Achieving Extraordinary Ends: An Essay on Creativity

CREATIVITY HAS become a popular slogan in contemporary education and society. We are urged continually to be creative with respect to all our endeavours - to be creative writers, creative cooks, creative teachers, creative thinkers, creative lovers. Ascribing creativity has become one of the principal means of praising, approving, and commending. Yet in the process of becoming a universal term of positive evaluation, the concept of creativity has tended to lose its connection with its origins. We have forgotten that creativity has to do with creating, that it is connected with great achievements and quality productions. And as a consequence of this lapse of memory, most attempts to foster creativity in educational practice have been misleading at best and dangerous at worst. We have come to settle for the encouragement of certain personality traits at the expense of the encouragement of significant achievement - and this in the name of creativity. If we are not clear about what is meant by creativity, we may end up sacrificing creativity precisely in the process of trying to foster it. This book is an attempt to be clear about creativity. The Context For the poet is an airy thing, a winged and a holy thing; and he cannot make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his senses and no mind is left in him. l Plato If creativity and its growth are to be viewed scientifically, creativity must be defined in a way that permits objective observation and measurement . . .