Are You Creative or Intelligent?

I’d like to start by quoting Sir Ken Robinson,

“All children start their school careers with sparkling imaginations, fertile minds, and a willingness to take risks with what they think.”

If I were to ask you to give a mark to yourselves on a scale of 1 to 10 on: (of course 10 being the highest)

1) How?Creative?are you?

And…

2) How?Intelligent?are you?

Please try this… no need to tell anyone.

How many of you gave yourself different marks for questions (1) and (2)?

What were you thinking of when you gave yourselves marks for?creativity?

What was in your mind? (yes “in” not “on” — it’s not a typo)

What were you assessing?

There are a lot of misconceptions around creativity. Many equate creativity with being artistic. That is not totally right though; creativity is a function of human intelligence. It’s the capacity for having original ideas that have value. A person can be creative at anything that involves their intelligence.

How about question number (2)? What did you have in mind when answering about?intelligence? What did you give yourselves a mark for? What did you think intelligence is?

Our education systems are rooted in a very narrow view of intelligence. They tend to equate intelligence with academic ability; the sort of ability you need to get good grades, get accepted into an Ivy League, etc.; but if all we had was?just?academic ability, most of human culture would not exist. People would not have businesses, there would be no technology, no arts, no music, no entrepreneurs, no friends, no romantic relationships, no social cohesion… I could go on!

Creativity is part of intelligence. Some describe it as the?ability to connect the resources to the challenge in order to solve the problem.

In education, we are faced with deep problems that are caused by the systems themselves; not teachers, students, parents, or professional leaders.

We have all the resources we need to genuinely enrich, improve, and transform education as long as we understand what they are. The deepest resources are human talent. Human talent is very diverse, highly dynamic, and is often hidden beneath the surface. So, perhaps we should also rethink the fundamental nature of human talent.

So, perhaps the better questions to ask moving forward would be:

1) How?are?you?creative?

2) How?are?you?intelligent?

3) How?are you?helping others discover and apply their diverse talents?

4) How?are you?connecting the resources available to the challenges of today and tomorrow?

5) How?are you?helping create, improve or develop better ends (challenges) and better means (resources)?

I guess this is something to think about.

Well folks, this was my?Verbal Breakdown, till the next one, keep it safe, keep it real, and keep it simple.

Ralph

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