George Bernard Shaw has a lot to answer for. Intentionally or not,
the man who coined the phrase ’He who can does, he who cannot teaches’,
has probably done more damage to the cause of education in this country
than any other individual.
While the saying contains an element of truth, it has also created an
anti-educationalist state of mind in this country not evident anywhere
else. How else can we explain the way teachers are revered in, say,
Europe and Asia, but reviled in the UK? Nor is this attitude restricted
to primary and secondary education: it still permeates every structure
and level of society.
We all know it’s daft, but the prejudice lives on - as evidenced by the
scepticism with which some have greeted the news of Patrick Collister’s
plan to set up a school for creatives. You don’t have to read too
closely between the lines to see what they’re thinking: ’Couldn’t cut it
at Ogilvy & Mather, so he’s setting up a school. Pah! And he’s planning
to teach creativity. Double pah!’
However, it’s not so much Shaw’s aphorism that we ought to challenge -
in Collister’s case it is self-evidently nonsense - so much as the twin
assumptions (perhaps prejudices would be a better word) that the critics
are also levelling at Collister: one, that creativity cannot be taught;
and two, that there’s no need to teach it anyway because, naturally,
creatives know it all - the sort of negative double whammy which seems
to have destroyed John Gillard’s School of Communication Arts.
Let’s start with the first, which seems to have its roots in the notion
that advertising is a form of art, and art is all about inspiration, not
applied perspiration - and therefore impossible to teach. I find this a
curious attitude, to say the least. Advertising is about problem
solving, about taking the client from where they are, which is point A,
to where they wish to be, which is point B. Whatever creativity is
applied must be done so within a framework - one bounded by context,
history, budget, time and possibility. These are the very real
disciplines that impinge on creativity - and helping people to think,
which is what teaching boils down to, can only be beneficial.
And, as for the idea that creatives don’t need to be taught anything,
well, I find this hard to comprehend too. One of the great virtues of
the UK ad industry is the continuous training educational infrastructure
available to account managers, planners and media folk. Why, I even know
a couple of chief executives who slip out now and then for a bit of
private coaching.
So what makes creatives so different? Nothing, as far as I can see, and
yet the very quality that you would want creatives to exhibit above all
the other disciplines - an open mind (not to mention a sense of
humility) - seems to be curiously lacking when it comes to further or
ongoing education.
Curious too when you consider that others whose livelihood depends on
their individual excellence - athletes, actors, opera singers - all
employ their own equivalents of Patrick Collister.
