A fascinating talk by Tony Buzan, a renowned education consultant, was held at the Oxford University Press office last week, in which he stressed the importance of creativity to broaden the mind. Without imagination neither art nor science advances, he said, pointing out that geniuses like Leornado da Vinci and Albert Einstein had urged people to use their imagination.
Education systems all over the world are uninspiring and boring, producing pupils who are not encouraged to think creativity. A study by psychologist revealed the mind of a child is highly creative but under the mundane method of teaching creativity diminishes progressively. Children in kindergarten have imagination rating of 95 percent, by the time they are in university their creative skills are down to 25 percent.
How true, how true, how true. The aim of modern education is to mass produce workers to fill job slots in demand in our day and age. There was a time when every student wanted to do his or her IBA, or become a chartered accountant, a doctor, an engineer. Degrees were allotted on the basis of what was learnt by rote; there were no innovating requirements. If a student wondered into innovation or gave is personal opinion he or she was failed or given poor marks. The examiner was not interested in evaluating the original answer in an exam paper. Today the stress is on IT skills, you just have to look at the number of advertisements of local and foreign universities. 90 percent of the course is IT-related.
That is because colleges and universities want to profit from education. It is a matter of supply and demand. Whatever skill is in demand that is what they advertise. Any student whose primary interest is art or literature is put in the straight jacket to learn a paying profession. Creativity is nipped in the bud once a child is in junior school by parents who, until then, had been drooling over the child's art work. Now he is told to concentrate on 'serious' study. In short, anything to do with imagination is disapproved and discouraged by teachers and parents.
Buzan stressed the key to clear thinking is to imagine something, picture it in your mind and live it. He said we should have dreams. Our dreams are what we really want to do. It reminded me of a song from the musical 'South Pacific': If you don't ever dream, how gonna have a dream come true? One particular that it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you. Nothing broadens your mind like dreams.
But here lies the crunch, our sleeping and waking dreams are full of the mundane things, the stupid ambitions of the life we live. For the past few days I noted what I dreamt while I slept. The tap in the kitchen was leaking; the toilet flush did not work; and a nightmare, that my car was stolen was so real I got up to check if the car was still there in the lane outside the apartment. Those are the things from my life. I want a decent kitchen and toilet and I worry about car theft. Have our dreams become as mediocre as our lives?
Of course we have dreams with glamour and glitter but these are just as boring. I asked some friends what was their life's dream. One mentioned a dream house, a bungalow with a garden, teak furniture and wooden floors. That is a very expensive house he would never ever be able to purchase unless he robs a bank. For another, the dream of his life was a grand wedding of his daughter as if she was the child of a nawab rather than a pocket-to-let journalist. How boring. What have we become? A nation of stereotypes who believe in television hype? Buzan said we learn to communicate through images and colour. That is our first language not English or Urdu. So someone tell him the images we see first are bearded daddies dressed in white and mummies in black burqas embellished with diamantes. Our surroundings are plain. The lights are stark white instead of mellow yellow. Nowadays people do not even believe in laying the table for the daily meals. It is just brought and dumped on the formica board and the plates are probably plastic. The aesthetics have departed from our daily lives.
Our education, our dreams and our lifestyle are dull and dreary. So why blame the world for mistreating us. We mistreat ourselves. We do not think, in fact we do not know how to think. We are bombarded with opinions and propaganda, both religious and political, which we accept without question. So if you ever wonder why this country does not progress, it is because we lack the imagination to innovate. It is called creativity.
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