Creative people think of things not talked about: Gardner

Ninety-nine per cent of education policymakers in the world think that creativity is about solving a problem or finding the correct answer.

But that is a skewed understanding of the phenomenon, globally renowned development psychologist Howard Gardner said.

“Much confusion prevails about what is creativity. People can be creative in every field and chore, however trivial that might be,” Gardner said in his public talk on “Creativity and genius/good work” at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) on Friday.

Dr Gardner, whose theory of multiple intelligences in 1983 changed the way intelligence was understood, thinks it impossible to compare various creative people.

“Einstein was one of the most creative people ever. And so was T S Eliot. But we can’t say Einstein was more creative than Eliot, or vice versa,” Gardner pointed out.

Put simply, it is difficult to judge the creativity of two people hailing from different fields or disciplines or domains.

Einstein and Eliot were among the seven creative people Gardner had studied. Later, he published a book “Creating Minds” on his findings. The others were Pablo Picasso, Martha Graham, Sigmund Freud, Igor Stravinsky and Mahatma Gandhi.

“None of these seven people grew up in big cities, but they did migrate to them later. And none of them was very social,” is what Gardner found out. 

The audience, comprising mostly research scholars, students, school owners and corporate heads, burst into laughter when Dr Gardner remarked: “(But) most people don’t want to be creative.”

So what exactly is creativity? According to the psychologist, creative people think about things nobody has talked about.

“The more time you spend in something nobody is talking about, the more you start probing it. Creativity is about emotions. It’s about throwing yourself in something, (other) people are giving answers wrong of,” Gardner explained.

“We say a person is gifted if he is better than the people of his age or times. A person can be gifted in so many ways,” he said. And which is the single attribute that all creative people possess? “All of them have the large capacity to be alone,” he said.

Gardner also dwelt on the conventional education system, especially in India. “Education is not about getting the right answers. Sorry to say, but teachers in most non-elite schools in India think it is,” he said.

Indian teachers, Gardner continued, would do well to emulate their American peers who “spend a lot of time on probing the wrong answers given by their students.”

“Kids would have a very good rationale behind the wrong answers they give. Often, they would come up with right ones without any clue,” Gardner added. Hence, teachers should not dismiss the wrong answers.

The same situation was there in China earlier. In that country, there was too much focus on discipline and getting something right. “It’s important that we create an atmosphere in which it is OK to ask new questions and make mistakes,” Gardner wished.

Gardner has coined three concepts to describe the attitude towards creativity. These are: reflecting, leveraging, and framing.

Reflecting refers to a person spending a lot of time on what they are trying to do.

Leveraging means knowing the goal and pushing for it.

And framing is what happens when things don’t work and one figures out what they can learn to ensure they get right next time.

Book on Gandhi

Guess which book Gardner recommended to students of Harvard University?

Shakespeare? No. It was Gandhi’s “The story of my experiments with truth”.

“The book may not be particularly a well-written one in English, and also not particularly a well-organised one. But it is important,” he said.

‘Huge disparity in Indian education system’

Dr Howard Gardner, renowned development psychologist who is hailed as one of the most influential educators in the world, is of the view that India should follow the education system of Finland or Singapore, rather than that of the United States of America.

Gardner, who was in Bangalore on Friday as part of his India Tour 2012, thinks that the education system in Singapore and Finland caters to all income groups, unlike the Indian set-up wherein a “huge disparity” exists between those who study at elite institutes or abroad, and those with meagre resources.

The psychologist appeared sceptical of any profession being favoured over others. He was replying to a question on the situation in India where too many students opt for engineering. “Who knows what is going to be needed in the next 25 years,” he asked.

According to Gardner, schools in the US and India should be wary of preparing the students for vocation. Vocations should do that themselves. Instead, schools should prepare them to understand arts, science, etc, better. The point of developing intelligence is to become a competent human being.

Gardner’s psychologist-wife Ellen Winner said there was no one-to-one mapping between children’s intelligence and profession. “It helps to know what you are strong at, but you can choose what you want to focus on.”Gardner disagreed with the notion in India that caste or creed played a role in people’s intelligence.