Creativity and Education: Experts, Philosophers and Philosopher Artists

Creativity and Education: Experts, Philosophers and Philosopher Artists Mr Ian Munday University of Stirling Institute of Education Pathfoot Building University of Stirling STIRLING FK94LA Stirlingshire UK mundayian@yahoo. co. uk Creativity and Education: Experts, Philosophers and Philosopher Artists Introduction In this paper I discuss creativity and education by drawing a contrast between the creativity “expert”, the philosopher and the philosopher-artist.

I argue that recognised “experts” on creativity such as Sir Ken Robinson present limited, nihilistic and sometimes incoherent visions of creativity. The first part of the paper provides a “critique” of such visions. To construct such a critique I draw on a fairly “traditional” notion of what philosophy should be about, namely, a commitment to producing robust arguments, weeding out contradictions and uncovering inconsistencies. The figure of the philosopher presented here is not necessarily a “professional philosopher” or “philosopher of education”.

I make this point due to an awareness that the experts of whom I speak are unlikely to present or think of themselves as philosophers (though, interestingly, quite often they call themselves “psychologists”). Though I argue that the “philosopher” has much to say to a discussion on creativity and education, her role is limited. At this point, the philosopher artist takes the stage. The philosopher artist is harder to define and her distinguishing characteristics will hopefully emerge as this paper develops. “Experts” When I was working at a University in the East of England a number of speakers came in to talk about creativity and education.

I attended these sessions not because I had any great interest in creativity, or any particular drive to avoid the study of it, but because I?d been asked to help put together an undergraduate course called “Creativity and Thinking”. Anyway, I attended these sessions as a “creativity” virgin of sorts. I use scare quotes here because, one would assume that nobody can really be a virgin as regards creativity (without the scare quotes), unless that is one had been shoved into a cupboard immediately after birth and remained there.

Though I don?t want to describe in detail the seminars I attended, I want to ay a few things about them. Firstly, they were all delivered by psychologists – in my innocence I was somewhat surprised by this. When the speakers discussed instances of creativity taking place, the examples did not sound like anything I associated with creativity – it would not have occurred to me that building a model using a set of instructions was creative. Apparently it is. Thirdly, I felt that in a couple of cases, the presentations were extremely slick but did not really say very much. Finally, these sessions were far and away the most well attended sessions that I had been present at. It was hard to get a seat.

Some members of the audience had brought along books to be autographed. When I moved jobs, colleagues (who knew I had an “interest” in creativity) suggested that I read books by or watched youtube clips (of which there are many) of the eminent creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson. Let me introduce Robinson?s vision. Society is experiencing the infancy of a technological revolution on a par with the Industrial Revolution – things are moving at such a speed that people are getting left behind: Throughout the world, companies and organisations are trying to compete in a world of economic and technological change that is moving faster than ever.

As the axis shifts towards intellectual labour and services, they urgently need people who are creative, innovative and flexible. Too often they can?t find them. (Robinson, 2001, p. 1) People need to be creative innovative and flexible if they are not going to get swallowed up in the tsunami. Education is largely to blame for this problem – businesses are forced to put on inadequate training programmes that only touch the surface. Education is “upstream”; business is “downstream” (p. 12). Education is not sending the right kind of individuals into the workforce.

Why? Because education operates in accordance with an Enlightenment model that was suitable during the modern period, but is now redundant (p. 8). This is because education put (and still puts) too much emphasis on propositional knowledge and deductive reasoning, when what it really needs to do is emphasise creativity. The “focus” is wrong – it is “septic” (p. 1). Robinson?s solutions to these problems (at the level of education) include personalising the curriculum, getting rid of traditional disciplines and giving much more space to subjects like dance.

Some of these ideas are at least ten years old, but they are not past their sell-by-date yet – Scotland?s new Curriculum for Excellence seems to have taken most of them on board. Let us then, following what I have called a “traditional” philosophical method, look at the robustness of Robinson?s statements/arguments. Let me set this out schematically. 1. If we accept (and we might not), that education put too much emphasis on propositional knowledge and deductive reasoning, how then, did it manage to kick off an unprecedented technological revolution.

One would think that such a thing surely demands quite a lot of “creativity”. If education systems are so backward, how did this revolution come to pass in the first place? This would appear to be something of a “mystery”. 2. Robinson is rather fond of dance. In a talk for Teachers TV (http://www. teachers. tv/videos/sir-ken-robinson), he asks why mathematics is compulsory and dance is not: “we all have bodies don?t we or did I miss a meeting? ” Interestingly, other than noting that we all have bodies, Robinson does not explain why it is that dance is just as important as maths.

When trying to follow his general line, it seems that dance might allow those inclined towards dance to feel better about themselves because they have managed to find that area in which they can be creative. However, given the importance of maths to innovations in computer science and the fact that we are experiencing an “unprecedented technological revolution” his claim seems in need of justification. 3. In the “Gurus” film Robinson argues for dismantling the curriculum on the grounds that we teach children not subjects.

This just seems incoherent (presumably we have to teach the children something) and is not explained or justified in his talk or elsewhere. In Out of Our Minds he regularly suggests that the most creative advances in all manner of areas come from inter-disciplinary collaboration, but how this relates to schooling is unclear. Moreover, when discussing creativity, Robinson argues that creativity can only take place within a medium. He then goes on to include uncritical sections on “generic creativity” and “domain specific creativity” (pp. 85-186) having already argued that the former is meaningless. 4. Sometimes it is difficult to fathom the ontological status Robinson attaches to his own claims and those of others.

He can sound like a rather prosaic Nietzsche: “The rationalist tradition has driven a wedge between intellect and emotion in human psychology; and between the arts and sciences in society at large”. At various points in Out of Our Minds, Robinson seems to argue that an Enlightenment model of thought mistakenly believes that it gets at the true essence of things, but this is never possible.

We only have to look at studies of the brain or developments in physics to see that thinking in foundationalist terms breaks down – when Einstein comes on the scene, then he does not simply come to a different conclusion, but resets the boundaries for what counts as doing physics. This way of seeing things bears a striking resemblance to Nietzsche?s critique of socratism where he attacks: “the dialectics, smugness and cheerfulness of theoretical man” and asks “might not this very Socratism be a sign of decline, of exhaustion or sickness” (Nietzsche, 1999, p. 4).

Here Nietzsche is not referring to either Plato?s fiction or the real historical Socrates, but challenging a way of thinking that believes that through the dialectical process of reasoning, we will eventually hit on the truth of how things are. For Nietzsche, this process of chipping away only ever takes us back to the historical circumstances that give birth to our ways of viewing the world. The question of what something “is” cannot be answered in logocentric terms – it can only be looked at through the lens of the philologist and this reveals the ways in which are understanding of the world is a human all too human “creation”.

Despite the apparent Nietzschian distrust of “Truth”, Robinson has an awful lot of time for psychology and neuroscience. Despite giving an historical account of the history of the studies of the brain (he discusses phrenology) Robinson often gives the impression that what neuroscience and work in psychology in creativity offer is true. In ways that are far from clear, this seems to be the guiding force behind his “definition” of creativity. Robinson does not simply provide a “working definition” of creativity. Rather, he makes the terribly familiar move of declaring that “creativity” has been misunderstood and that he knows what it is.

This sort of claim is painfully common in the literature on creativity. It normally goes something like this. Stifling a yawn – everybody thinks that creative people are a talented and elite minority, but this is a fallacy – everybody is creative (see for example, Amabile, 1989, p. ix). Robinson then defines what creativity actually “is”. Apparently, creativity denotes “imaginative processes with outcomes that are original and of value” (Robinson, 2001, p. 118). This is somewhat disappointing. I was hoping it was going to be an immaterial “substance” a bit like Descartes? “soul”.

So – creativity is a process/set of processes. Or is it? At one point in Out of Our Minds, Robinson writes: Creativity is not a specific activity but a quality of intelligence (p. 113). This is all a little murky. Whether creativity is a process or a quality of intelligence (or both, whatever that would mean), Robinson gives us no “reason” to take it for granted that he is right. His more Nietzschian moments only enforce scepticism in this respect. Defining creativity Given that it has come to mean so many things, I can understand the desire to define creativity. Let us consider some of these meanings.

So, drawing breath, (1) creativity should be associated with individual genius. (2) Everybody is creative. (3) Creativity can be measured on a scale. (4) It makes no sense to measure creativity, (5) Problem solving is creative. (6) All learning is creative. (7) Consumer choices can be creative. (8) You?re only being creative if you produce something. (9) You?re only being creative if you produce something original (there are a number of definitions of originality that people go for here) (10) Different kinds of creativity relate to different kinds of intelligence. 11) Creativity can only take place within a discipline. (12) Creativity is generic. (13) Autonomy is synonymous with creativity. If one wants to get a handle on something, it can perhaps help to have some sort of definition. Moreover, if one is going to engage in any kind of empirical research into creativity in education or wherever, then I can see that it is necessary to have some notion of what one is looking at or for (assuming that is, that providing a definition is not simply an excuse to do ever more empirical research).

If creativity can mean anything, it can also mean nothing much at all – one might as well give up on it, or if not, give up on all distinctions. Beginning with a definition does not entail that one has to necessarily continue with it. However, giving definitions can sometimes present obstacles to interesting and surprising ways of seeing things in the richness of their multiplicity. Creativity and Family Resemblances At this juncture, this paper will start to move away from more traditional forms of philosophising. I have tried to show the contradictions or flimsy thinking which I argue characterises Robinson?s thought.

I hope that this was a worthwhile activity. Though I have been employing something like a socratic method through a critique, I feel that this approach has now been “partially” exhausted. I have no desire to come up with definitions. Not only can no definition be verified as THE true definition, defining something as true does not stop words meaning what they mean. Language evolves – it is shared and it is public. If creativity becomes associated with all sorts of things that it was not formally associated with and these meanings enter the language, then that is what creativity has come to mean.

It is hard at this point not to think of Wittgenstein?s theory of family of resemblances (which is. in a sense, an anti-theory of family resemblances). Wittgenstein famously looks at different uses of the word “game” and shows that we hit a point in the chain in which there is no longer any obvious relationship anymore between one use of a word and another. We cannot find “what is common to all these activities and what makes them into language or parts of language” (Wittgenstein, 1953, p. 65). This marks a rejection of the philosopher?s craving for generality and a departure from attempts to find the essential core of a word?s meaning.

Instead we might undertake a journey into “a complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing” (p. 66). To get a flavour of what this amounts to, let us consider these sentences: 1. Mozart was a creative genius. 2. Arthur is a creative accountant 3. All children are creative 4. Arsenal is a creative football team 5. That was a creative solution to a problem As we can see, it is not simply the case that there is no overlap as regards what these sentences mean, but it seems rather obvious that creativity is being applied with different senses.

The fact that Arsenal are thought of as a creative football team seems to have little to do with what is being said about Mozart. For a start, it is not obvious that Arsenal, or indeed Arthur “create” anything at all. Perhaps Arsenal “creates” lots of chances to score, but then so do lots of teams who, interestingly, would not be described as “creative”. I could go on but we would be here all night. Given that there is no one thing that unites all uses of creativity, it is perhaps pertinent to consider the values that are intrinsic to different uses of the term.

This involves an approach that is perhaps more like literary criticism than philosophical analysis. Have we started to enter the territory of the philosopher artist? Creativity and Values Given that creativity can mean so many things, yet people often define it by correcting a mistake, the question might then be: what is at stake in defining creativity – what do such definitions “perform” or “do”? I want to suggest that the generality of the kind of definition offered by Robinson helps to develop a “creative merger” that brings together education, business, neuroscience, philosophy, art (pretty much everything in fact).

This is a common move in the literature on creativity. Here is Craft: I have come to use the word „lifewide creativity? to describe the application of creativity to the breadth of contexts in everyday life (Craft 2002). Others, too, have written about creativity as a fundamental attribute to enable adaptation and response in a fast changing world (e. g. Ripple 1989, Barron 1988, Gruber 1989, Henry and Walker, 1991). (Craft, 2005, pp. 113-114) It is perhaps interesting that interdisciplinarity or cross-disciplinarity and creativity are often bedfellows.

Indeed, as mentioned earlier, Robinson is often fuzzy or incoherent when he talks about these things. This leads one to wonder if eliding disciplinary boundaries simply provides an excuse for making everything coterminous with capitalism. Moreover, does “creativity” humanise or warm up capitalism? I have been informed by people in management studies in my current place of employment that the word innovation has gradually started to disappear from writing in that discipline and has been replaced by creativity.

It is interesting that when Robinson talks about creativity and values (Robinson, 2001, pp 116-117), he is not referring to values in the moral sense, but whether or not the products of creativity are any good. One could have some sympathy with this. I recall watching an episode of Masterchef in which a contestant made what he thought was a creative move by putting venison in a chocolate pudding. Clearly there are benefits to thinking about creativity in terms of the quality of its products. However, other ways of thinking about creativity and values are perhaps more important.

Here is an extract from a routine delivered by the late comedian Bill Hicks: By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing… kill yourself. Thank you, thank you, thanks. Just a little thought. I?m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe, maybe one day, they?ll take root – I don?t know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do…. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too: „Oh, you know what Bill?s doing? He?s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That?s a good market, he?s very smart. ? Oh man, I am not doing that.

You fucking evil scumbags! „Ooh, you know what Bill?s doing now? He?s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That?s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We?ve done research – huge market! He?s doing a good thing. ? Goddamn it, I?m not doing that, you scumbags! Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet! „Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill?s very bright to do that. ? God, I?m just caught in a fucking web. „Ooh, the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market – look at our research.

We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to them, and then separate them into the trapped dollar… ? How do you live like that? (Hicks, 2005, p. 135) What Hicks shows is the pernicious side of creativity. Note that he “shows” us this and does not argue for it (we will come back to this later). There seems no escape from the nihilism of the market. A defence against such nihilism can itself become a market. The sense that creativity entraps us is at one with the idea that we must be continuously “flexible”. Flexibility often gets lumped in with creativity.

Of course, they go hand in hand, but not simply as nuanced differences in a chain of terms that have a similar meaning. The need to be flexible is surely a by-product of creativity. We might imagine that if new kinds of job come into being and others die out, then this is the result of some sort of creative force. If people have to be flexible or “adaptable” (adaptability is obviously synonymous with flexibility) then this is because other people are being creative. Of course, through being creative, people could be actively contributing to their own unemployment.

Might “creativity” ultimately be a form of masochism? It is interesting that when Robinson talks about our common assumptions about creative people, he is referring to members of the kind of profession that Hicks would like to see commit collective suicide: Creativity is often seen as a purely individual performance. It comes from people who just happen to be creative, or from departments whose role is to be creative. Most companies keep their „creatives? in separate departments: they?re the people who wear jeans and don?t wear ties and come in late because they?re struggling with an idea.

This book argues for a completely different approach…. (Robinson, 2001, p. 2) This different approach is, interestingly, not concerned with offering different views of what the creative person might be like, but seems to have more to with suggesting that everybody can and should be more like the “creatives” described above. What I am suggesting here is that the parameters around creativity are set in such a way that it invariably becomes coterminous with capitalism. This sort of discourse can have particularly absurd implications. Last year, Cambridge University entered its 800th year.

As I walked along Hills Road, a giant poster displayed the words “The University of Cambridge, 800 years of innovation”. Are we supposed to be transported back to a time when the founders of Cambridge University maximised their potential through engagement in all manner of creative synergies, operationalising creative collaborations and constructing innovative networking processes? It seems that the past is not a foreign country for the “creatives” who came up with this. Problems and Mysteries It is a common move in the literature on creativity to equate creativity with problem solving.

Robinson seems to follow this approach, though he complicates things slightly: “Problem solving is a feature of creative processes, but it would be wrong to equate creativity only with problem solving. Creativity can be as much a process of finding problems as solving them” (Robinson, 2001, p. 114). Of course, there are numerous instances of creative activity that involve problem creating or solving but on quick inspection they seem to largely involve the sorts of things people are involved in when they work for companies.

Working out how you are going to market a product presents any number of problems to solve and perhaps create. That Robinson equates creativity with problem solving is entirely in keeping with the ways in which he seems to see no distinction between promoting the arts and economic development, and the fact that he sees creativity as a thing to be defined and therefore understood. He seems blind to the various ways in which we understand creativity, some of which do not sit easily with the business model.

Given that Robinson is so keen to think outside the box, to think the future even, it is perhaps slightly odd that he does not think about the various ways in which creativity might not have anything to do with “problems” at all. Before considering what this might mean, it is worth considering what the existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel has to say about the difference between a problem and a mystery: A problem is something met with which bars my passage. It is therefore before me in its entirety.

A mystery, on the other hand, is something in which I find myself caught up, and whose essence is therefore not before me in its entirety. It is as though in this province the distinction between in me and before me loses its meaning (Marcel, 1949, p. 109) This distinction between a mystery and a problem is very reminiscent though not identical to Heidegger?s distinction between things being ready-to-hand, which describes our normal everyday coping with the world in which we are not consciously directed towards the things that we?re doing, and when things become present-to-hand – when there is a problem and “something bars my passage”.

I want to suggest that the “mystery” which Marcel speaks of is perhaps a dimension of the ready-to hand aspects of our experience. Let us take playing football as an example. Assuming one has reached a very basic level of competence, playing football does not, for the most part, seem to involve solving problems. What we do is ready-to hand or perhaps ready-to-foot, till for example we get backed into a corner. Then something like an attempt at problem solving may occur – I am literally confronted with something that bars my passage.

However, when things are going particularly well (in my case this is pretty rare) we can be completely caught up in what we?re doing and the distinction between “in me and before me loses its meaning”. I recall listening to an interview with the (famously “creative”) footballer Ryan Giggs. In that interview Giggs complains about how often he gets asked to give an account of a goal he scored against Arsenal in an FA cup semi-final. The reason that Giggs dislikes the question is because he does not know how he did it – he just did it! It is as much a mystery to Giggs as it is to everybody else.

Let us take another example that is perhaps more commonly associated with creativity such as writing a novel. Sometimes writers talk about having to solve problems, but this usually seems to happen when they get stuck on something – how the plot should develop etc. Indeed we talk about writers? block when writing itself becomes a problem. However, when things are going well…. I do not want to suggest that writing lacks any dimension of consciously directed action. Rather, whatever is consciously directed about it does not necessarily have anything to do with problem solving.

Indeed, when someone finishes writing a novel, can they ever really tell us how they did it? Please note that I am not suggesting that there is nothing to say about the creative process or that it is “simply” a mystery and should therefore be left alone (although in some cases, leaving things alone might make a refreshing change). Over time, writers in all sorts of fields have had much that is interesting to say about creativity. However, this often involves an attempt to delve into its mysteries, whilst simultaneously retaining the mystique of creativity.

One might think here of the role played by Prospero?s books and staff in The Tempest and the meditation on the magical (sometimes questionable) powers of the artist that are handled in that play. When he gives up his magical possessions Prospero says: “Now all my charms are all o?erthrown, and what strength I have?s mine own, which is most faint” (Shakespeare, 2010) This treatment of creativity as something that is mysterious, magical and not “mine own” resonates with the invocation of the “muse” or “muses” that has marked so much meditation on what the artistic process is about.

Of course, nobody believes that “muses” can be pinned down and then utilised for creative ends. The notion that “muses” might represent problems to be solved simply seems absurd. Rather, they represent a rich understanding of creativity that stands in contradistinction to the limited vision of creativity that focuses on the solving and creation of problems. The philosopher/artist, creativity and the future It might be the moment to discuss two approaches to creativity and the future. The first is encapsulated by Robinson?s emphasis on “flexibility” where we constantly adjust and try to keep up with the pace of our time.

Craft seems to be arguing for something similar. She distinguishes between “probable education futures”, preferred education futures and “possible education futures” (Craft, 2011, pp. 29-32). Considering “probable” futures takes us into the sort of territory that Robinson describes. Detectable trends include: “… increases in uncertainty, change, cultural diversity, environmental challenge, digital engagement, population growth, economic challenge… ” (p. 29). In contrast a focus on: … preferred education futures takes us into a less predictive and more emancipatory place of critical values which, together with informed critique- riented ethical and political debate, leads to proposals for alternative education futures. Clearly preferred futures are determined by patterns of values; given the difficulties we seem collectively to have with imagining possibilities at this point in the early 21st century, together with the time-lag we experience in moving from policy to practice – thus it might be more useful to explore possible futures. (p. 31) Craft has little to say about “preferred futures”. In fact, the above citation represents pretty much everything she has to say on the matter.

It would appear that affirming values about what the future should be like is “inefficient” and “difficult”. So what does it mean to think about “possible education futures”? Well: “In contrast with the forecasting stance of probable futures and the more decisive position of preferred futures, a focus on the possible futures facing education takes us into the realm of imagination, considering flexible creative possibilities”. Moreover it “begins to connect creativity with education futures” (ibid). Craft?s argument here is rather vague. It would seem that thinking in terms of “possible futures” is simply about tweaking the “probable” ones.

Possible futures are considered in relation to “probable continued and increasingly rapid change” (p. 32). Ultimately, like Robinson, Craft seems to associate creativity with flexibility. As mentioned earlier, if we take Robinson?s argument to its logical conclusion, through our creativity and constant innovations, we reach out ahead of ourselves generating the panic that can only be quelled by our becoming flexible and relishing those therapeutic pleasures which creativity provides (if dance is on the curriculum). It seems that creativity both poisons society and provides the antidote that allows for survival.

This seems to be a paltry state of affairs. Is it all that we can hope for from life? Are there other creative and untimely ways of pushing through to the future? There is a decided danger in asking this question – might trying to think the unthinkable lead on to the flimsiness and sophistry that I have associated with Robinson?s account. I want to suggest that thinking the future, indeed creatively about the future (and the role education may have in this) cannot be done through formal argument, or at least, not through formal argument alone.

Perhaps instead it can be done through shocking eschatological humour and also through a particular treatment of language. Both approaches belong to the activities of the philosopher artist. Let us begin with humour and with Nietzsche. Nietzsche?s humour arises out of an attention to “figurative language and thinking” (Hicks and Rosenberg, 2003, p. 4. ). He maintained that the Ancient Greeks revealed “the profound mysteries of their views…to those with insight, not admittedly via concepts, but through the penetratingly vivid figures of their gods”.

What does this mean, and why is a kind of figurative thinking privileged over the conceptual. It is because: “we understand figures directly: all such [figurative forms] forms (Formen) speak to us [immediately, intuitively]” (ibid). Now of course, the philosopher will always come along to interpret these figures and introduce a conceptual element into the picture but this will be outstripped by the figurative: …. the implication is that figurative thinking (Bilderdenken) is already “out there” ahead of what we can currently formulate conceptually and discursively in the prevailing philosophical language available to us.

The poetic and literary figures outstrip, in some sense, what can be stated (at the present time) propositionally; and subsequent philosophical reflection on the figures and what they embody generates new concepts and propositions that, in turn, are outstripped by new and more innovative figures. (ibid) It is not that Nietzsche wants to give up on reason as such, but consider its? limitations. Against those limitations he constructs figures that can “integrate comic art and knowledge into a form that will make life tolerable again”. They will be ambiguous and disconcerting.

Moreover, they will “counter our human-all-too-human tendency to take Nietzsche?s own ideas seriously in the wrong way (viz. , as having a dogmatic cognitive content to be learned)” and “enable us to take them seriously in the right way (viz. , as reconfiguring and opening-up spaces for alternative human possibilities). Due to their complexity, there is not space in this paper to consider Nietzsche?s ambiguous and disconcerting discussions of the future. However, his approach has a precedent in satirical works such as Swift?s A Modest Proposal (Swift, 1996).

In his satirical essay Swift suggests that the Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for the rich. Of course this satire mocks both British policy in Ireland and attitudes towards the poor in general. What Swift and Nietzsche are up to is often present in the kinds of outrageous thing comedians say. Earlier, I cited a section from a routine by Bill Hicks. During the same gig, Hicks provides a “solution” to the “problem” of the terminally ill, namely, that they could be used as extras in action movies.

Hicks is well aware that the notion of using the terminally ill as stuntmen will offend the audience?s sense of public decency, and their morality. His aim is to put them off guard on the defensive, before hitting them with the powerful moment in the routine, the moment when they reflect on what actually happens to the terminally ill and how this seems so acceptable: “„Oh God Bill, terminally ill stuntpeople? That?s terribly cruel. ? You know what I think cruel is? Leaving your loved ones to die in a sterile hospital room surrounded by strangers. Fuck that.

Put „em in the movies” (Hicks, 2005, p. 162). Both Swift and Hicks offer a way of reimagining the moral life by unsettling it in its timeliness. The primacy of expression here trumps any attempt at a formal argument. In this sense we are given an education into possibilities of thinking differently. When society comes to treat the poor or terminally ill people in new ways, those approaches would also eventually ossify and be replaced by something else – comedy?s kick may play a role in this. It may not: what more can any of us do than throw the dice.

Swift and Hicks seems to somehow embody a much richer and indeed Nietzschian philosophy of the future than what is provided by the “experts” of the present. The force here derives from the tasteless, eschatological subliming of our timely moral horizons. This provides an education in creativity as regards the moral life. Reason has a role to play in all this but it is infused through the force of artistic endeavour. I do not, however, want to suggest that tastelessness and the sort of aggressive comedy are the only ways of providing a creative philosophy of the future.

We might also think of the kinds of experience common to reading poetry. Often we are confronted with a kind of language, and a way of disclosing the world that is alien and difficult to define as precisely as we might like it to be defined. However, what we think of as good poetry will invariably lead to multiple forms of disclosure that hit us at times in our lives, when what a poem means will appear to us in other ways, containing always the promise of another future. Figurative/poetic uses of language are necessarily futural: “that which is most profound always loves masks”.

What applies to poetry also goes for the work of philosopher artists such as Derrida, Deleuze and Nietzsche himself. Conclusion I am not suggesting that Robinson is necessarily wrong about everything. He might be right in saying that focusing on creativity may enhance economic development. However, I have tried to show that much of what is said about creativity (for which Robinson is something of a mouthpiece) is empty or self-defeating. To do this I have invoked the philosopher and the philosopher-artist. People might wonder about the implications of all this for schooling.

I am not suggesting that schools put on videos of Bill Hicks. However, I saw Hicks at home on Channel 4, when I was in my mid-teens – not all moral education takes place in schools. Of course, I “am” arguing that writing, but perhaps more specifically, reading poetry (if not Derrida et al) is an education in creativity. Ultimately, the creativity machine will keep spitting out problems to be solved. In the midst of all that, children may still experience the mysteries of creativity and comedies of the future.