Then let me note that while this essay is aimed at students who are currently in college, it might apply equally as well to high school students, and to college graduates who have recently joined the ranks of the unemployed. In what I write I will focus on current college students, but I hope it is not too difficult for others to translate the message to their own circumstance.
The Creative Attitude is an essay by Maslow, well worth the read, and perhaps multiple reads. (I made a Word version of the article because the PDF version which is available from Proquest has a very light font that's hard to read.) I am going to appropriate Maslow's meaning for my own purposes. (I have sketched my own path toward the creative attitude in this post.) First, it means being completely absorbed in the present activity, so much so that everything else fades into the background. Second, this absorption is active, not passive. Being hypnotized is not what we're talking about here, nor is vegging out. Third, the creative attitude becomes a part of one's personal philosophy, so it is something to strive for in as many situations as possible. Most people can describe some circumstance that produces complete absorption for them. But then it is the particular environment, it would seem, that induces the state of absorption. (For many college students, playing video games achieves this effect.) Armed with the creative attitude, the individual can become absorbed in many different environments and it is the individual's fascination with the environment that drives the absorption. Fourth, this becomes something that the individual wants to do, in advance. Experiences of complete absorption are enjoyable, in retrospect, though while going through them the complete absorption precludes making a determination then and there of whether it is enjoyable. It is this retrospective preference for experiences of complete absorption, that provides the motive for embracing the creative attitude.
Note that so far I haven't said a word about the product that the creative attitude produces - a work of art, a musical composition, innovative computer code, an essay such as this blog post, etc. Maslow points out that we should separate out the initial conception of the idea for creation from the hard work that follows to deliver a completed product. That hard work requires additional factors, particularly mastery of technique and then determination to see it through. Maslow didn't concern himself with these additional factors in the linked essay, nor will I do so here. This means you can be displaying the creative attitude as a member of the audience to a performance, or by listening to a wonderful piece of music, or by reading a good book, provided that you are completely absorbed in the activity at hand rather than having your mind wander while doing it. Indeed, it is my belief that developing the reading habit is the best way to eventually embrace the creative attitude.
Conversely, you can be doing tasks autonomously while your mind is focused on something else - developing the concept of your idea. Donald Murray calls this prewriting. It is where the bulk of the effort lies, even if it happens while you are doing the dishes, driving to go shopping, or folding the laundry. For me, it is producing an internal narrative that I can buy into. Contrary to Murray's labeling, however, I find that the prewriting and writing intersperse, though there might be quite a long period of earlier thinking that is needed before any writing is produced. After that initial period I typically don't compose a complete essay at one sitting. I might write a paragraph or two, then get stuck. That begats another round of prewriting. I should also note that now I write longer pieces than when I first started with this blog. Then I was writing a post every day and for the most part did compose them at one sitting. That no loner suits me, both in terms of time allocated to the activity and regarding my temperament now. Then I wanted to get the piece out and be done with it. Now I want to touch all the bases. So my approach has changed over the years. But, I think it useful to have a less linear view of the creative process. It's better to envision it as a cycle that renews itself than as a line segment with fixed starting point and ending point.
Having provided some sense of what we mean by the creative attitude, we can now consider why students should embrace it and why it is timely to do so.
Maslow likens the creative attitude to self-actualization, being all we can be, and he likens complete absorption to a peak experience. Presumably, the more frequently a person has peak experiences the more mentally healthy the person will be. It is well known now that many college students are not mentally healthy, they are experiencing anxiety and depression. Indeed, there has been a crisis in higher education regarding student mental health that existed before anyone heard of the coronavirus. Now, many others are also experiencing anxiety and depression, as graphically illustrated in this recent piece by David Brooks. Does it matter what the cause of anxiety and depression is? I think so and I will try to elaborate on that in a bit. But first I'll make the broad strokes reasons for an embrace of the creative attitude. It is something an individual can do for himself or herself in an attempt to improve mental outlook and to develop a better sense of resiliency.
Maslow, though he is writing in the early 1960s, quite a long time ago, laments the pace of change of knowledge and that in order to keep up the individual must embrace the creative attitude to continually learn new approaches and be exposed to new ideas. Nowadays, we'd use different jargon - learning to learn, self-teaching, and lifelong learning. In this sense, Maslow views the creative attitude as a necessary precursor to self-teaching. In so doing we equate creativity and learning. This equation is not perfect, as there are still some things learned by rote, e.g., home address, phone number, and birthday. But the rote learning is limited to those things that require spitting the knowledge back out exactly the same way it was learned. In contrast, learning something that can be used in a context other than where it was originally learned, what is termed transfer, does require creativity, so in that case the equation is more exact. Thus, a second reason for embracing the creative attitude is to become a better lifelong learner and thereby be better able to handle the curves that life throws at us.
Now I think it worthwhile to ask, has the student already embraced the creative attitude? If not, why not? About a dozen years ago I wrote a post called PLAs Please, which focused on student self-directed learning and enrichment outside of school (so it counted both reading interesting books and magazines and going to stimulating movies and concert performances). When I was in high school, some kids did that and indeed much of what they knew was learned outside of school, not in it. Further, this was not done as a credentialing activity but rather to satisfy the interests of the students. I didn't have the terminology, the creative attitude, at the time of writing that post, but if I did I would have argued that this is the way for a student to develop it. More recently, those who are high academic achievers but who don't embrace the creative attitude are termed Excellent Sheep, by William Deresiewicz. Sheep are members of the flock; they don't lead the flock. The derision in the term stems because the students have opted out of directing their own learning and left that task to others - parents and teachers. Thereby, they lose all sense of intrinsic motivation. This framing places the onus on the students. No doubt parents and possibly teachers as well share some of the blame by not encouraging students to be more self-directed in their learning.
In looking at the possible reasons for selecting one path or the other, let's sort them by cultural reasons, on the one hand, and self-protection against failure reasons, on the other. I'm very wary of cultural stereotypes, and propagating those. But yesterday I had a Zoom call with some of my extended family, where my siblings and I were cracking jokes throughout, but my cousin from Denmark and another cousin from Florida, on the other side of the family, said they don't have conversations like this very often. Why not? So I am biased to associate Reform Judaism with comedic humor - we all want to be some semblance of Groucho Marx. On the flip side, I wrote a piece for Inside Higher Ed called The Student's Dilemma, based on a discussion group I had with three former students of mine, each an international student from East Asia, where it was evident that their high school education abhorred not following the pre-arranged script for their learning. So, I think it futile to ignore these cultural differences, some of which stifle creativity.
The self-protection against failure is harder, as we all fail at one time or another, but some of us are not so scarred from it that we require self-protection thereafter. Further, as somebody who will admit to being phobic in many areas, fear of heights and fear of dogs two of the more obvious ones, I want to observe that some of my fears are based purely on my own experiences, while others are more concerned with a social context that was beyond my control. There is ordinary nervousness - stage fright - that can be present because others can observe our performance, rather than because our prior performance was inadequate. Indeed, our prior good performance might make the stage fright all the worse, as now we feel it necessary to get above the bar that we ourselves set previously. Self-protection, in the form of getting off the stage, can happen even if the others never ridiculed prior performance. It is protection against the future threat that it might happen. (A nerd who knows he is not hip, when with others who value being hip, may feel extremely uncomfortable even if those others have never indicated there is some problem.)
In this context embracing the creative attitude is taking on some risk, so moving away from the safety play, because the consequences from the safety play have proved intolerable. This may then be seen as an act of rebellion. But really, it will be an individual trying to assert control of the circumstance rather than abiding by what others say should be done, because what others say hasn't worked.
In the wake of the coronavirus, the motivation is different. The labor market for new grads is likely to be very soft. I wish I had more data on this from my former students. In the absence of that, I'm guessing that many students who are graduating this semester, even those who were previously offered a job, will end up unemployed after graduation. This is because the economy is tanking overall, not because their own performance is substandard. These students have experienced a huge capital loss on the human capital they have acquired and on the various credentials they have amassed, as early poor performance in the labor market is apt to have significant negative impact on earnings into the future. These are the big investments the students have made in their lives up to this point. The vast majority of these students won't have diversified this investment. So the loss is real and it is devastating.
I don't want to claim expertise about how people regard large financial losses versus how people deal with the grief from loss of a loved one. But with the latter we associate five stages of grief. Depression is the fourth stage and acceptance is the fifth stage. If such a parallel makes sense, the embrace of the creative attitude should wait at least till the first three stages have passed. Indeed, the need for the embrace won't be felt until that has happened. Recalling how I dealt with the death of my mother and then the disposition of her estate in late 2012 and then much of 2013, I think there is a blur between depression and acceptance, at least there was for me. As the embrace of the creative attitude is likely to take quite a bit of time even after it has been initiated, waiting for the depression to conclude by itself is probably waiting too long. But each student who goes through the embrace must opt in for themselves. So they get to determine when it should happen.
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In this section I want to talk about impediments to embracing the creative attitude and possible reasons not to do it. This is my truth in advertising section of the essay. Really, I mean it to temper early idealism so the students who do embrace the creative attitude have a better sense of what they are getting into.
First, students will need to devote a significant chunk of time each day for an extended period of time (I'm guessing that would be about 2 - 3 months). Do they have that much time available? Or are they already obligated with care for loved ones, being a full-time student, doing telecommuting work, or possibly other obligations. Squeezing out more hours in the day by planning to sleep less is not an answer. Lack of sleep makes us dull (and also can amplify the depression). There is also coming to grips with this requirement as in the circumstance prior to the coronavirus, where instructor expectations (in a normative sense) of how much time should be devoted to a course are typically quoted as 3 hours per week for every credit hour per course. In contrast, students are apt to put in much less time than that, closer to 1 hour per week for each credit hour per course. So students may be impatient about the requisite time commitment, as they won't have prior experience as to why this is necessary. But that is because they largely haven't experienced learning things in a deep way. The creative attitude facilitates that sort of learning.
Second, many students are hooked on multiprocessing as the way to get things done. Multiprocessing is anathema to the creative attitude, which requires complete absorption in one thing. Can the student give up multiprocessing for a good chunk of the day, possibly by being away from laptop, tablet, and phone? How will the student prevent their own cheating on a prior commitment to do just that? On the flip side, one might ask whether student mental health would improve without embrace of the creative attitude, merely by going offline like this as an ongoing matter. My own experience with this recently is a sense of addiction to being connected that is hard to combat. When I'm reading a novel in a paper book, rather than on my Kindle, deliberately chosen to address this issue, I still frequently crave looking at my phone. On occasion, when what I'm reading truly is drawing me in, this craving goes away. But not everything I read satisfies this requirement. So this is a struggle for me. I'm guessing it will be an even greater struggle for the students.
Third, there is how to deal with fear of failure. Many students have this fear with respect to their regular schoolwork. They often "manage" the fear by procrastinating, not initiating doing the work till very close to the deadline, so providing a ready excuse for a mediocre performance. On the plus side, the embrace of the creative attitude is possible to achieve with only the student aware of the student's performance. As much of the fear of failure concerns looking stupid in the eyes of others, that can be avoided. Yet sometimes we are our own harshest critic and self-criticism must be confronted squarely. There is a need to persevere in spite of that.
Fourth, particularly for students with ADHD or some other learning disability, the program I will suggest in the next section may be inappropriate for them. There is a delightful Ted Talk, Do schools kill creativity, given by Sir Ken Robinson. He points out that some students crave motion, so, for example, dance can be considered creative expression. And it may be to become an active listener the student must physically act out what the student is hearing. I don't want to deny this possibility. I simply want to note that I don't seem to have this need for motion, so can't readily suggest how it should manifest. Students who do have this need then may be thwarted by a program that doesn't acknowledge the need. Something else will be necessary as a substitute.
Last, for students who have been experiencing depression even before the coronavirus, there is a need to make themselves an object of study (as will be explained in the next section). But self-examination of this sort might initially lead to self-loathing. For a person already experiencing depression, this might push the person over the edge and make the person suicidal. As this can be anticipated, there are mitigations that can be taken which reduce the likelihood of going over the deep end. The student should be made aware of these beforehand and then make a judgment about whether proceeding is worth the risk.
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I'm going to suggest a three-pronged program for embrace of the creative attitude. This program is aimed at students who were already experiencing depression before the pandemic. Those students who were doing reasonably well emotionally before the pandemic might focus on just the first two prongs. I want to note that these prongs need not be mutually orthogonal. One might support another. That's for the individual student to decide. The prongs are:
- Practice of complete absorption as a reader or as a member of the audience.
- Practice of complete absorption in self-expression that produces some sort of product.
- An examination of self that aims at producing a personal philosophy that the student can live with.
For example, if it is agreed that the first prong will be devoted to reading, then the student might ask whether there is something that the student read, either as part of school or as pleasure reading, which held the student's interest. Might the author(s) of that piece have written other pieces that the student might then read? Alternatively, are there other pieces of the same genre written by others that might interest the student. Then there is the question, does the student have any friend or classmate who also wants to engage in reading this way? Might they form a reading group to choose the readings and discuss them, with the social connection part of what supplies the motivation to sustain the effort. Still a different way to pick something is to consider a movie that the student liked. Is there a book or short story on which the movie was based? Might that then be tried? Not everything that is tried will be compelling. But if the students finds nothing compelling, the sense of complete absorption will not be attained.
In addition to doing the daily reading, I think it would be good to do some record keeping about how long the student stayed at it and how close to complete absorption the student became, as well as any other thoughts that occur about the experience. I'm well aware that monitoring of this sort can impact the experience itself, so detract from the complete absorption. I would try then to monitor by recall later in the day or the day after, not immediately after the session. Recall may be imperfect. That's okay. One cares about these measurements longitudinally, so after a month or so the student can get some sense of whether improvement is happening or not. Precision of any one particular measurement is not the issue.
Regarding the second prong, one real reason for doing this is that various matters may be weighing heavily on the student, both personal and in the external world, and it would be good for the student to express these concerns in some way, so they don't simply continue to go around inside the students head. This might be done by keeping a written journal or, if writing is difficult, then making voice recordings of the student's current concerns. For a little while, say two weeks or so, that should be the extent of it, simply giving voice to what the student has already been thinking.
If I'm like these students in some ways, then it will be natural to read these journal entries or listen to the voice recordings. Part of that is simply to reacquaint the student with the concerns. But then the student might also do this with a more critical eye. Did the student tell the full story or were certain key ideas omitted? Was there a logic to the ordering of the ideas or does it read more like a stream of consciousness? Quality-wise, how does this product compare with what the student has been reading for the first prong? As the student will be a novice writer, it is reasonable to expect that the student can see ways where the quality of what is produced can be improved. Two possible ways this may occur are first, to produce a second draft of what has already been produced and second, to be more effortful in the production of new journal entries. With regard to the latter, the student should discover the need for prewriting as part of that increase in effort.
The student may find at this point that with the prewriting itself time consuming, it is necessary to produce pieces with less frequency or only do the actual writing as a paragraph at a time, with it taking several days to produce a full piece of writing. The bigger issue than the quality of what is produced is whether the creative activity itself is engaging for student. In other words, is there intrinsic motivation for doing the activity?
There is then an issue of whether what is being written is too personal to share with anyone else or if the student wants to have other eyeballs on the work. I would advise a student who is experiencing depression to err on the side of caution here, for fear that negative external feedback will be quite damaging. Nevertheless, if there is a good friend whom the student can trust and if the student has put in substantial effort in producing the work, getting the friend's reaction to it might be a natural thing to do. Positive external feedback can be a spur to do more of this sort of thing. Sometimes even negative feedback can be such a spur.
The ultimate goal here is not to produce another writer. It is to develop a strong sense of the need for prewriting and with that to realize that something analogous is necessary in any episode of self-teaching. In other words, it is to get the student to understand what needs to happen in order to achieve deep learning. It is also to come to terms with whether such deep learning can happen as the student is completely absorbed in the activity and to get a sense of when effort that is not completely absorbing is also necessary.
If the student can find complete absorption in pursuit of the first two prongs, the student will have discovered the power of intrinsic motivation. This simple observation gets us to consider the third prong.
Someone who is experiencing depression will want a way out, to learn to live within the person's own skin. This means understanding what the person wants, devoting a significant amount of energy to that, having reasonable expectations about achieving goals, and learning how to give oneself a break when coming up short on those goals. But there must also be a looking backward in time as to what came before that caused the depression.
In general, depression results because the person feels trapped in a situation not of their liking, with no sense of agency how to get out of the situation, and quite possibly no view of an alternative that would be more to their liking. This might be coupled with a strong sense of anger at others who seem responsible for creating the situation. This can be anger at parents, anger at schools, and anger at themselves for having allowed this to happen. It may be all the harder to deal with this now, because the student may have very well moved back in with the parents as part of the the social distancing that their college imposed, and this living arrangement might be expected to persist for quite some time, especially if jobs after graduation remain difficult to come by. So the challenge will be a daunting one and it might take some time for the student to simultaneously take control over many life decisions while making sufficient peace with parents that everyone in the family can live together under one roof.
If in pursuit of the first two prongs the student does indeed make a bow to intrinsic motivation, yet in the look back the student realizes that all motivation was externally provided - getting good grades and building a good resume - the student will begin to see that certain myths had been propagated and the student had bought into them, hook, line, and sinker. In subsequently rejecting those myths various ideas about money will surely emerge. Parents, who may have acted out of the best interests for their child without realizing the torture they were creating in the process, undoubtedly were concerned about the financial well being of the child after graduating from college. All the extrinsic motivation emerged to address that as the underlying goal. The reality in the current macroeconomics as a consequence of the pandemic, is that it may be impossible now to ensure financial well being for the student if and when something approximating normalcy is achieved after the pandemic fades into the past.
Yet the student will need to ask whether this goal of financial well being after graduation, to be pursued no matter what, was sensible prior to the pandemic, or if the parents projected their own fears onto their child in a way that prevented the child from developing as a full human being. Further, the parents' excuse surely will be something like - all the other parents were doing the same thing for their kids, so they didn't have a choice in the matter. Will they come to understand what they have done? Will they then express regret for it? If they do that, can the student forgive the parents for not truly trusting the child to direct matters according to the child's own inclinations?
To go from being an excellent sheep to being an adult who is capable of driving one's own life choices will surely take more than two or three months. What I believe can be achieved in that comparatively short period of time is for the student to identify wanting to go down that path and feeling somewhat confident that self-teaching in the future, based on both need as dictated by the labor market and by inclination as driven by the student's interest, can be functional and sufficient to keep the student's head above water. Self-confidence doesn't just happen. It must be earned. And it is not earned by pleasing others. It happens as a byproduct of pleasing oneself.
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An argument that has been going around for some time, Hanna Rosin's piece The Overprotected Kid was my first time reading about it though I surely was aware of it earlier, is that parents in trying to provide a safe environment for their children inadvertently blocked the children in learning life lessons for themselves. They grew up being more brittle. The widespread depression among college students now is evidence of that brittleness. That much of the argument I agree with.
Some are arguing, in addition, that these college kids need to experience hardship which they must navigate on their own. That is the only way they will learn the requisite life lessons. I think that's is cruel and unnecessary, especially given that evident hardships they will face nonetheless as a consequence of the recession we invariably are experiencing now and likely will be experiencing for quite some time to come. An alternative is to focus directly on the learning of the college kids and encourage them to embrace the creative attitude. It has a decent chance of being effective without the need for additional undo hardship, which will surely now push many of them over the deep end. Do we really want that? I, for one, surely don't.
