“Schools as Society’s Wishing Mirror: What Do We Want to See?”

Anton Dobart and Ernst Strouhal on the concepts of creativity and innovation, the meaningfulness of having artists as “role models”, and how we deal with “traitors to the old system”

Dobart:
The EU Year can be traced back to the Lisbon Process. The object is to show that conventional patterns of thinking and acting no longer suffice. The dominance of the old, traditional patterns has to be called into question. What is needed is more openness, a more flexible approach, and this can only be achieved through a process of reflection and learning. The necessity for broad discussion in which the keywords are creativity and innovation is therefore obvious. Of course, we have to fill the term “innovation” with meaning; everyone considers themselves innovative in some way or other, and the same applies to the term “creativity”.

Strouhal:
In a society, particularly if that society views all the aspects of life from an economic perspective and takes this to extremes, creativity and innovation have positive connotations, at least at first. But you have to be careful. These are concepts of meritocracy; they flash through our discourse like a Pershing II missile that is no longer remote-controlled. As Dr. Dobart said, these are unsaturated terms that need filling out. The financial head of Enron, the company which suffered the greatest bankruptcy scandal of the 20th century, was also “creative”. The murderers in the television series “Columbo” are innovative. We therefore have to define the goals to which creativity and innovation at school are supposed to lead us. And why the discourse is only to be for one year, and what is to happen afterward.

KKA: The creative imperative “be creative!” can also put pressure on people, especially when used as a panacea: “Solve your problems, be creative!” To formulate the question provocatively: Can creativity and innovation be prescribed?

Dobart:
Innovation and creativity are defined by the currently dominant views of the world – on the one hand by economics, on the other hand by socially dominant patterns in other fields. We speak of innovation, for instance, when what exists is developed further, oriented on the logic of progress, but we must not get bogged down in this logic. One of these basic patterns is the tendency to try to force things, which you spoke of in regard to the imperative “be creative”. This is where we have to start changing the paradigm and make an attempt to put dominances into perspective.

I think that on a small scale we have succeeded in doing this through KulturKontakt Austria: Creativity does not develop at a given time, at nine o’clock on a Monday, it requires the right environment; project teaching is one way, for example, or you take advantage of possibilities for learning outside the school. Generally it is the attempt to become more open and experience support in doing so. KulturKontakt Austria has a lot to offer here.

We need openness, because the logic of progress cannot be projected any further. The picture of our society’s future is unclear. At present, many of the unsolved problems are landing on the shoulders of individuals, without there being any clear objectives and components to help them deal with them independently. If we don’t want unstructured hecticness to ensue, we need a framework that is suitably open.

KKA: Is the education system courageous enough to allow these spaces?

Strouhal:
Courage is perhaps not the most essential category. Perhaps we should agree on the following: I am creative in a situation in which I have to be creative, that is, when I can no longer solve problems in the conventional way. Of course, now we can ask: “We have creative solutions, but what is actually the problem we have to solve?” The second aspect that is important, and where this year can be meaningful, is that everyone who introduces innovation is at first a “traitor to the old system”! The question to be asked in systems as a whole is, to what extent does a system integrate people who question that system and offer new solutions to actual problems? Or do such people have to leave the system immediately? How do we deal with traitors to the old system: that is actually the question! And: What is the problem that is supposed to be solved through creativity?

KKA: How do we deal with traitors?

Dobart:
I think it’s a question of irritations. We have to presuppose that it is the task of the education system to adjust individuals to society. I don’t mean this in a negative way, because it has helped, for example, to achieve progress in society, which has benefited us greatly, on a global scale as well. It is as a result of such adjustment to dominant patterns of thinking and acting that we are able to live and survive. The determining patterns have been those of modernism, or industrial society. Overall, it has been a success. But we should not forget that there have been various manifestations of this adjustment process, unfairness etc. Such adjustment is mainly oriented on the dominant habitus of the middle class and thereby legitimates societal differences and corresponding allocations of status. Naturally there are other socioeconomic disadvantages; the question of interculturality increasingly comes into play. Mere adjustment is no longer enough. What we need today is a development of society that is not only economically oriented but also engenders social innovations on a continual basis. We need change that also includes possibilities for personal development – the “pursuit of happiness” as the American constitution understands it.

KKA: Do we need a new job profile for teachers in order to achieve this?

Strouhal:
School is always both a wishing mirror and a mirror that distorts society’s yearnings. Everyone believes they’re an expert in this respect, because everyone has gone to school, even if it was 30 years ago. Everyone wants to join in the discussion, but the system is like a highly specialised, enormous, tremendously heavy tanker travelling through time, and it is only possible to change its direction by very slight degrees. At the same time, the development of the schools – and this makes the issue particularly interesting this year – is also a reflection of politics. Especially of education policy, in the sense that, as a mirror, it reflects not only the content but also the emptiness of such policies. Apparently, aims for promoting innovation and creativity are being handed over to experts or delegated to backbenchers in parliament, who are now supposed to define the objectives, which then have to be implemented by mechanisms ranging from the schools themselves to a federal ministry. Here I see another reflection of what seems to be a vacuum in school development, accompanied by unsaturated terms like innovation and creativity.

KKA: Experts are currently focussing on the question “How do we get new things into the system”...

Strouhal:
The thing is, these are political questions. As I said, each murder in “Colombo” is new, too; the almost surrealistic bookkeeping at Enron was also new. We should be asking, what “new things” do I really want, what objective do I have for innovations? Without a goal, as Dr. Dobart says, chaos breaks out; the result is a jungle of “idea lianas” which become more and more entwined, and that, I believe, is a reflection of a school policy that no longer has a programme.

KKA: In other words, you feel a lack of objectives and programmes.

Strouhal
I don’t feel a lack of anything at all. I only see that the systems of culture and education are very sensitive seismographs and right now they indicate, in my opinion, a de-idealisation of school policy.

Dobart:
This year won’t bring the solution; it is an impulse. The impulse cannot concentrate on a discussion process in individual sectors; it has to keep the whole breadth of society in view. It is my hope that in the Year of Creativity and Innovation a raising of awareness can occur through discourse, reflection and action. Dr. Strouhal mentioned the political dimension. I agree with that. A policy that bases its impact to a great extent on ideology and views of the world has also been set down in the school legislation and has effected a compromise between dominant views of the world. I still miss the emancipatory dimension in this respect. And there is a lot of irritation going on at the moment. What should an individual party envision for the future? A continuation of the progress whose boundaries we clearly recognise is no longer an option. How should we deal with the question of balance with the third world, with the questions of social justice, the threats to the environment etc.? These are all discourses that have to be pursued and this has to be done with greater openness and more secure perspectives.

We need to start at three levels.

At the personal level with the question: What does this mean for our educational mission? What does it mean for the learning process, the persons involved, in the sense of “personalised learning”? To what extent is this going to affect the teacher’s role? I share the opinion that a tremendous change is needed in the teacher’s role and the teacher’s professionalism.

Strouhal:
Schools are made by people for people. The teacher’s role, from primary school to secondary school, is in a state of total transition. At the moment teachers are suffering from role-splitting: being expected to be a social therapist, a person of authority and even a service provider, rolled into one.

Dobart:
And a facilitator of interculturality etc., etc., etc.

Strouhal:
It is a role conflict that is hard to solve. Many of them suffer from not knowing: am I now an authority of the state – school is compulsory – or am I a friend, or a service provider for parents who are sometimes tired of child-raising.   

Dobart:
There are a lot of ambivalences. Formerly, the picture of homogeneity was dominant. The guiding principle of the schools was the homogeneous group of pupils, and although it was an illusion, it was accepted as definitive all the way down the line. But the fact is that pupils, for a variety of reasons, are becoming more heterogeneous and the job description of the “teacher” requires a substantial capacity to differentiate. This is unsettling and highly demanding and brings us to the next question: How do we initiate a process of empowerment? Teachers need suitable support systems. Not in the sense that they should call in experts as a matter of course, but in the sense that, on the one hand, they concentrate on the learning process and the pupil as a person, and, on the other hand, they also recognise where the pupil’s individual possibilities are insufficient and expertise from outside is required.

A second question:
What does this mean for the schools as an institution? At the moment, the institution “school” is in a temporal corset; it is too highly structured with regard to content; we need more openness in the institutional context. Here I’m thinking about project teaching, for example, as a basis for learning in heterogeneous groups.

We have initiated a discussion with experts on the subject: “How do we deal with the existing institutional structure?” “What does ‘learning organisation’ really mean? and “What are the motives for maintaining the existing structure?” Think about the controversial discussion of the past weeks on the question of teaching hours. Where was the pupil as a person in all this discussion? The only thing that was talked about was “an hour more or nothing”. It was an endeavour to keep something in the structure that in my opinion is out of date and is not suited to future developments.

Strouhal:
Even with all the individualisation and heterogeneity of the pupil generations, which in turn are only a reflection of a societal development, you can’t get along without a view of the world and an ideology! Because you have to ask yourself, I think, what kind of citizens you want to develop through school education. Do you want easygoing people, do you want people who show solidarity, do you want people who can assert themselves at any price in an elbow society? Are you going to put “success” on a par with “economic success” or is there perhaps something else, something more? And here is where the political arena is conspicuous for its silence. It is symptomatic how assiduously the discussion focuses only on organisational measures, whereas a discussion of “What do I want from and for people?” “Why am I working in this field?” no longer seems possible at all.

KKA: Is it “only” the field of education that is engaged in this discussion? Is there no discussion in society as a whole or at the political level? Is the arts sector involved in this kind of discussion, Dr. Strouhal?

Strouhal:
Yes, of course! You might say that is the actual focus of this year – even from a critical point of view. Obviously, the artist has become the “role model” for the so-called flexible person, the role model that the schools are supposed to convey.
Terms like “project teaching” and “interdisciplinary” can be seen as having been transposed one-to-one from the cultural field. Only, this transposition of terms from the field of art to the areas of school and work also has a catch. Because the artist is considered an “I Inc.” par excellence, in other words, someone who not only does a job but has a “vocation”, and works in systems with shallow hierarchies etc. (“The boss is going to get the pizza”), and is somehow “free”. The only thing is, such people very easily find themselves out of work. What we need to think about is whether we really want to make this flexible person, who changes jobs 21 times in the course of a lifetime, so competent that he/she will also change jobs a 22nd time. Should people remain in a precarious situation all their lives? Art is naturally a precarious situation, but is it a model for the working world? Or do we want something else? We might ask whether we perhaps want people with a sense of solidarity, who want to work together and have a friendly relationship with each other. This is the discussion I’d like to hear.

Dobart
I’ll agree with you when you say that views of the world can be engendered in people, nourished by the influences of the family, the schools and other things. These views of the world are also related to certain values. Therefore, we need to foster pupils’ capacity to build up a view of the world that is based on values. Not on something like the “survival of the fittest”; the dimension of solidarity has to be reflected much more strongly, not just solidarity with people but also with nature.

Strouhal:
But isn’t that also a “value” in the sense of social Darwinism?

Dobart:
I consider the building of a view of the world to be an important facet of general education. I think the “key competences” that we have agreed on in our European consensus form a good basis. On the one hand, there is the model of the “winner”, the human success story who leaves everything and everyone behind, and thinks he/she can survive and doesn’t need the community. This model certainly exists and is exemplified in many people’s lives. On the other hand, there is the growing realisation that the social element is important and necessary for society. You can’t force a view of the world onto people, it has to be experienced and lived; it has to grow. School is, I think, a place where this can happen, although we shouldn’t make too many demands on it in this respect. School is one of the few places where colourful social mixing is still occurring. There are groups that, for religious or cultural reasons, do not want this. Here we have to work intensively to find solutions.

It would also be a good idea to form study groups, communities, in the upper levels of secondary school. And I believe that, despite all the weaknesses of the American system, this is an integral element of school life there. Not only does it promote subject-related learning; it also supports social processes, particularly in the sense of raising awareness and perception, which is not an easy thing to do.

Strouhal:
I’m afraid that at the moment the education system in Austria is being “Americanised” without its having the economic or dynamic bases of the American education system. To add to what we said about our schools, also in a critical sense: Any kind of elite research you consult will tell you that family background is still much more significant than education. For becoming a member of a management board or an advisory board or a political party executive, background is by far a more important key qualification than education or achievement. Thus the achievement ethic, as it is currently advocated, is, for most people, a bad bet. Many of those who believe they can rise to become a member of the elite are ultimately disappointed. But isn’t it true that school policy amounts to nothing more than a series of organisational measures, without saying anything at all about what kind of society – in the aesthetic sense as well – it wants to educate people to build?

Dobart:
I wouldn’t say that we’re tending towards an Americanisation. I think that sounds too superficial. In the United States there are elements that could be very enriching and I have already given one example.

The third level we want to discuss this year, then – in addition to the level of individuals and the level of institutions – is the level of society. There is still too much belief in authorities and central controls. We need developments that will strengthen the elements of civil society, which are underdeveloped in Austria and have hardly any tradition in this country.

We need an interaction of these three areas, not just in order to fulfil an educational mission, which Hartmut von Hentig described as “to clarify things and strengthen people”. We can’t extrapolate logic any farther. In antiquity there was a cohesive cosmos – everyone had a specific place and a specific purpose. It wasn’t much different in the national state. Today there is an openness that allows for much more ambiguity and ambivalence. The question is how to make positive use of this.

And therefore we mustn’t demand too much of artists! To project too much into artists would be fatal. We have to ask how an individual personality develops. The starving artist of the 19th century, who had nothing but his freedom, is hopefully passé. There are people who try to put their “picture of a world” up for discussion and talk about it. This is where the process of bringing artists into contact with young people begins: motivating young people to present their worlds through films, pictures etc. and to enter into discussion. I see artists as people who “swim against the current”, who ask questions, who develop and seek pictures. Social projects are very important in this respect.

KKA: Music and other creative subjects have always been unjustly described as “luxury subjects”. What role can cultural education play here?

Strouhal:
I’m definitely not thinking of the school subject “art”, where art often becomes, in the negative sense, a free period. I’m thinking that the figure of the artist is beginning to become established in all subjects. But here, too, I would advise caution in order to avoid stereotypes: the unrecognised starving artist, dying of tuberculosis, is a typical cliché. This cliché also insinuates that the artist has something like freedom. One has to ask, freedom from what? When someone is informed that he is fired, it is sometimes expressed as being “shown the door”. Is this a door to freedom? Is he then an artist? Obviously not! So, what can we meaningfully associate with the term “artist”? For one thing, the unreserved way in which an artist sees things. All the artists I know are highly perceptive observers, who see things that I cannot see. The second important criterion is concentration. An artist is not someone who zaps from one programme to another with the remote control. Even if they sometimes pretend to be scatty, all the artists that I esteem work with tremendous concentration. A work of art needs a third thing, and that is a precise language. What the artist sees, in concentrating on the subject as if through a special lens, must be formulated in a precise language. This applies to all fields, whether it be mathematics, biology or economics. I believe that if someone has begun practising a musical instrument intensively at a certain age and has learned how long one has to work in order to play a score properly, then he or she is capable of transferring this (self-) realisation to other things. It doesn’t matter what kind of “music” you make. What is important is the knowledge that a skill requires enough time and practice to master it before you can work intuitively. An artist’s idea, which seems to be intuitive and emerge out of thin air, is not divine. It is based on tremendous experience. No one can achieve anything without this kind of work. This is the work of an artist and the insight that can be gained through art.

KKA: You advocate a greater integration of art and school?

Strouhal:
Yes, if you like. I think we can learn a great deal from artists. But we have to be careful that we don’t fall into the trap of clichés. Such clichés about artists are widespread and often prevalent among artists themselves: that everything comes easily, for instance, if you only have talent. The tremendous diligence and concentration that are needed to produce a work of art often remain a trade secret.

Dobart:
There’s the little anecdote about Haydn and the prince who played a musical instrument but liked only major keys until Haydn gradually got him interested in minor keys as well. Flexibility – another catchword – should not be used to mean jumping haphazardly from one thing to another to see what can be achieved somewhere; it should mean being open for new things as Dr. Strouhal has described, in particular for dealing with differences.

Strouhal:
There is also a fourth aspect – in addition to concentration, the gift of observation and precise language – and that is the artist’s critical and detached relationship to power. This is essential in order to be able to work in at least some kind of autonomy.

Dobart:
This requires space and time. The communication process is very important here: communicating how someone has worked on something with concentration and drawn conclusions for himself/herself. This has a lot to do with the fact that in a very controlled, structured world, this has not been happening enough. But using the basic human abilities that we’ve talked about here is no longer sufficient when we’re faced with such complexity that we don’t know where the future is. We have to ask ourselves: what are the key competences that will make us capable of action in the modern world?

Strouhal:
If you agree with me that concentration, intensity and the gift of observation are qualities that make it possible for anyone to live an artistic existence, it must be said that the highly controlled schools we have now allow no space for such qualities to even develop. There is another reason for this too, in my opinion: the schools as we know them are schools with their thumbs on the remote control – constantly zapping from one subject to another. This absolutely unproductive restlessness, combined with a lack of substance, seems to me to be the actual problem.

In primary and secondary school there is a battle of material going on, a hopping from one spectacular event to the other that barely gives the pupils or the teachers a chance to catch their breath. The important thing would be to create some space for taking a few deep breaths. Space, also, for taking into account, in grading, whether someone has dealt intensively with something – it doesn’t really matter with what – not only for a couple of hours, but for a couple of weeks. That would be a tremendous luxury at school! It makes no difference whether we’re talking about a mathematical or physical model or a picture; that is interchangeable. Creative achievement, as I define it, requires time, and time is what the schools are not providing at the moment. What we’ve got is a frenzied standstill, with everyone gasping and panting through the school year. Under these conditions, innovation and creativity are impossible.

KKA: About sustainability: What will be done – specifically in this European Year of Creativity and Integration – with these suggestions, with the results of the working groups? How can we make sure that people don’t just talk about these things, that what has been discussed will actually be introduced into the system? Next year is the European Year for Combating Poverty...

Dobart:
Such processes as you have just described require time and space. That means we have to stop over-regulating and start reinforcing individual responsibility, in order to become capable of building up our own views of the world and in order to make it possible for everyone to have their particular view of the world within a framework, a social community. That is why we need public schools. How do we achieve sustainability? Certainly not by keeping a set of examples at the ready and expecting everyone to copy them. Of course there is edutainment – as you have said – where people overdo it and think they have to give a PowerPoint presentation or something every day.

We’re dealing with ambivalences here. We have to start with the teachers. It is a difficult process, because it has a lot to do with personal views and structures. And we have to communicate with the parents, because we keep hearing about comments such as: “Project teaching is all very well, but when will you get back to learning something?” So there are deeply entrenched patterns that people have to be made aware of.

That’s why we had the idea of holding three conferences during the EYCI to bring together people with experience at the various levels and help them – also through theoretical knowledge – to further develop their reflections and pass them on to others.

In our first discussion I was considering a manifesto on innovation and creativity, but I’ve changed my mind and what I now think is that we need to pose more precise questions. We should not give answers, but rather state the questions more precisely.

This is what happened at the three conferences in the spring of 2009. The issues will all be put together at a major conference in October of this year. In addition, we plan to meet again a year later to see how far we have come. On this occasion, networks of schools and NGOs will be invited to report on their experiences. We would like to initiate exchange between as many parties as possible. I have considerable faith in networking. Basically we want to fight for more space. Space in which such reflection processes can take place. But we are involved in highly structured systems with widely diverse interests, which means that this will be a complex and long-term process.

However: It’s a public school system and there is still the fact that, as already mentioned, different degrees of opportunity exist, that the courses of careers often depend on the “subtle” difference, the cultural capital that people bring with them. Here is where the schools certainly have a compensatory mission, but it is a difficult one. The questions of interculturality and multilingualism present new challenges. It is a complex process that will definitely take time.

Strouhal:
A year like this serves mainly as a vehicle or a catalyst for existing projects. We can consider that we’ve achieved a great deal if we can strengthen some of the projects that are already underway and help them achieve a breakthrough. Perhaps it would be possible to combine creativity and innovation with the theme of poverty and to ask what creative and innovative options our society has to offer in order to battle these outrageous injustices – which have become even more obvious during the current crisis – as manifestations of a crisis of the system.

KKA: Thank you very much!

Anton Dobart is Head of Division I for Schools Providing General Education, Educational Planning and International Affairs, Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture (BMUKK) and initiator of the BMUKK’s programme for the EYCI, and Chairman of the Board, KulturKontakt Austria. He was formerly the director of the Zentrum für Schulentwicklung, an institution of the BMUKK devoted to school development, and is the author of numerous publications.

Ernst Strouhal is a professor of artistic and cultural sciences and art education at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He has published numerous books and is responsible for a large number of exhibition concepts.