創(chuàng)造力，我們再也傷不起

by Sir Ken Robinson 譯/ 陳繼龍

Creativity is a key part of the educated mind.

教書育人的關(guān)鍵在于發(fā)展創(chuàng)造力。

Iheard a great story recently about a six-year-old girl in a drawing lesson. The teacher said this little girl hardly ever paid attention in class, but during this lesson she did. The teacher was fascinated.

She asked the girl, “What are you drawing?” And the girl said, “Im drawing a picture of God.” The teacher said, “But nobody knows what God looks like.” The girl said, “They will in a minute.”

What all children have in common is that they will take a chance1). Theyre not frightened of being wrong. I dont mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. But if youre not prepared to be wrong, youll never come up with anything original. By the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong.

We run our companies like this, by the way. We stigmatize2) mistakes. Now, were running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.

The result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso3) once said that all children are born artists. The trick is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately: We dont grow into creativity; we grow out of it. Or, rather, we get educated out of it. Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.

Something strikes you when you travel around the world: Every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy4) of subjects. It doesnt matter where you go. Youd think it would be otherwise, but it isnt. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts—everywhere on Earth.

And in pretty much every system, too, there is a hierarchy within the arts. Music and art are normally given a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isnt an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics.

Why not? I think math is very important, but so is dance. Children dance all the time, if theyre allowed to. What happens is that as children grow up, we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. Then we focus on their heads, and slightly to one side.

If you were an alien from another planet visiting Earth and you asked yourself what public education here is for, youd have to conclude, if you look at the output—who really succeeds, who does everything that they should, who gets all the brownie points5), who are the winners—that its whole purpose, throughout the world, is to produce university professors.

I like university professors, but we shouldnt hold them up as the exemplars of all human achievement. Theyre just a form of life. But theyre rather curious, and I say this out of affection for them.

Typically, they live in their heads. They live up there, and slightly to one side. Theyre disembodied, in a kind of literal way. They look on their body as a form of transport for their heads. Its a way of getting their head to meetings.

If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, by the way, get yourself along to a conference of senior academics and pop into the nightclub on the final night. And there youll see it: grown men and women writhing6) uncontrollably, off the beat7), waiting for it to end so they can go home and write a paper about it.

So our education system is predicated on8) the idea of academic ability. And theres a reason for that. The whole system came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So you were probably steered benignly9) away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that10) you would never get a job doing that: Dont do music; youre not going to be a musician. Dont do art; you wont be an artist. Then: benign advice. Now: profoundly mistaken.

Academic ability has really come to dominate our view of intelligence. If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted11) process of university entrance. The consequence is that many highly talented, creative people think theyre not, because the thing they were good at was not valued in school, or was actually stigmatized.

We cant afford to go on that way. In the next thirty years, according to UNESCO12), more people worldwide will graduate from school than did so from the beginning of history to the present. This is because of the transformative effects of technology on the nature of work, and the huge explosion in population.

Suddenly, degrees arent worth anything like what they used to be worth. When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job, and if you didnt have a job, it was because you didnt want one.

But now, kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need a masters degree where the previous job required a bachelors degree, and now you need a PhD for the job that once required an MA. Its a process of academic inflation, and it indicates that the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet and that we need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.

We know three things about intelligence: First, its diverse. We think about the world in all the ways we experience it. We think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically13), we think in abstract terms, we think in movement and in many other ways, too.

Second, intelligence is dynamic. Look at the working processes of the human brain: Intelligence is wonderfully interactive. The brain isnt divided into unrelated compartments. In fact, creativity, which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value, more often than not14) comes about15) through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.

And the third thing about intelligence is that its distinct. Im doing a new book at the moment called Epiphany16), which is based on a series of interviews with people about how they discovered their talent. It was prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman named Gillian Lynne. Shes a choreographer17), and everybody knows her work. She did Cats18) and The Phantom of the Opera19).

Gillian and I had lunch one day, and I said, “How did you get to be a dancer?” She told me that when she was at school, she was really hopeless. She couldnt concentrate; she was always fidgeting20). The school wrote to her parents and said, “We think Gillian has a learning disorder.” So Gillians mother took her to see this specialist. She sat on her hands for 20 minutes while her mother talked to this man about all the problems Gillian was having at school: She was disturbing people, and her homework was always late, and so on. In the end, the doctor sat next to Gillian and said, “Gillian, Ive listened to all these things that your mothers told me. I need now to speak to her privately. Wait here—well be back. We wont be very long.”

As they went out of the room, he turned on the radio sitting on his desk. When they got out of the room, he said to her mother, “Just stand and watch her.” The minute they left, she was on her feet, moving to the music. They watched for a few minutes, and he turned to her mother and said, “You know, Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isnt sick. Shes a dancer. Take her to a dance school.”

I asked, “What happened?” and Gillian said, “She did. I cant tell you how wonderful it was. We walked into this room, and it was full of people like me, people who had to move to think.”

She eventually auditioned21) for the Royal Ballet School and had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet and became a soloist. She later moved on, founded her own company, and met Andrew Lloyd Webber22). Shes been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history, shes given pleasure to millions, and shes probably a multimillionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

I dont mean to say we are all dancers. But in a way, we are all Gillians. There are millions of Gillians. I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine23) the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it wont serve us.

We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which were educating our children. And the only way well do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness24) they are, and seeing our children for the hope they are. Our task is to educate their whole being so they can face this future. We may not see this future, but they will. And our job is to help them make something of it.

我最近聽到一個(gè)很有意思的故事，講的是一個(gè)六歲的女孩上繪畫課的事情。老師說這個(gè)小女孩以前上課幾乎從來都不專心，但這節(jié)課卻專心起來。這引起了這位老師的注意。

她問女孩：“你在畫什么呀？”女孩說：“我在畫上帝?！崩蠋熣f：“可是沒有人知道上帝長什么樣啊。”女孩說：“一會(huì)兒他們就知道了?！?/p>

所有的孩子都有一個(gè)共同的特點(diǎn)，那就是他們愿意冒險(xiǎn)。他們不怕犯錯(cuò)。我不是說犯錯(cuò)等同于有創(chuàng)造力，但是如果你沒有犯錯(cuò)的心理準(zhǔn)備，你就永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)有任何創(chuàng)新。大多數(shù)孩子長大成人以后就失去這種敢于冒險(xiǎn)的能力了，他們變得畏縮不前，生怕犯錯(cuò)。

順便提一下，我們在經(jīng)營公司時(shí)也存在這樣的問題。我們總是對錯(cuò)誤一味指責(zé)。如今，國家教育體系的運(yùn)行方式也如出一轍，在這個(gè)體系中，犯錯(cuò)是最令人難以容忍的情形。

這樣導(dǎo)致的結(jié)果是我們教出來一個(gè)個(gè)毫無創(chuàng)造力的人。畢加索曾說過，所有的孩子都是天生的藝術(shù)家。問題的關(guān)鍵在于，如何在我們成長的過程中始終做一名藝術(shù)家。我深信，創(chuàng)造力不會(huì)隨著我們的成長與日俱增，而是會(huì)越來越少?；蛘?，更確切地說，我們所受的教育讓我們漸漸喪失了創(chuàng)造力。如今，在教育領(lǐng)域，創(chuàng)造力與讀寫能力一樣重要，我們不應(yīng)厚此薄彼。

當(dāng)你在世界各地旅行時(shí)，有件事會(huì)令你印象深刻：世界上每個(gè)國家的教育體系都有著同樣的學(xué)科等級系統(tǒng)。不管你去哪里，全都一樣。你或許以為會(huì)有例外的情況，但事實(shí)上沒有差別。排在最上面的學(xué)科是數(shù)學(xué)和語言，接下來是人文學(xué)科，而藝術(shù)則位于底端——寰球皆如此。

在幾乎每一個(gè)教育系統(tǒng)內(nèi)，藝術(shù)課程本身也有等級之分。在學(xué)校里，音樂和美術(shù)通常都要比戲劇和舞蹈更受重視。在我們的星球上，沒有哪個(gè)教育體系會(huì)像我們教孩子學(xué)習(xí)數(shù)學(xué)那樣每日教他們學(xué)習(xí)舞蹈。

為什么不呢？我認(rèn)為數(shù)學(xué)非常重要，但舞蹈也同等重要。如果允許孩子們跳舞，他們會(huì)一直跳個(gè)不停。然而事實(shí)是，當(dāng)孩子們漸漸長大時(shí)，我們的教育重心開始逐漸轉(zhuǎn)移到他們的腰部以上，之后把關(guān)注點(diǎn)放在他們的頭部，并且有點(diǎn)偏重一側(cè)大腦。

假如你是一名造訪地球的外星人，你自問：在這里，公共教育的目的何在？如果你看到教育的結(jié)果——誰真正取得了成功，誰盡了該盡的本分，誰贏得了贊譽(yù)，誰又成了贏家——那么，你就必定會(huì)得出這樣的結(jié)論：世界上所有公共教育的全部目的就是培養(yǎng)大學(xué)教授。

我喜歡大學(xué)教授，但我們不應(yīng)當(dāng)將他們樹立為全人類成就的典范。他們只是生命呈現(xiàn)的一種形式而已。不過，他們都相當(dāng)好學(xué)，我這么說，完全是出于對他們的傾慕之心。

一般來講，他們都依靠大腦生存。他們的生活就在他們的腦中，而且稍稍偏向一側(cè)。毫不夸張地說，他們是生活在身體的軀殼之外的。他們僅把身體視為大腦的交通工具，可以載著大腦去開會(huì)。

對了，要是你想真正見證一下這種頭腦脫離軀體的經(jīng)歷，你可以去參加一次由資深學(xué)者參加的研討會(huì)，然后在研討會(huì)的最后一個(gè)晚上跑去夜總會(huì)。在那兒，你就眼見為實(shí)了：成年男女扭動(dòng)著身體，動(dòng)作失控，不合節(jié)拍，只等著舞曲趕緊結(jié)束，這樣就能回家寫篇論文來報(bào)告此行了。

所以，我們的教育體系所基于的正是這種注重學(xué)術(shù)能力的觀點(diǎn)。這是有原因的。整個(gè)教育體系是為了滿足工業(yè)化的需求應(yīng)運(yùn)而生的。因此，在你的孩提時(shí)代，學(xué)校可能就善意地引導(dǎo)你遠(yuǎn)離你喜歡的事情了，他們的理由是就算你學(xué)了，你也永遠(yuǎn)不可能靠它找份工作：別玩音樂了，你又成不了音樂家；別畫畫了，你又不會(huì)成為畫家。往昔之良言，今日之大謬！

學(xué)術(shù)能力確實(shí)已經(jīng)開始主導(dǎo)我們對才智的看法。細(xì)想一下，你就會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)，世界各地公共教育的整套體系就是一場曠日持久的大學(xué)入學(xué)考試。其結(jié)果是，許多天賦異稟、頗具創(chuàng)造力的人對自己的能力產(chǎn)生了懷疑，因?yàn)樗麄兊奶亻L在學(xué)校沒有得到重視，甚至還遭到污蔑。

我們不能再這樣下去了。據(jù)聯(lián)合國教科文組織稱，在未來30年間，從學(xué)校畢業(yè)的人比從古至今畢業(yè)的人加在一起還多。這既源于科技對勞動(dòng)本身所產(chǎn)生的變革影響，也歸咎于人口大爆炸。

突然間，文憑變得不像以前那么值錢了。我上學(xué)那會(huì)兒，只要你有一紙文憑，你就會(huì)有一份工作；如果你沒有工作，那只是因?yàn)槟悴幌胍选?/p>

但現(xiàn)在就不一樣了，拿著文憑的孩子們常常只能回家玩電腦游戲，因?yàn)橐郧氨究飘厴I(yè)就可以做的工作現(xiàn)在得要碩士文憑才行；原來需要碩士文憑的崗位現(xiàn)在得要博士文憑。這是一個(gè)學(xué)歷膨脹的過程，它表明整個(gè)教育結(jié)構(gòu)正在我們眼前發(fā)生改變，我們需要好好地重新思考一下對才智的看法。

我們知道才智有三個(gè)特點(diǎn)。首先，它是多樣的。我們用自身形形色色的體驗(yàn)去理解這個(gè)世界。我們用視覺、聽覺、觸覺去理解，我們抽象地思維，我們在運(yùn)動(dòng)中思考，如此種種，不一而足。

其二，才智是充滿活力的。來看一下人腦的運(yùn)行過程就知道了：才智有著奇妙的交互性。大腦的各個(gè)組成部分之間并不是毫無關(guān)聯(lián)的。實(shí)際上，創(chuàng)造力——我個(gè)人把其定義為產(chǎn)生有價(jià)值的獨(dú)創(chuàng)性觀點(diǎn)的過程——通常是在從不同學(xué)科的角度認(rèn)識(shí)事物的交互作用下產(chǎn)生的。

才智的第三個(gè)特征是與眾不同性。眼下我正在寫一本書，名叫《頓悟》，書的內(nèi)容是基于一系列關(guān)于如何發(fā)現(xiàn)自己天分的人物訪談。這本書的靈感來自于我和一位優(yōu)秀女士的對話。這位女士名叫吉蓮·琳內(nèi)，是一位舞蹈編導(dǎo)。說起她的作品，可以說是無人不曉：《貓》和《歌劇魅影》都是她的代表作。

有一天吉蓮與我共進(jìn)午餐，我問：“你是怎么成為舞者的？”她告訴我，她上學(xué)那會(huì)兒真是無可救藥。她不能集中注意力，總是動(dòng)來動(dòng)去。學(xué)校給她父母寫信說：“我們認(rèn)為吉蓮患有學(xué)習(xí)障礙。”于是，吉蓮的母親帶她去看專科醫(yī)生。母親跟醫(yī)生談?wù)撈鸺徳趯W(xué)校出現(xiàn)的所有問題：她總是打擾別人，老是遲交家庭作業(yè)等等。在此期間，吉蓮把雙手放在屁股下坐了20分鐘。最后，那位醫(yī)生坐到吉蓮身邊說：“吉蓮，我聽你媽媽講了關(guān)于你的所有事情，現(xiàn)在我需要和她私下里談?wù)劇Ｄ阍谶@等會(huì)兒，我們一會(huì)兒就回來，不會(huì)太久?！?/p>

離開房間的時(shí)候，醫(yī)生打開了桌上的收音機(jī)。邁出房門，他對她的母親說：“我們就站在這兒，觀察她會(huì)做什么?！彼麄円浑x開，吉蓮就站起身，跟著音樂動(dòng)起來。他們觀察了幾分鐘后，醫(yī)生轉(zhuǎn)身對她母親說：“您看，琳內(nèi)夫人，吉蓮沒有得病。她是一個(gè)天生的舞者，帶她去上舞蹈學(xué)校吧?！?/p>

我問：“后來呢？”吉蓮說：“母親帶我去舞蹈學(xué)校了。別提有多棒了。我們走進(jìn)那個(gè)房間，滿屋子都是像我這樣的人，都是需要?jiǎng)悠饋聿拍芩伎嫉娜?。?/p>

她最終參加了皇家芭蕾舞學(xué)校的試演，在皇家芭蕾舞團(tuán)經(jīng)歷了一段精彩的職業(yè)生涯，并成為一名獨(dú)舞演員。后來她繼續(xù)發(fā)展，成立了自己的公司，遇到了安德魯·勞埃德·韋伯。她擔(dān)任了史上好幾部最成功的音樂劇作品的舞蹈編導(dǎo)，為數(shù)百萬人帶去了歡樂，而她自己大概也成了千萬富婆。要是換成別的醫(yī)生，當(dāng)初可能就會(huì)給她吃藥，叫她安靜下來了。

我的意思不是說我們所有人都能成為舞者，但從某種意義上講，我們都是吉蓮，我們周圍有數(shù)百萬的吉蓮。我相信，我們未來的唯一希望在于，對于人類生態(tài)學(xué)，我們要抱有新的觀念，基于這個(gè)新觀念，我們要開始重新構(gòu)建我們對人類所擁有的豐富潛能的看法。我們的教育制度開啟我們心智的方式就像人類露天開采地球礦藏一樣：針對的都是某種有特殊價(jià)值的東西。但這在未來并不能為我們造福。

我們必須重新思考我們教育孩子時(shí)所依據(jù)的那些基本原則。為此，我們唯一的辦法就是要看到我們有著豐富的創(chuàng)造力，認(rèn)識(shí)到我們的孩子是我們的希望所在。我們的任務(wù)就是為孩子們提供全方位的教育，使他們能夠面對未來。我們不一定看得到這個(gè)未來，但他們一定會(huì)。我們的工作就是幫助他們在未來有所作為。

1. take a chance：冒險(xiǎn)

2. stigmatize [?st?ɡm(xù)?ta?z] vt. 指責(zé)；非難

3. Picasso：畢加索(1881～1973)，西班牙畫家、雕塑家，現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)的創(chuàng)始人，西方現(xiàn)代派繪畫的主要代表

4. hierarchy：請參見41頁注釋2。

5. brownie point：品行良好而獲得的稱贊；討好上級所得的信任

6. writhe [ra??] vi. 扭動(dòng)身體

7. off the beat：不合拍

8. be predicated on：基于，依據(jù)

9. benignly [b??na?nli] adv. 和善地

10. on the grounds that：根據(jù)，以??為由

11. protracted [pr??tr?kt?d] adj. 拖延的

12. UNESCO：聯(lián)合國教科文組織(United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization)，該組織成立于1946年，總部設(shè)在法國巴黎。其宗旨是促進(jìn)教育、科學(xué)及文化方面的國際合作，以利于各國人民之間的相互了解，維護(hù)世界和平。

13. kinesthetically [?k?ni?s?θet?k(?)li] adv. 動(dòng)覺地；(肌肉等)運(yùn)動(dòng)感覺地

14. more often than not：大半；大概

15. come about：發(fā)生；產(chǎn)生

16. epiphany [??p?f?ni] n. 對事物真諦的頓悟

17. choreographer [?k?ri??ɡr?f?(r)] n. 舞蹈編導(dǎo)

18. Cats：《貓》，由作曲家安德魯·勞埃德·韋伯根據(jù)英國詩人T. S. 艾略特的詩集《老負(fù)鼠的貓經(jīng)》及其他詩歌所編寫的一部音樂劇，是歷史上最成功的音樂劇之一。

19. The Phantom of the Opera：《歌劇魅影》，由安德魯·勞埃德·韋伯作曲的一部知名音樂劇，劇本根據(jù)法國偵探小說家卡斯頓·勒胡所著的同名愛情驚悚小說改編。

20. fidget [?f?d??t] vi. 動(dòng)來動(dòng)去

21. audition [???d??(?)n] vi. 試演

22. Andrew Lloyd Webber：安德魯·勞埃德·韋伯(1948～)，生于英國倫敦，是一位非常成功的音樂劇作曲家，代表作品有《貓》、《歌劇魅影》、《萬世巨星》、《日落大道》等。

23. strip-mine：露天開采

24. see sb./sth. for sth.：認(rèn)識(shí)到某人或某事的真實(shí)情況