13. I notice that “critical thinking” and “creativity,” once they become educational bureaucrat or management consultant jargon, lose all meaning. Critical thinking comes to mean a series of rather routine elemental academic tasks. Creativity means creating an amusing doodle or cartoon of a business plan. Yet is what I’m doing, in defining poetic thinking, not just the same thing, susceptible to the same reductions?
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This problem arises when consultants (and sometimes teachers) present themselves as motivators -- of creatitivity or critical thinking or writing or poetry -- rather than instructors. Their pedagogy is all about getting people to do things at all, rather than helping them to do it well. So when the client/student proudly shows them their "work" (or, in the case of creativity, often their "play") they feel compelled to approve of the product. That sets the bar very low.
There's a weird presumption that people wouldn't be critical or creative if they weren't encouraged. The truth is that it's hard to do these things effectively. The most annoying management consultants (and, again, teachers) are the ones who act like you had never thought of their banalities before.
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