Learning the 'rules of the game': reconciling our rules based culture with creativity

One of the biggest philosophical tensions I have felt in leading a kura towards a vision as 'he puna auaha a centre of creative excellence' is what on the surface is the apparent conflict between our rules based culture and creativity. When creativity apparently demands the ability to think outside the square, to break the rules, it seems odd then (maybe even implausible) that we can do so when schools have so many 'rules'. It is a regular kōrero with some students .. 'why do I have to follow these rules, XXX (insert appropriate issue here) doesn't affect my learning'.

Perhaps it's all about the 'rules of the game'.

This has played on my mind. I have managed to come up with two arguments that reconcile these tensions. The first had been founded in what might turn out to be an 'urban myth', but I am still left wondering about the validity of the sentiment anyway. The story went like this.

Source: https://www.truthorfiction.com/margaret-mead-femur-quote/

I have had conversations with quite a few young people over the years in which I retold this story, making the point that for a group of hunter gatherer people to do this, there must have been some tacit agreement about how they would cooperate to 'feed the passenger', someone who was unable to do their share of hunting or gathering to feed themselves. Now there is a good argument to say that this story about Margaret Mead never happened. I'll go with that, but I still think there is some validity in the sentiment, and I would suggest that no group can be successful unless there is some tacit agreement about the rules that are necessary to ensure success. Regardless of the nature of the group - armed offenders squad, motorcycle gang, army platoon, school - I would posit that all groups need rules that are generally agreed upon and upheld if they are to be successful. If we then take the broader view of our purpose as schools, if we allow young people to walk out of our gates not understanding this need to follow a prescribed set of rules for success, then we have failed  in a very profound way. We have not equipped those young people to take their place in society. Maybe the devil is in the detail about exactly what the rules should be, and how we agree upon and enforce them?

There is another argument that I rehearse in my mind that reconciles a rules based culture in support of creativity.

If we accept that creativity is founded on deep knowledge of a particular 'discipline', implicit in that deep knowledge  must be an understanding of the rules of the discipline. What's more, if we intend to break the rules in a specific discipline in order to develop creative solutions, there is an argument that we need to know what those rules are. I'm less convinced by that last statement, but think that it is worth considering.

This takes me back to the latter years when I was teaching economics to senior students. I had fallen out of love with my discipline. I saw so many examples in which the theory and models I taught failed to match the real world. In order to continue to teach this material (required in NCEA standards) I would explain to students that the world needed them to challenge the orthodoxy, to challenge the rules, but in order to do so they needed to understand what those rules were in the first place. They needed deep knowledge of the theory and the models before they could critique them in any meaningful way (not that such a requirement seems to apply to journalists and politicians these days). It helped me, anyway.

So, where does this leave us? In my own mind I have been able to reconcile the rules based nature of kura as organisations and communities, with a vision that values and seeks to develop and grow creativity and creative thinking. Maybe I'm fooling myself?

Is creativity hard wired?

Our most fundamental survival instinct is fight or flight. Within that context I am going to make a bold, uninformed claim: all human beings are hard wired to be creative. Why? Our very survival over the millenia has come down to our ability to flee from or to confront those existential dangers, those things that threaten our survival,  to our ability to creatively solve problems. 

If that contention is correct (it seems reasonable, but how often have things that seemed reasonable subsequently been shown to be utter tosh?) then for kura I would have thought a big question continues to be 'how do we nurture, feed, encourage, inspire, that creativity in every one of our students?'. I would have thought that we WOULD want to, since our students are the future, if I may use a well and truly hackneyed/over used cliche.

A stroll through our creative spaces, Te Pai Tūhura, gave me the opportunity to 'feast my eyes' on some gobsmackingly good mahi, the result of good teaching, combined with of all of those processes of engagement, of the opportunity work in good facilities, from our senior DVC (Design and Visual Communications) students.

Students created 3D virtual fly throughs of their projects

Our DVC teacher Oscar Richardson (a trained architect in a previous life) tells me this is effectively Stage 1 Architecture School work.... high praise indeed.  This is creative work, this is excellent work, this is a fabulous example of 'creative excellence'. To produce work like this also requires students and staff to have a good values foundation, and this work certainly demonstrates our values of commitment, achievement, resilience, and respect.

This stuff doesn't happen by accident. This stuff doesn't 'just happen'. It happens because we hold high expectations of all of our learners, it happens because we have good teaching taking place in good facilities. It happens because we are committed to Mana Orite, the need for equity for all learners regardless of background.

It also happens because we have clarity of vision about what we are 'about' as a kura, and because we have clarity around our foundational pedagogy 'Learn, Create, Share', which captures the centrality of creativity to learning, and implicitly to equity and wellbeing. 

Three words keep ringing in my head, three words that simply won't go away: clarity, coherence, and persistence, and I think that accurately describes a significant part of what good leadership looks like. Our staff know the story.. 'stay on the bus', as per the 'Helsinki bus theory.

Is creativity 'hard wired' into us as a survival instinct? I have noiidea, but it is an idea that appeals eh!!