Here's the typical article that thinks "professionalism" and "creativity" are the opposite of each other. In my view, creativity emerges through discipline, in both senses of the word. I had a student once who thought he was creative but pronounced the word "gozo" with a voiced sibilant. He was a graduate student. Being creative in scholarship means doing it better, not more lazily as many people seem to think.
I agree with this in the spirit in which you clearly mean it, but then again do not. "Professionalism" so often does not mean expertise but conformity, and there is also the Woolf critique of professionalism and professionalization ... which is not the same as the argument that we should all be gentleman scholars.
ReplyDeleteCool teaching materials on the Woolf text I am talking about -- http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/courses/sexgender/f05/day24.html