Claim your creativity with Joanne Foster
Resist a fear of creativity!
The text below is a transcription of the Minibabble episode above. A Minibabble is a shorter, thematically focused version based on one of our full-length episodes. In this Mini, we focus on creativity in American education and science, and how forces are at work to stifle it.
An assault on science
When I interviewed Dr. Joanne Foster about her research on creativity in March 2025, the assault on federal science funding in the United States had just begun. It was new and shocking and didn't quite seem like reality. Four months later, we are in a new reality. The current administration is dismantling the post-World War II system of turning small investments of federal dollars into the frenzy of talent, invention, innovation, and world dominance that the US has been known for.
When people think of creativity, they usually think of art, especially visual art. But creativity is a brain function that humans can apply to literally anything in their lives. From devising games to keep kids happy during long car rides to inventing vaccines that have saved millions of lives, creativity is all around us. When it comes to science, creativity fueled the enormous leaps that humanity has taken in the last 150 years. Joanne points out that creativity is the very basis for what we call progress.
“Progress is a matter of being creative, finding ways to problem-solve, finding new perspectives on things, and sharing them, not only me sharing them with others, but by listening to others and encouraging other people to listen to one another so that we can build upon each other's ideas and build upon our skill sets, too.”
What creativity is
I think it's instructive to listen to Joanne talk about what creativity is in order to realize why, perhaps, supporting creative endeavors, from elementary school through post-doctoral research, doesn't sound like a good investment to someone who thinks in dollars rather than in, let's say, sense.
“I think part of understanding creativity as a process, is it's not only about excitement and astonishment or wonder or imagination, it's about putting things together in ways that you might not originally have thought of.
“If you think of your brain as millions and millions of pathways of tangled vines going every which way, then think of having bursts of sparks, and these are called synapses, actually absolutely everywhere, flashing every millisecond, that’s sort of creativity in action.”
A unique American relationship with creativity
The history of the United States is a unique one. As the first modern state founded with the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, our people, whether native born or immigrant, have had an outsize influence on the scientific advances that underpin modern society. But America has also always had a tension between the thought and discovery that moves us forward, and an inborn cultural suspicion of learnedness and accomplishment.
Joanne tells us that creativity, though a native human ability, has to be nurtured and encouraged in specific ways.
“In relation to thinking, creativity involves stretching ourselves in new and imaginative ways. So we might want to do that convergently, that is by narrowing possibilities and then focusing into something really specific. We may want to do it by thinking divergently, which means that you have lots of different ideas all sort of floating around there, and you have to wean out the ones that are most appealing to you or that you think have the most value with respect to extending your creativity.
“And then you might want to think critically, too, when you're trying to be creative, because you want to at some point become more disciplined around your ideas and maybe analyze them and think further about them, and figure out what to do with them to take them to the next level.”
Creativity in problem-solving
A creative approach to problem-solving often meanders far and wide before coming to fruition.
“Creativity is not about an end point, necessarily. It's not about having an end product, like a completed poem or a beautifully decorated cake or a song, whatever it might be. If we look at creativity as kind of a journey, as a ‘getting there’ situation, as an opportunity to find your interests and your areas of strength and bolster your areas of weakness, then that might help people to stretch themselves if they're reluctant to do so.
“Another issue that often comes up with creative effort is impatience. People think, you know, ‘I'm gonna get started and it's gonna come out and it's gonna be beautiful and I'll be done in 15 minutes. Well, maybe 20 or maybe a half an hour.’ And then it takes longer and longer and longer. And sometimes they give it up. A lot of things take time. It took Edison—how long to create a light bulb?”
To answer Joanne's question, Edison worked on developing a working lightbulb for two full years, tossing aside over 3000 failures as he worked. In hindsight, that sounds like a great investment of time and funds, but what if he had to justify the usefulness of his experiments to a fiscal tightwad of a federal government? Weren't oil lamps good enough?
Why our educational system eschews creativity
Creativity takes time, and our educational system with its emphasis on testable outcomes doesn't have enough of it.
“I think that we are very focused on learning the foundational material that we have to learn, whether it's history, geography, math, science, and sometimes teachers are so busy trying to consolidate their curriculum and get everything in that has to be taught because it's mandatory that we don't necessarily value the creative aspects of the learning process enough.”
As a teacher, I have a particular dislike of an idea that was standard during Joanne's teacher education, Bloom's Taxonomy. In the 1950s, Bloom formed his levels of understanding, as he called them, into a pyramid. The way the pyramid is commonly understood by teachers, remembering and understanding facts is foundational, to be mastered first, while creativity is a complex action only to be performed when a student has mastered the other levels. But any of us who have worked with high achievers knows that it's their creativity with limited resources that they build their understanding on.
“You couldn't be creative until you could take the thing apart and put it back together in new ways. Well, yeah, that's part of being creative. But there's a lot more to it than just that. I think about, what can I build upon? What can I change? How can I help? What do I need to know? I think resourcefulness and resilience are far more important than having to follow some sort of structured, you know, ‘do it this way’.”
An assault on science is an assault on freedom
It's all of a piece: the steady defunding of our public schools and push to restrict teachers' creative freedom. The restriction of the flow of immigrants who have always fueled new creativity in our culture. The cutting off of funds to universities so that corporations will dictate which research gets funded.
The time we're living in now is the culmination of a long effort by a reactionary element in our culture: this part of American culture fears the freedoms we've been given, fears uniqueness and self-expression, fears progress that isn't controlled by the wealthy and powerful, fears a culture that steps outside of the ancient prejudices enshrined in books that were never meant to stand for all time as a literal set of instructions.
We are in a time of fear of creativity itself
But if history is our guide, this time, however awful, is also a prelude to a new blossoming of culture and innovation. Here's Joanne again.
“Ignore the naysayers. Stay positive. Stick with your guns. Be willing to think and explore in new and unexpected ways and try different strategies because that's how we develop new things. I mean, humankind is based on the creative efforts of the people who came before us and will continue to be so, right? So we really do have to continue to nurture creativity, whether it's in the arts or writing or science or technology or, you know, just get out there and be involved.”
Nothing will stop the blossoming of creativity
Creativity is an innate human attribute. But it can be stifled, so each one of us needs to step up and claim it. We need to hold it in front of ourselves like a protest sign and nurture it inside ourselves in the greenhouse of our mind. We need to value creativity in others and find ways to sustain it, especially when stronger forces react in fear and try to suppress it.
“Why be creative? Like with magic, creativity involves mystery and surprise. There's delight. Creativity is something you feel, embrace, express, stretch, and enjoy. It's a decision that can help you see fresh possibilities for tackling daily challenges and become happier. Creativity and is, is an outlet for your imagination and curiosity and for the wonder that lies within your soul.”
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Fear is at the root of what's happening today. I think it's about change for many. Change is scary. But some also feel their values are being eroded or disregarded. Consider the religious right. On Bloom, Creating is the top level, but creativity happens much earlier. You can't "construct meaning" or "interpret" without it. Often those "gifted" students are doing all of levels at once. They just didn't need explicit instruction to get there. But I also think you can ask students to create and have them come up with what they need to know about something as they try to figure it out. Just make sure Foundational Skills are in place first. For me, it's skills, not facts.