bad nor good. Sure, creativity is good, but so is motherhood, a teaching job, and a full tank of gas. The search for creative solutions for everything from cake mixes to finance to prayer becomes ludicrous. Kagan (1967) puts the matter in perspective:

The last decade has developed a fetish for what was once a perfectly legitimate word, creativity. Where previous centu- ries saw fit to apply this label with some caution and in single units, our genera- tion exuberantly assigns its adjective form every day to hundreds of young people.... Since our shared premise about genius is that it is born not made, we will do anything that will allow us to retain this belief, and we often wrap a Pollyannish and semi-religious cloak around the word creativity (pp. vii-viii).

The overuse of the term creativity lies in the texture of our lives. Life is often boring, dull, and repetitive.

"Creative" solutions to problems promise hope-they offer a little relief in the humdrum, mechanistic, technological blah of existence.

The ghost of creativity is alive and well in the minds of future teachers. Some of you say "More power to them"; others may "boo" or "hiss." However, such advocacy or non- advocacy is not the point. As art educators, no matter whether or not our personal goals include creativity, we have some responsibility for helping elementary classroom teachers to clarify their assumptions about creativity. The ghost of creativity still exists in the stark daylight of art education in the 1980's.

Robin R. Alexander is assistant pro- fessor of art education at the Univer- sity of Texas at Austin.

References Stephanie Dudek, "Teachers Stif-

fle Children's Creativity: A Charge Too Easily Made," Learning, Vol. 4, August 1976.

Elliot W. Eisner, "The Develop- ment and Use of a Typology of Cre- ative Behaviour in the Visual Arts," Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1962, Dissertations Abstracts Interna- tional, Vol. X, 1962, p. 82.

Jerome Kagan, Creativity and Learning, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1967.

Viktor Lowenfeld and W. Lambert Brittain, Creative and Mental Growth, New York: MacMillan & Co., 1955, 1964, 1970, 1976.

Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality, New York: Harper Bros., 1954.

John E. Ritson and James A. Smith, Creative Teaching of Art in the Elementary School, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1975.

Carl R. Rogers, "Toward a Theory of Creativity," in H. A. Anderson, ed., Creativity and Its Cultivation, New York: Harper Bros., 1959.

Edna Shapiro, "Toward a Devel- opmental Perspective on the Creative Process," Journal of Aesthetic Edu- cation, Vol. 9, #4, October 1975, pp. 69-80.

E. P. Torrance, Guiding Creative Talent, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Pren- tice-Hall, 1962.

E. P. Torrance, Rewarding Cre- ative Behavior, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965.

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the ghost of creativity in art education

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