Creativity and Development: Gardner Offers Welcome Context with which to Understand our Artistic Nature

Gardner, Howard
Art, Mind & Brain: A Cognitive Approach to Creativity
New York: Basic Books, 1998

I began reading Howard Gardner’s Art, Mind & Brain: A Cognitive Approach to Creativity after having taught some challenging sixth-grade classes for LCI. As I boarded the train in the Bronx and headed home, I opened this book for the first time. I was immediately engrossed. Nearing Brooklyn, close to an hour later, the stranger next to me on the crowded 2 train said, with genuine awe and intrigue, “Art, Mind & Brain!? What’s THAT book about?” I was so excited to respond that the rest of our ride turned into an animated conversation about arts education (it turns out she was a teach artist too, though not familiar with Gardner). I was happy to share with her that this work is by far the most refreshing, inspiring, and engaging work on creativity that I have spent time with.

My primary studies as a professional have been of dance and choreography, but my affection for aesthetic education and my desire to teach well has led me to study educational theory and to become familiar with current philosophies and trends in educational approaches. An eagerness to “do” aesthetic education with grace, to lead students through deep experiences centered around a work of art, and to build upon each individual’s own experiences have often caused my interests (and those of my colleagues at LCI) to intersect with theorists and scholars of philosophy and psychology. I enjoy these studies, but am well aware that I do not come to them with the same finesse or refined knowledge as a graduate student in education, for example. And it is especially worth noting that I am neither a serious student of child-development, nor a neurophysiologist, nor do I have any experience studying cognitive science. Yet, I came away from this book strongly believing that it could be equally relevant and accessible to a teaching artist like me as to one of the advanced academics I mention above.

The book contains a series of Gardner’s essays, grouped into five parts. The essays deal with the psychology of creativity and are also something of an historical sketch of the thinking that has lead to Gardner’s research—though prior to his studies it seems there was relatively little research in these areas. He draws from psychology, neuropsychology, and cognitive science and is able to weave these strains in a way that is relevant and through-provoking. In “Masters,” the first section, he discusses the structuralist approach and the idea of symbol systems. Gardner is heavily influenced by Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologist, and the first chapter of this section focuses on his work. This section also includes essays examining the work of linguist Noam Chomsky and anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strausse, among others. I am sure that many readers know the work of these individuals well, but I don’t—and that was OK! Gardner’s essays give enough history and overview for a casual reader like me to benefit.

Most inspiring and illuminating, and hugely applicable to my work, is “Part II: Artistic Development in Children.” Gardner’s discussion of the development of creativity in children looks at creativity as a cognitive process different from (though related to) Piaget’s description of intellectual development (which is apparently generally accepted in cognitive psychology). Gardner talks about discovery-based and skills-based arts education, which have historically comprised the two main approaches to arts education for children. And he advocates for both of them—neither with an either/or bias nor with an idea that “good” arts education would include a perfect compromise of the two. His discussion is far more nuanced and subtle, which I really appreciate.

I found this section especially inspiring and helpful in considering age-appropriate activities for children. This was not just useful in a theoretical, developmental psychology sense, but specifically relevant to me as an arts educator (especially after my difficult day with the 6th graders!). I gave me new ideas about how to consider the development of children’s artistic skills and “other symbol systems” (other than language, that is), which Gardner suggests are their own separate capacities. In the future I will turn to Gardner’s findings in choosing an AE approach most appropriate for any specific group of students.

Other sections include “On Education and Media: The Transmission of Knowledge,” which looks at the media’s and specifically television’s influence on creativity from a cognitive standpoint, and “The Breakdown of the Mind” which studies individuals with brain damage as a way to understand creativity. The final and shortest section, “The Height of Creativity,” looks at creativity in adults and concludes with an essay in which Gardner was inspired by a quote by Mozart. In this essay, Gardner wonders if “there are perhaps at least some communication between the mundane processes with which we all engage and the creative powers of the world’s greatest geniuses” (351).

Gardner is an influential figure in educational philosophy and theory, often best known to educators (including myself) for his theory of multiple intelligences. He is a cognitive psychologist and the co-founder of Harvard’s Project Zero, a research team on arts education, and in addition to being an important theorist and psychologist, he is also true writer whose work can be appreciated by a wide audience. His writing is personal, relevant, illuminating, and refreshingly easy to grasp. To me, his ideas were so fresh that I thought this must be a more recent follow-up to his seminal 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. However, to my surprise I discovered that this book was first published in 1982—further proof of the freshness and relevance of his thinking.

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