[DRAFT] Education, Creativity, and Orthodoxy

Discuss the disagreements between my professors on education's and creativity. My thesis is that school does not destroy creativity but rather incubates orthodoxies. In particular, discuss how the classroom exercise that sparked this disagreement illustrates my point.

• the classroom exercise

  • I forget the exact problem, but the most elegant solution required ternary reasoning
  • most students sought binary solutions, which either failed or were clunky
• DA's takeaway

  • school destroys creativity
  • focusing on binary reasoning in CS curriculum hampered students' ability to recognize the ideal ternary solution
• JP's counterargument

  • the students were in fact displaying great creativity in their attempts to solve the problem
  • it was unfair of DA to not recognize that
  • wasn't meant as a brutal takedown of DA; their refutation was an aside in a speech championing the creativity of their students
• my point

  • education does not destroy creativity but instead incubates orthodoxy
  • yes, the students' focus on binary solutions was the result of 4+ years of CS study
  • it isn't that school explicitly hampers the ability to think outside the box, but it does often provide us with new boxes
  • how would a non-CS student have approached the problem? if they sought a non-binary solution, would that have necessarily meant they were more creative than the CS students?
  • no; their advantage would have been that they didn't have the same boxes (frames of reference) as the CS students
  • creativity involves knowing where those boxes are drawn and consciously searching outside them when necessary

In one of my senior-level computer science courses, the professor, Dr. D, presented us with a toy problem. Several students offered solutions, but again and again Dr. D found them wanting. I no longer remember the exact exercise, but I do recall that its most elegant solution required ternary reasoning—three-state logic—whereas the students' suggestions were all focused on binary reasoning. Dr. D then briefly lamented the ways that education destroys the creativity of its students before continuing with the lesson. Another professor, Dr. J, was also in the classroom that day. The way Dr. D seemed to write off the students' abilities bothered him enough that he referenced the incident obliquely in a later speech. Even though they had failed to notice the cleanest solution, he argued, the students had nevertheless displayed great creativity in their proposals. The educator's job is to nurture that creativity, not downplay it. (This wasn't meant to be a brutal takedown of Dr. D. He never named names, and it's possible that I was the only other person out of a few hundred in the room who knew the situation he was discussing.)

In thinking about this contrast over the past several years, I ultimately have to agree with both and with neither. I do believe Dr. D was responding to a genuine phenomenon even as I share Dr. J's distaste for his language.