My young son frequently asks me ‘what if’ questions. ‘What is there is an earthquake in Singapore?’ ‘What if aliens landed?’ ‘What if dinosaurs came back to life?’ You will be familiar with the sort of thing, charming for the first few hours perhaps, but I eventually find myself saying, ‘It will never happen, you don’t need to worry about it.’ My motivation to prevent nightmares is (of course) pure, but I worry about stifling these creative questions for many reasons; not least that I love the hypothetical questions myself. It’s always seemed to me that we can learn a great deal from wondering, and letting the imagination flow freely; it’s at the root of great science, great art, great literature, great engineering, great economics, great law, great maths, great business. At the root of great thinking in fact. I sometimes feel that this is not widely appreciated in everyday life; often the more formal arts of logic and critical thinking get top billing – especially when they are seen as linked to national economic development, or career enhancement. Governments often pay lip-service to imagination, and to the Arts, but when it comes to the crunch, they fund science and technology courses, slash the arts when funds are tight. And logic and analysis are often stressed in various national curricula.
Now, as a maths teacher I would certainly not want to underplay the importance of logic and analysis, but logic is to maths what grammar is to literature; necessary and of interest in its own right, but ultimately not the point. And ultimately, in service of something more important. So what is that more important thing that we need? Psychologist Maslow, in his famous hierarchy of needs, claimed that we have a pyramid of needs we can ascend – once we satisfy our basic needs for food and drink, we can address our needs for security, property, and then move on to needs for friendship, family and so on. At the top of the pyramid are the so-called self-actualisation needs like creativity. Maslow’s hierarchy is not without its issues, for sure, but there is something in it; it’s hard to get excited about things like imagination and the Arts if you are worried about hunger or unemployment.
So, back to the free-flowing imagination; here’s a thought experiment for you. If somehow technology progressed to a point where all our basic needs were totally met, would that automatically make people happy? What would people do? We are in the realms of speculation here, but it seems to me that we can learn something from Maslow here – we would still have the urge to create, to express ourselves, to use our imagination. Freed from the lower order needs, we would migrate to the top of the pyramid.
If that’s right, then we have to ask ourselves something really important – why don’t we spend a little more time at the top of the pyramid anyway? Why don’t we make more room in our lives for the things that enrich it so much – the music, art, dance, literature theatre where imagination and creativity are most obviously manifested? Why do so many students regard the arts as second-class disciplines, and feel that ‘real learning’ happens in the sciences, in maths, in economics? It cannot be that we are really short on the Maslow’s basics – most of us are rich enough that the lower order needs are not an issue. Perhaps it is because we have become confused between what we want and what we need; that is, we have so many things to distract us from the really important things at the top of the pyramid that we lose sight of their importance amidst the noise of everyday life. We are distracted by the gorgeous gadgets, and think we need them when in fact we just want them.
So behind my son’s questions, I saw an underlying worry about his lower need for security and I could reassure him that the night would be earthquake-free, alien-free, and dinosaur-free. I hope in future to be able to encourage him to keep using his imagination (hopefully more constructively), and as well as meeting his immediate needs, to help him stay ambitious. Ambitious not for more and more material needs, but ambitious to express himself creatively and imaginatively, much like I hope for all the students at UWCSEA.
