Creativity: The fight against the pioneer, entropy, and its antagonist, pedigree

By William C. Schillig

On March 24, 2008, the Washington Post reported: "The Hoyas, with their well-known pedigree" lost to Davidson in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, carried by a sophomore deemed not good enough to play in the bigger programs. Pedigree invokes a set of standards that proclaim to predict a certain outcome, whether it be in sports, breeding, or education. Two years ago, George Mason University reached the NCAA Final Four with a non-pedigreed team of ad-hoc players rejected by the larger programs. How many non-pedigreed players have we lost in the sports world—which seems to be the most fair of all professions in allowing exceptions to rise to the surface—because of quantitative evaluations? What about those professions that reside in the "arts"—music, theater, painting, sculpture, graphics, and architecture—the ones whose evaluations are not quantitative but primarily subjective?

Our "No Child Left Behind" law has pre-selected students not predicated on the arts. Depending on the state, county, and school, a student can be said to meet or fail pedigree standards of reading, writing, math, and, soon, science. How will this affect the colleges and their selection of students in arts programs? Will arts programs of advanced study seek out non-pedigreed individuals and adapt curricula to allow these individuals to flourish? Or will many of these students again starve, as was the case in the public school system? If the accountability of No Child Left Behind encompasses the university level will this create arts curricula more quantitatively evaluated?

Curricula are being challenged at the public school level by parents home-schooling their children. Beginning with the counterculture movement of the 1960s, through the religious movement of the '70s and '80s, home-schooling now has migrated to all groups because of the mobility of information through the Internet and flexibility of time allotted due to a less constrictive public school curriculum. Home-schoolers comprised two percent of school-aged children in 2003 (a 29 percent increase over 1999). Home-school learning now has the opportunity to become more purposeful, geared to the individual, and more directed in nature. Students take trips to museums, government facilities, parks, theaters, and so on to gain first-hand understanding of what is needed to attain the project of purpose. Students learn in an integrated manner out of necessity. Learning, in my teaching experience, has the most impact when it is meaningful, fun—or both. Home-schoolers will have a growing impact on higher learning. How will the pedigreed institutions adapt their curricula to accommodate this purpose-oriented, cross-curriculum direction?

When I taught architectural design at the university level in the 1970s, curriculum was loose and classes were based on design concepts—an "Idea of Ideas" as defined by Francis Bacon—rather than design categories. Students were given the task of coming up with a manifestation of the concept, no matter where it led. Ferrari, one of my teaching mentors, would say, "It's okay to start out designing a bicycle and end up with a washing machine, so long as you do not call the washing machine a bicycle." They were to acquire information as needed and proceed with the process to some type of conclusion—be it paintings, toys, photographs, sculptures, or drawings or models of buildings. The outcomes were totally individual. No student had to work on all the concepts presented. Research was done when necessary and frequently required students to take trips to actual sites or meet with architects. In those days, a student could miss class without penalty and make up the work as needed, something much more difficult to do today. Classes were highly pluralistic in nature, based on the individual and unpredictable, an anathema to pedigree and entropy. Different level students gravitated to my classes as information was not leveled or categorized by curriculum. I functioned as a resource and guide, along for the ride in the learning process. What was consistent was the level of dedication and enthusiasm that the students showed in their work and the amount of teaching that they did in sharing their results and processes with the other students. The class was like a one room schoolhouse with different levels of exchange.

Public institutions are advocates of student accountability—for what is being taught, for obeying rules, for attending class, and for following the curriculum because elders know what's best. This is a one-way, pedigreed, passive street. True pioneers of the future hold themselves accountable first and foremost to themselves, their ideas, desires, and dreams. It's an active, solid contract for a productive way of life, but one that may not survive today's educational system.

Where will the pioneers of the arts come from if public schooling has belittled the arts, and higher education does not counter by abdicating its pedigree path to success? The all-knowing professor of past styles as the judge of future success is quite staid in comparison to the nurtured imagination of today's young adults. Where will the Bruce Goffs, Bucky Fullers, Jersey Devils, and Rand Elliotts come from? Had Mozart succumbed to the dictates of Molieri, he, himself would have become as obscure.

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William C. Schillig is a recently retired instructor in Reston, Va. He counts 10 years as an elementary school teacher, 16 years as a university professor of architecture, and 10 years as a practicing architect.