I came across a list of traits that creative people should possess. While studying the traits listed I wondered whether such traits would be welcome in schools as we traditionally know them today. Will schools be able to cope with such people? More specifically, will schools in Singapore ensure that the nurturing of creative people become one of its hallowed goals?

Singapore schools have long prided itself on an examination-centric system and also on characteristics like team work and discipline. The last two often are just an euphemisms for rigid and unquestioning conformity. The examination-centric approach is never healthy for the kind of divergent thinkers, non-conformists, the imaginative and the severely critical, traits that usually characterize the creative. Neither is the mis-emphasis on team work and discipline

Will schools in Singapore be able to recreate the school environment to encourage such traits? How do schools create an environment where habits of minds related to creativity like persistence, intuitiveness, adaptability, tolerance to ambiguity and even risk-taking? What must schools in Singapore give up before such traits can be seriously nurtured?

Recently, my wife and I went to an ATM to get some money. When we arrived at the ATM station, there was a single long queue of people who wanted to do the same. There were two ATMs at the station but no one seems to be using one of them. My wife, like all the other people probably, assumed that the other machine could not dispense with cash.

We waited patiently in the queue.  Then a woman walked up to the line of people and she bean staring hard at the other machine. It seemed to be working because we could see that the screen was on. However we had all made the inference that it could not dispense with cash. The lady stared again at the machine and then she asked me if that machine was working. I said that it probably could only not dispense with cash and that is why everyone had formed one queue and had not used that particular machine.

The lady still continued to stare hard at the machine and eventually she went up to it and tried to get some cash from the machine. And it worked! She was able to get her cash. I couldn’t help but laughed at the situation. I could see that most of the others in the queue either looked a little bemused or a little flabbergasted.

Meanwhile, the lady left the ATM smiling happily, probably thinking how dumb the rest of us had been for standing in the queue and not using the other machine. Honestly, she deserved her little victory because she had the thought to managed her impulsivity to think like the rest in the queue had done, and she thought of another possibility. This is what Art da Costa and Bena Kallick describe in their Habits of Mind framework about the need to manage impulsivity. They also talked about taking responsible risks. I failed as I had assumed the worst. But I consoled myself that I had passed too somewhat because I could still find humor in the experience. Finding humor is also part of the Habits of Mind framework.