Creative Impulse in Industry: A Proposition for EducatorsMarot, Helen
Science
Creative Impulse in Industry: A Proposition for Educators
Marot, Helen
Business and education -- United States; Technical education -- United States; Working class -- Education -- United States
As America and the greater part of Europe have been for over a century
devoting their attention to coping with specific scientific and
economic problems, is their manhood due to appear? Is the raw,
immature character of present day association and interdependence to
be enriched by sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness and
openness of mind? In the midst of this world war I venture no
prediction on the appearance of manhood. But clearly there is a line
of action for educators to pursue. Clearer than ever before it is
evident that it is the business of educators to see that schemes of
education are introduced which do not fit children into a system of
industry that serves either Empire or business, but a system that
serves whole-heartedly creative enterprise as it might be pursued in
the period of youth as well us in adult life. Within the past century
and particularly in the past generation we have made brave efforts at
coöperation, but our failures to realize the spirit of coöperation are
as notorious as the efforts themselves. The effort to work together in
industry has been brutal rather than brave. We shall account for this
brutality in industry and recognize why the spirit for coöperation in
other fields has failed, as we distinguish between a puerile desire
of individuals to express themselves and their impulses for creative
enterprise.
As industry through the ages has changed from the isolated business
of provisioning a family to the associated work of provisioning the
world, it has blazed a pathway for relationships which are socially
creative. But art in social relationships will not be realized until
a passionate desire for the unlimited expression of creative effort
overcomes inordinate desires of individuals for self-expression.
Art in living together is possible where the intensive interest of
individuals in their personal affairs and attainments, in their social
group, in their vocation, in their political state, is deeply tempered
by a wide interest and sympathetic regard for the life of other
groups and people. Art in social relationships is contingent on broad
sympathies and extended relationships, and it is contingent as well
on ability to work for social ends while remaining in large measure
disregardful of the personal stakes involved. Because of our inability
to lose our personal attachment for our own work, because of what it
may yield us in personal ways, the world never yet has experienced the
joy and creative possibility of associated effort And because it has
not we have still to experience art in social contact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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