# 2. I Kill Creativity when I Assign Grades without providing Informative Feedback.

Grades without rationale give no useful information that helps a person be creative.  When we give reasons, do our criteria include credit for the originality as much as for following prescribed requirements? Sometimes grades punish instead of rewarding.  If grading is used as punishment, it can motivate rebellion or passive resistance unless the student is unusually mature.  When grading is needed in art, we can use an accumulation of positive points including credit for growth and improvement (longitudinal grading instead of normative grading).  Normative grading assumes that there is a certain equal norm that everybody most achieve.  It would be like forcing all children to be a certain height by a certain age. 

# 3. I am probably Killing Creativity if I see a lot of Cliché Symbols instead of Original or Observed Representation of Experience.

Snoopy dogs, hearts, smiley faces, stick figures, formulas for drawing trees or animals, ovals for people, and so on, are all evidence that I am killing creative thinking in my class.  If I see a lot of Cliché drawing, it tells me that I have not established a classroom culture of creative thinking and a joy of learning to learn.

How can I encourage more imagination, better observation, and expressing what is remembered?  Can we prohibit Cliché production? What if we start each class with a few minutes of innovation practice and direct observation practice? What if I ask more open questions that encourage thinking instead of making suggestions? What if we practice doing experiments in order to have fun making discoveries instead of teaching principles and color mixing as facts. Can more of our homework consist of idea books, journals, sketchbooks, question-lists, diaries, reflections, illustrated experiences, and so on that can be turned into future class projects?

# 4. I Kill Creativity when I Demonstrate instead of having students Practice.

I can sleep through a demonstration.  I can not sleep through a hands-on practice lesson.  Tell me and I might remember a little while - if I listen. Show me and I will remember a bit longer - if I pay attention.  Have me do it - I learn it.  When I demonstrate, I still get quite a few questions about what I "taught". When I direct a practice session nearly everybody feels confident to do it again using their own ideas.  If a demo is the only way, I find that it needs to immediately followed by practice, not by the final product assignment. A demonstration can cause the aborting of imagined ideas before they are born. It implies a "right" way. I never see what a student might have imagined had I not provided the "right" way.

# 5. I Kill Creativity when I Show an Example instead of Defining a Problem.

I like to show the Art History, the Fine Art Exemplar, the multicultural examples at the end of the lesson.  This allows us to use what we learn during the media work experience as frame of reference for the example. However, when not showing examples prior to media work, I must provide a better problem definition, more chances to practice the technique, and be particularly alert to students who may be floundering at the beginning of a problem because they are not accustomed to doing their own thinking. Sometimes we have to repeat the practice a few times until everybody understands how to practice a new skill that can help them be creative.

When not showing an example, I must give students time for their subconscious mind to operate. This might mean that we discuss assignment issues and conduct practice sessions on one day and come back to the same problem on another day. Many students forget what is learned, so I ask questions to let them know that it is good to remember what is learned so it can be used again next time.

Often, if students are not accustomed to listening carefully, they feel lost if I do not show them what it is supposed to look like.  In these cases, I repeat the problem definition using different words, or I have them make a some sketches of what they think might work.  I also have them make written lists of ideas to pick from.  Some are not accustomed to sketching and thumbnailing.  They are not used to the idea that they are to originate ideas from their own lives, experiences, and concerns.  Other teachers may not ask this of them. When I do not show them the answers, they may need help in learning how creative people develop ideas for their work. It can mean that we start thinking about things several weeks in advance. A future challenge can be presented long before the actual production so the subconscious mind can be focused on it. Creative people generally have several projects going on simultaneously at different stages of development. Creative minds, once unleashed, continue to work while we sleep.

While "image flooding" (showing many examples) may be inspirational, it can also be intimidating and very suggestive.  It can be argued that "image flooding" creates slicker work, but less creative thinking skills.  It may win the scholastic awards, but it teaches us to go through life in other people's skins.  We never learn the ecstasy of having original ideas. Also see #10 below and #1 above.

# 6. I Kill Creativity when I Praise Neatness and Conformity more than Expressive Original work

Neatness is over rated.  Conformity (and even following the assignment too slavishly) may be a negative indicator when assessing art.  I believe that product centered education makes very good slave training.  What I want is student ownership.  I often imagine what it might be like to be one of those artists cranking out "Starving Artist" oil paintings.  They are done in painting factories. In any list of grading criteria, originality must have more importance than neatness. Neatness is style--not substance. As a style, it can get some credit, but other styles need to get just as much credit.

# 7. I Kill Creativity when I give Freedom without Focus

If I ask students to do whatever they want to do, they often avoid risk by doing something they already have learned in the past.  The amount of creative thinking may be zero.  When there are limits, there is a better chance of having a challenging task.  The teacher's challenge is to make the limits seem compelling and interesting to the student.  Good lessons ask questions, provide learning goals, reasonable objectives, and so on. As a teacher, my job is to make the hard stuff easy and to make the easy stuff hard. It is not to allow risk free lazy repetition.

Students of nearly any age can learn to do this for themselves, but I have to cultivate the classroom culture where these expectations are assumed. I want there to be student choices that require genuine thinking and decision making, but never choices to avoid innovation and problem solving.

A creative classroom culture expects focus and experimentation that requires modification to move beyond entrenched habits of thinking and working. I want students to learn to work this way on their own. Therefore, I think it is good to move from assigning this at first to a culture where it is expected without being specifically required. In art class, the rubrics and critiques used can actively move students in the direction of self planning for creative thinking. 

# 8. I Kill Creativity by Making Suggestions instead of asking Open Questions.

Too often I am so glad I have what seems like an intelligent suggestion that I blurt it out without thinking.  When I do this I am taking away several important things.  I make my students less self-reliant and more dependent on me.  I teach them not to think for themselves.  Would it not be better to bite my tongue - to pause long enough to phrase a question or two that helps students realize that what they think is important.  I can often simplify the problem by asking them to solve a smaller problem that helps with the larger question.

My Open Questions - What would happen if I would ask those who observe my teaching to help me overcome my tendency to give answers when I could be teaching thinking and self empowerment? What would happen if I ask our students do this for me? What if students learning to be teachers when observing other teachers giving an answers, would jot down alternative ways to revise these events into empowering teaching moments rather than spoon feeding events? Hmm. How could I have stated these questions better?

# 9. I Kill Creativity if I Give an Answer instead of teaching Problem Solving experimentation methods.

How can I help students learn to set up experiments to find answers?  What are problem solving strategies used by artists?  Some move things around until they look "right".  Some know that they need to simplify.  Some need to work at creating new kinds of order from chaos.  Some want to point out the problems of the world.  Others want to solve them. Some want to search for more perfect beauty.  Still other artists use intentional accidents (often a series of accidents). They find ideas in the accidents that are impossible to discover by force of will? 

There are many experimental methods of working aesthetically. How can I get students to practice using as many experimental methods as possible and get them to invent new methods of invention? It is not my job to answer the students' questions.  It is my calling to encourage the students to learn how to formulate questions that they find compelling. It is my job to make sure they learn to devise ways to test their ideas experimentally. In this sense we are teaching both science and art--truth and beauty. 

# 10. I Kill Creativity if I allow students to copy other artists rather than learning to read their minds.

We know that artists look at and that they are influenced by the work of other artists (as well as everything else in their lives). How can we respond creatively to outstanding works by other artists? How do we learn to stand on their shoulders rather than gather their crumbs? How can we use their expertise to surpass them, or at least do for our time what they did for their time? Is not the apprentice system based on mastering the work of previous experts?

I am concluding this list of creativity killers with some ways to think about the apprentice system of teaching and learning. In #5 above I say that I kill creativity if I show examples before students have developed their own concepts of what might go into a significant creative effort. When not showing examples, we have to practice other ways to generate ideas. In #1 above I say it is better to steal, rather than borrow ideas. To really be creative with an idea, one has to believe it and own it.

The question is not simply: What can we learn from Picasso? The question is, What did Picasso learn that allowed him to surpass his artist father? The question is not simply: What we can learn from Rembrandt? It is, How did Rembrandt learn to surpass Karel van Mander and his other teachers. What must we surmise about how the greatest artists became creative? I am guessing that the most creative artists learned much more technical expertise from their progenitors.

In the tradition of the apprentice system, many assume that the apprentice learns by copying the techniques and looking at the master's finished products. Some of this happens. However, what may not be nearly as obvious, is that particularly creative apprentices are also apprenticing the master's idea generation process. The creative apprentice copies the master's thinking methods, idea building sequences, questioning processes, warm-up routines, practice routines, habits of work, and so on.

When I was a student teacher I apprenticed with two master teachers with many years as successful art teaching. From Mr. Nelson, I learned ways to being a personable and helpful person, but eventually abandoned many of his other ways of presenting lessons. From Mrs. Wolfe, I learned some very effective ways to get students to generate ideas for their own work, but I have had to work to abandon some of her personality traits.

Today, formal education has replaced the apprentice system. As a teacher, I used to start a new course by showing slides of great works of art in the area the students were expected to learn. I now start the course with warm ups that require skill building and with idea generation activities. They learn good practice methods to build confidence and make things easier to do. New students get warm-ups that are easy enough to avoid frustration and hard enough so they feel they are learning and becoming prepared and skilled enough to be creative. This is accompanied by questions to be answered with art materials. The questions focus the thinking and the practice suggests ways to materialize answers to the questions.

Often students expect and ask to see examples. I assure them that we will be studying great exemplars as we begin to understand and experience how it feels to materialize work ourselves. I explain that I look at lots of great art so that I know what I do not need to do (it has already been done). I explain that when I look at great art, I see a reflection of another time and/or culture. I do not see work that needs to be done today by me and in my situation.

I also tell students that I apprentice at great work to analyze the motivations behind the work--never to find something that I can visually mimic. I explain that I apprentice with important artworks in order to learn to read and understand the mind and heart of artists, but not to copy the look of their work. I speculate on why it may have been made. If I had made it, what would it have looked like? I never conclude that my work should look like what I am looking at. Copying is not a reasonable option. When viewing art this way, it can inspire and give me the courage to create something in my life that I need to express.

Artwork is great because it was made for a reason deeply felt by the artist. Of course apprenticing with exemplars in this way often requires some understanding of context--not merely surface appraisal. This is a reason to delay showing work until students are minimally familiar and confident in their own creativity.

By showing exemplars of great work after some student creative experience, I want the student to see validation of their own inventions and yet be inspired to come back again and again knowing that there are more ways to think, to question, and develop the same themes. First impressions are important and unforgettable. I want students' first impression of art making to come out of themsleves---not from another artist. To show examples before the work cultivates an culture of dependence on experts. Creative art is more likely to come from learning how to learn from the minds of others while applying similar thinking to local and personal experiences .

By showing exemplars of great work, I hope students will respond by moving beyond the exemplars by "stealing" thinking processes to make their own work---never copying or borrowing the look or style of the work. The thinking processes are taken (copied) to strengthen and express their own discoveries and experiences more fully. Learning to use art models creatively means learning to search for the hidden motivations under and behind them. No master artist outside of ourselves can do this for us. We have to learn to see the masterwork in ways that inspire and activate our minds. Copying kills creativity.

• Generating Art Ideas -- an inside-out art curriculum
• Teaching Creativity -- Yes, creative thinking can be fostered
• Teaching with Questions
  
• Divergent Thinking (imagination) is extinguished in school aged children
• Lesson Planning This is my attempt at explaining how I plan art lessons that are not Creativity Killers while still teaching production, criticism, aesthetics and art history. This is a lesson on Cubism that attempts to follow the principles.
• This Clay Box lesson use principles of teaching creativity. 
• The Conversation Game to help students understand how artists generate ideas.
  
• Invention Skill and the Generation of Ideas as Curriculum Goals

"The best boxes come from the students who think outside the box."  I like to think it is because I encouraged them to trust themselves.

Visit These recently updated Art Education Links Essays and Lessons by the same author Who is the Author? Biography Contact the Author ******************** Bartelart.com Creativity Presentation Slides Art Department Bartel Courses Marvin Bartel Home Bartel Artwork     Practice Works. Those that do not draw, do not learn to see very carefully.  Those who do not know how to observe, are bad at drawing.  They stop drawing because they find it discouraging.  When they stop drawing they never learn it.  Viktor Lowenfeld, the famous art educator  wrote, Creative and Mental Growth. He said some children were haptic instead of visual.  He encouraged them to be expressive instead of realistic in their artwork. Competent visual observation did not seem to matter to him as long as they were being expressive and creative.  In my experience the children themselves never believe that observation drawing skill does not matter.  Why should they?  It would be like saying those who have not naturally learned to read and write on their own are just wired differently, so we should just teach them to talk and sing instead.  Forget writing and reading.  When we neglect to teach observation drawing, I believe we neglect basic brain development. I am experimenting with children as young as four.  I know a child who is five and has learned to use a blinder to practice observation blind contour drawing before she attempts to make her actual drawing.  Her blind drawings are just for practice, but it is amazing how much she sees and includes in her "real" drawings.  When you are five, this is not strange or unusual.  It is just like learning to read, if you are instructed this way, it seems very natural.  Amazingly, it works.  Of course not every drawing should be from observation.  Memory and imagination also need lots of practice.  Young children need encouragement.  I make a policy to never correct them.  I never draw for them to show them how I draw things.  Such "help" only makes them doubt their own ability and some stop working. To see blinders in use,  see this link. Notice: © 2001-08, Marvin Bartel, Ed.D.  Art teachers have permission to print a copy of this page to post in their office, supply closet, or elsewhere.  Others who wish to copy or publish any part of this electronically or otherwise must get permission to do so. Your responses are invited. If you have a web site, you may make a link to this page. updated April 16, 2008  Contact the Author

Footnote:  I am grateful to the many thoughtful responses and stories this page has stimulated among teachers everywhere.  I really learn a lot from the notes I get from teachers out in the field.  If you have an idea or question about anything you read on my pages, and if you are an art teacher or simply a person who cares about a child, I am interested in your thoughts.  I will respond to art teachers and parents who send me notes.  Contact me. THE IVORY TOWER SYNDROME I admit to being "a college professor" and not spending as much time with children as K-12 Art Teachers do.  I have periodically tested ideas by working as an art teacher substitute in the public schools.  I have made many visits to see what my student teachers are doing and how things are working for them.  I also help out in Sunday School and I frequently work with children that are friends and relatives. Our junior level methods students test our lessons in local classrooms.  This has some limits, so if you try any of the lessons on this site, we really value your thoughts.  If you have a lesson that follows the theory described on this page, I would love to get a copy of it.  I cannot promise that I would post it here.  I would give you credit if I posted something based on your lesson. My classes of elementary education majors have been very special to me.  Many come to an art class with lots of art making fear.  Unfortunately, in their childhoods they had some teachers that did not know about the Creativity Killers.  The approaches to art making skills, art history, aesthetics, and criticism that work with them are often the same things that work with children in the schools.  OUR STUDENT TEACHERS While our student teachers were quite aware of my unorthodox theories, I encouraged them to learn as much as they could from their supervising teacher while in student teaching.  If our theories collide, I encouraged student teachers to do what they felt would best result in a positive evaluation at the end by their supervising teacher.  Once they are in their own classrooms, they have more choices.  Most often the student teachers who work hard at their preparation find that they can impress their supervising teacher with some "slight improvements".  Many teachers after having a student teacher who has been particularly creative, cannot wait to have another one.  DO I FOLLOW LOWENFELD? Yes, in a way I do.  My graduate school professor in Art Education was Dr. Phil Rueschhoff.  He was a student of Dr. Viktor Lowenfeld.  We were told interesting stories about the way Lowenfeld worked, but we did not have to agree with all of it.  In practice, art teachers who were following their impression of Lowenfeld's theories were leaving out too many important notions about art. I am quite certain that this was a big reason for the development of DBEA (discipline based art education).  While I am pleased to see the content added by DBEA (art history, criticism, and aesthetics was added to production), I am often bothered when these things are taught by methods that threaten the idea that every child has a right to learn to think for themselves based on their own perceptions of the world and their lives.  I admit that Lowenfeld and Rueschhoff made me aware of so much that I had never though about until after I was through college.  OBSERVATION DRAWING What I am attempting to do, is to keep the best aspects of DBAE and the best aspects of the legacy left us by people like Lowenfeld. In my opinion observational drawing is one thing that neither DBEA or Lowenfeld address adequately.  Many of the Standards Statements that I see also are afraid to ask for it. When I work with children, often the thing they wish for the most is to be able to draw better. When I help them learn how to see things they are amazed at themselves. If we are all concerned about our dropouts and the "crisis of confidence" our children experience, we might do well to begin more observation drawing in grade one or sooner.  Practice works. Those that do not draw, do not learn to see very carefully. Lowenfeld said they were haptic instead of visual.  He encouraged them to be expressive instead of realistic in their artwork. Competent visual observation did not seem to matter to him. However, in the final analysis the children themselves never believe that it does not matter - nor should they. It would be like saying those who have not naturally learned to read and write on their own are just wired differently, so we should just teach them to talk and sing instead.  Forget writing and reading. I find that children can learn a few good methods and continue to teach themselves observation and drawing.  This can be enjoyable homework.  Music teachers know the value of learning skills when children are young and their brains and bodies are still malleable. Also, I still believe in drawing from memory and drawing from imagination.  These also remain very important developmental tasks that are generally ignored in many non art school rooms. MY Super DBAE DREAM I dream that art teachers can find ways to combine the development of basic skills, the knowledge of art analysis, of aesthetics, of our rich art history, and our rich multicultural heritage in art. I dream that there are ways to all these things and still foster creativity of the most positive type that encourages every person to  do good in the world. This is why I propose some of changes that Creativity Killers suggests.  It is a work in progress.     back to top of this page