Robi Kroflič, PhD, Senior Lecturer
CAN CREATIVITY BE CULTIVATED THROUGH AUTHORITY?(draft version)
(For symposium Quality Education and Creativity, Pula, 14–16 June 2001)
Abstract:
The author begins with the Kantian definition of creativity as freedom of the spirit able to ask essential existential questions and take due responsibility for the answers at which it arrives (Passmore). The definition originates in the paradigm of man as an autonomous being – a paradigm increasingly often contrasted with the idea of the child’s spontaneous creativity which education effectively suppresses. I nevertheless believe that my argument can be successful, since certain analyses of puer aeternus show a link with outbursts of creative imagination particularly in the field of art, which may, however, be accompanied by narcissism and covert authoritarianism. Other problems connected with permissive educational concepts include the incapability of encouraging “healthy” internal motivation to invest effort into creative activity and the impossibility of the transference of the spontaneity of family education into institutional environments. Education for creativity must therefore be based on clear authority which encourages/motivates the child to develop the necessary cognitive abilities and willingness to empathise with the outside world, as well as responsibly seek solutions to ethical dilemmas. It also entails a reorientation from the concept of education as reproduction of traditions to one of education as promotion of the development of personality potentials necessary for creative processes.
Keywords:
Creativity, authority, autonomy, spontaneity, permissive education, puer aeternus, pathological Narcissism.
When we consider education that encourages the development of the child’s ability to solve existential problems creatively and responsibly, we face one of the toughest issues in education theory, most explicitly formulated by I. Kant as follows:
“One of the greatest problems of education is how to reconcile submission to the coercive law with the capability to exercise our freedom… How do I cultivate freedom through coercion?”
(Kant 1988, p. 157)
Since education is always paradigmatic and agogic and therefore always connected with coercion, it is relatively easy to see it as mere reproduction of existing knowledge, patterns of thought, values, views and (moral) habits, and much more difficult to see it as an activity which, while indeed assisting children to control their thought patterns (paradigms) and instructing them to develop basic life orientations (agogicity), also cultivates their potentials to think independently and creatively. It is hardly surprising that many distinguished sceptics saw it primarily as a tool used by adults to inoculate into children a bulk of (un)necessary knowledge, unreflected customs and illusions, and, as S. Freud sarcastically wrote in Civilization and Its Discontents, that “education is behaving as though one were to equip people starting on a Polar expedition with summer clothing and maps of the Italian Lakes.” (Freud 1979, p. 344-345); in The Future of an Illusion he added: “Think of the depressing contrast between the radiant intelligence of a healthy child and the feeble intellectual powers of the average adult.” (Quoted from Millot 1983, p. 184)
Education theory provides two possible solutions to the conflict between the coercive character of education and its task – to form a freely thinking human; they are related to two different conceptions of creativity. According to the first, creativity emerges from the child’s innate imagination and inquisitiveness, and will develop spontaneously if we do not restrain it at an early age with out demands and matrices but rather encourage the child’s independent activity. According to the second, children will develop into autonomous and creative persons only if they successfully resist the dictate of the biologically based pleasure principle and choose the difficult task of independent thinking instead of embracing the pleasure of following external authorities; this can only be achieved through the pressure of education aiming at the disciplining of the will (the motivation to use the mind freely).
This basic conflict within the twentieth-century pedagogy – between the permissive and repressive models of education – is therefore related not only to the general attitudes to the use of permissive or repressive methods and devices, but also to the attitude to the possibility of encouraging the development of creative potentials.
My point of departure is the definition of creativity as freedom of the spirit able to ask the essential existential questions and take due responsibility for the answers at which it arrives. Of the psychologists interested in the phenomenon of creativity, this dimension was best expressed by E. Hilgard, who wrote that “…creativity is mainly about discovery, that is, addressing, opening problems, not about their solving… The very addressing of a problem often indicates its solution. Thousands of solutions, inventions and discoveries would still be closed and unknown, had not there been creative minds who asked the relevant questions.” (Hilgard, Creativity and Problem Solving, Anderson (ed.), Creativity and Its Cultivation, New York 1959; quoted from Trstenjak 1981, p. 29) According to A. Einstein, putting a new question clearing the path to new discoveries takes a certain degree of naivety, that is, a sense of spontaneity, ingenuity and freedom from conventionality and settledness, since it is precisely “…intolerance to old laws that brings about the discovery of the new ones” (ibid.). The freedom of thought was described by psychologists as a form of divergent thought (Guilford) or as contact with one’s pre-focal (unconscious) thoughts (Thurstone), which affects the whole personality and its value system (R. B. Catel), since a creative personality must be able to reject and overcome previous experiences (N.E.Golovin) (ibid. p. 26–68). The relationship between cognitive abilities and motivational factors enabling the rejection of the existing thought patterns must be particularly emphasised if we are to believe that adults with their educational authority have an important influence on the development of the child’s creativity. M. Pergar-Kuščer, for example, found a statistically significant link between the teacher’s creativity and certain personality traits (sociability, daring, gaiety, class loyalty, discipline, emotional stability, down-to-earth attitude) on one hand and the development of the pupils’ creativity on the other (Pergar-Kuščer 1994, p. 256-263).
The paradox of the link between the development of creativity (conceived as freedom of the spirit) and educational authority therefore cannot be avoided even in psychological research. Moreover, the original contradiction of the project “Education for Freedom of the Spirit” seems to be even more serious if we consider the two apparently irreconcilable ideas which emerge as preconditions for free and creative thinking:
- creativity is not possible without a certain spontaneity, freedom of thought;
- creativity develops on the basis of the teacher’s authority and the child’s motivation to reject the existing patterns of thought, evaluation, etc., which is an essential trait of an autonomous personality.
The author of the second idea and its education model, based on the concept of autonomy, is I. Kant. It is interesting that the whole life project of Kant’s philosophy can be linked to the issue of defining man as a free being capable of creating new ideas (pure reason), of imagination (judgment) and practical decision (practical reason). Kant is of course aware that man is primarily a natural being subject to natural laws (causality) capable of growth in his natural spontaneity to reach a certain level of well-being in which his needs are fulfilled relatively without restriction; but according to Kant, this biological basis is not where we should expect to find human freedom and creativity. These properties can only become real in the area of human reason, which obeys different principles of causality and order. It is characteristic of reason that it can create a priori ideas, as well as take practical decisions which are completely free from the dictate of the momentary need or social pressure. According to Kant, this is possible because in the world of reason the laws of natural causality do not apply; they are replaced by the capability to create new ideas spontaneously.
Kant therefore sees the freedom of the mind in its pure positive form as spontaneous production of new ideas. But he never forgets that man is not only an intelligible being, but also a natural (biological) one, which puts the practical possibility of the free mind in a completely different existential perspective. The split between the biological and spiritual natures brings spontaneous decision-making into the vicinity of the pleasure principle, the fulfilment of our needs, which runs contrary to the idea of free use of one’s reason. This is true particularly in juveniles, who depend on their parents, teachers, priests and other important others and at the same time lack the fully developed structures of reason to direct their will and motivation to act. The pleasure principle drives them to submit themselves to the authority of the important others and to the dictate of biological needs. That is why Kant in his Answer to A Question: What Is the Enlightenment says that we should not blame man’s immaturity on his lack of reason, but rather on his lack of will (Kant 1987, p. 9); he is convinced that an enlightened pedagogy must on one hand train the child’s reason and on the other discipline and strengthen his will (for a more detailed presentation of Kant’s philosophy and pedagogy see Kroflič 1997, pp. 161-203).
J. Passmore links Kant’s conception of man as split between the biologically determined and the free rational natures with the concept of the emerging capability of critical thinking, which can also be described as creative and responsible thinking. He says that critical thinking cannot be defined as a “mental skill”, but rather as a “character trait”. Accordingly, he differentiates three levels of critical thinking: the level of critical competence, which is identical with mental skill; the level of critical spirit,which typically makes possible critical judgment of given situations and decisions; and the level of creative critical thinking, which combines the abilities to maintain critical distance and to creatively transcend the existing solutions (Passmore 1975, On Teaching to be Critical, summarised from Fenstermacher 1992, pp. 96-97). According to Passmore, the development through these levels is connected with different dimensions of teaching. Whereas the training of mental skills is sufficient to reach the first level of critical competence, the teacher who wants to achieve higher levels must “develop the pupils’ enthusiasm for responsible participation in critical discussions” (ibid., p. 97).
It is interesting that this view of human nature was embraced by all great Enlightenment thinkers, and later by most scientists in the period of separation of the arts and social sciences. Even, J.J.Rousseau, the great critic of disciplining as the basic task of education, did not oppose Kant’s statement that children are inclined to imitate adults and that we should, with a careful control the educational environment, restrict the child’s excessive desires and needs – not by disciplinary measures and punishment, but by a careful manipulation of the natural conditions to make the child feel the resistance of the situation and give up his momentary needs: if he wishes to play outside naked in winter, he will be cold and will want to dress himself voluntarily… Even more interesting for us is the attitude of psychoanalysis to the child’s spontaneous play. The analysts – as followers of the Kantian concept of man – do not see in it as much a proof of the child’s boundless creativity as a symbolic “remedy” for the momentary tensions and conflicts arising from his contradictory nature: let us just remember the many symbolic games in which the child compensates for failed separation processes (the child, for example, hides under a sheet, meaning that he was swallowed by a whale, and then attempts to crawl out – i.e. escape from the whale’s stomach).
Different conceptions of education assisting the development of the child’s creative potentials are therefore not so much a result of different key assumptions regarding their developmental nature. And if I began by quoting Freud’s thought of the difference between the “radiant intelligence of a healthy child” and “the feeble intellectual powers of the average adult”, I must emphasise here that in spite of his conviction that most neuroses result from overly repressive education, Freud did not embrace the illusion of “friendly repression-free education” and the “spontaneous development of the child’s creativity”. There are at least two reasons for this.
The first is of theoretical nature. Freud is convinced that man as a cultural being simply needs a certain degree of pressure, frustration, since he must learn to resist the destructive contradictory pressure of his drives; therefore the prohibition of incest is the first act of every culture, and realistic demands for the sublimation of one’s needs are the “engine” of education: “… if we took away the family, this germ of culture, it is impossible to foresee what new paths the development of culture would take; but we can be certain that the indestructible characteristic of the human nature (the split of the drives between eros and thanatos, note by R. K.) would follow him there.« (Freud 1979, p. 321) According to Freud, education must therefore be moderately repressive for the individual to learn to control the destructive dictate of his own drives, which on one hand force him to seek the protection of the authority of important adults (the tendency of eros or libido) and on the other encourage distancing, resistance and search for one’s own identity (the tendency of thanatos or aggression).
Freud wrote about the second reason in Civilisation and Its Discontents; he found it “empirically”, that is, in the clinical practice of the time which in rare cases confirmed his theoretical surmises: “The two main types of pathogenic methods of upbringing – overstrictness and spoiling – have been accurately assessed by Franz Alexander. The unduly lenient and indulgent father is the cause of children’s forming an over-severe superego, because, under the impression of the love that they receive, they have no other outlet for their aggressiveness but turning it inwards.” (Ibid., pp. 339-340)
To what can we therefore attribute the twentieth century boom of the philosophies of spontaneous development of the child’s creativity in various orientations of reform pedagogy and rejection of the repressive, frustrating education allegedly suppressing the child’s development of creative potentials? In my opinion, the reform movement in pedagogy is primarily a response to the prevailing repressive and rigidly repetitive pedagogy at the turn of the century, characterised by a persevering exorcist view of education as correction of the child’s sinful nature and as a transfer of the pre-made corpus of knowledge and values from the older to the younger generation – typical of the so-called cultural transmission model of education. To avoid this repressive view of the inherently sinful nature of the child, which can be seen in the attempts to suppress his/her sexual development and in teaching methods based on the repetition of knowledge and values utterly disregarding the development of the child’s independent mental practices and the training of cognitive structures, the alternative educationalists advocated:
- as for discipline, a more relaxed education based on positive emotions (the pedagogical eros) and relaxed educational authority (e.g. A. S. Neill);
- as for teaching methods, education emphasising the child’s free activity, learning through play and the expression of emotions through art (e.g. the representatives of the Arbeitsschule, M. Montessorri, R. Steiner, L. Malaguzzi).
Although reservations about free education appeared as early as in the thirties (F. Alexander, A. Aichorn, S. Freud), individual reform projects aimed at an unhindered development of the child’s spontaneous creativity were undoubtedly successful to a certain extent. Jung’s student M. L. von Franz in her work Puer aeternus analysed the biographies of certain distinguished artists of the beginning of the twentieth century (with the focus on Saint-Exupéry – the author of The Little Prince) and showed convincingly that narcissist personalities (and pathological narcissism is believed to be the prevailing personality type produced by the permissive educational practice of the twentieth century) develop a high level of artistic creativity; Malaguzzi’s Reggio Emilia project was also exceptionally successful in the development of artistic creativity in pre-school children.
In addition to the pathology typical of the “eternal youth” personality type (her descriptions are comparable to the symptoms of pathological narcissism described by O. Kernberg in his theory of object relationships), von Franz also stressed certain positive traits which may develop in such personality: wittiness, unconventionality, boyish charm and lovingly cultivated imagination (von Franz 1988, pp. 9-10); she noted that “… the tendency to resort to surprisingly childish pleasures is not only a symptom of the problem of puer aeternus, but is also part of a creative personality. Creativity requires a great deal of sincerity, freedom of internal impulses and spontaneity… The inclination to playfulness is something perfectly natural and ingenuous in most artists and other creative people. For them, play is a great relaxation and a way to recover after a great and exhausting creative effort. Therefore this trait of Saint-Exupéry’s personality cannot be attributed only to his nature as puer aeternus, but perhaps also to the fact that he was an artist.” (Ibid., p. 27)
On one hand, the eternal youth is typically characterised by the mother complex, which can lead to asocial individualism (ibid., p. 7) and a marked lack of self-control – which is a necessary component of the creative process (“Every work, even creative work, contains a degree of tedious routine that a puer aeternus shuns, saying ‘this is not it’.” /Ibid., p. 11/). On the other hand, his spontaneous imaginative creation displays something which may further complicate our consideration of the preconditions for the development of creativity. In his essay The Psychology of the Child Archetype, C. G. Jung wrote: “…the child symbolises the pre-conscious and super-conscious essences of man. His pre-conscious essence is the unconscious state of the earliest childhood; his super-conscious essence is the analogous anticipation of an afterlife. This idea expresses the all-embracing nature of the psychic whole… The ‘eternal youth’ in man is an indescribable experience, a discord, hindrance and divine exclusive right… the immeasurable which determines the highest worthiness or unworthiness of the personality.« (Ibid., p. 53)