Inventiveness

Harry Potter’s potion-making ability soars when he follows alternate instructions scribbled in his Advanced Potion Making textbook (pic from the fandom wiki). The textbook’s previous owner remains mysterious through most of the namesake Half-Blood Prince, but is revealed at the end as none other than Severus Snape. Meanwhile in class, Hermione is miffed by the inferior results of her doggedly following the official instructions – the equivalent of the lab manual in chemistry courses. How did Snape improve on the lab manual? He must have been quite the talented student to try things out for himself to yield better results. Perhaps that’s why he is a potions master.

But Snape was going a lot further in his magical education. He was inventing new spells! Several are mentioned by name including muffliato, levicorpus, and sectumsempra; they range from useful-harmless, to amusing, to downright life-threatening. Hermione may have been right to beware of trying something out without knowing what it does, as Harry learns the hard way to his chagrin. How does one invent a new spell anyway? I’m sure it has to be much more than combining some well-chosen Latin phrases and flicking or swishing your wand with the appropriate hand movements. Otherwise I’d expect lots more folks doing it.

At Hogwarts, Harry does not invent any new spells – in fact he’s an average student academically. Hermione is excellent academically, but called “narrow-minded” by Luna’s father; perhaps this blinkers her from creative invention. In contrast, we learn in Deathly Hallows that the young Dumbledore was both academically brilliant and creative – probing the cutting edge of magical knowledge as he corresponded with the top magical users of the day, and was celebrated in the leading magic-academic journals. And the main antagonist of the series, Voldemort (“flight of death”), went further than most in developing the Dark Arts – inventing new spells and magic.

Part of what makes books 6 and 7 in the series engaging is broadening the focus away from the three young protagonists (Harry, Ron, Hermione) to flashbacks and memories of three powerful inventive wizards (Dumbledore, Voldemort, Snape). The latter three encounter challenges, tragedy, and loneliness in early life. Could this be a source of their creativity? Witness the many homages to Steve Jobs. Or does creativity require a hint of madness, as hinted by the Greeks? Or perhaps an appropriate balance of stimulation and rest? What are the conditions that foster genius?

Today’s higher education punditry is awash with “innovation” and teaching for creativity. Can it be taught? Must it be caught? Is it innate? Or is it fostered with a growth mindset? We’re all worried about robots taking away our jobs. Perhaps creativity is the last bastion that A.I. will not conquer as it machine-learningly grinds its way to some solution. The flash of insight, the novel imagination – are these human-only traits? Listen to the clarion calls for creatively overhauling our education systems. Sounds good – until you wade into the weeds. How exactly do you teach for creativity? Having delved through the literature, and wearing my scientist-hat, I can say that the whole business remains murky. I contrast this to the pundits wearing their wizard-hats touting their magical solutions.

One significant challenge in being inventive is that coming with something both novel and useful requires having a fair amount of area-knowledge. Genius solutions don’t spawn from the ignorant novice, especially if you’re looking for something that is useful to a significant degree. You don’t need a fancy academic degree to be creative, but you need to know enough stuff, or have a prepared mind so to speak. And as a field progresses in depth of knowledge, the breakthroughs can only come when you have enough basic (and possibly detailed) knowledge. But you have to hold that knowledge lightly. It should not be a stricture that you doggedly follow, but a launch-pad that widens your horizons.

I’ll be honest. I don’t think I’ve come up with anything of genius in my research. There have been some innovative things, clever little bits, that one might even call creative solutions. There is some novelty and some usefulness in some of the papers I’ve published, but these swirl in an ecosystem of related ideas already out there. Maybe my training has made me blinkered, although I don’t think so. People have called some of my teaching ideas creative, but what seems novel to someone else is something I’d been working on for a while – and I read a lot in the area. I’ve come up with creative projects for students in class, tinkering at the edges of fostering creativity, but enlightenment remains elusive as I muck in the mirk. (This blog is my creative outlet!)

Oddly enough, I’m not bothered by all this uncertainty. Maybe it’s age, and that my perspective of life changes as I look through a rearview mirror that increasingly captures more of my years. I look forward to trying a few new things in my classes. Small changes that I can build on. Maybe I’m not smart enough. Maybe I’m too cautious. Maybe I’m not driven or ambitious enough. Maybe I’m more Hufflepuff than Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, or Slytherin. Or maybe I’m just not willing to work hard enough at it.

Dumbledore, Voldermort, Snape. Different generations. Maybe each generation has its one rare outstanding inventive magic-user. Who would this be in Harry’s generation? I’d like to suggest Neville Longbottom. We start to see hints of ability first in Herbology as he is encouraged and gains confidence. In Deathly Hallows, Seamus remarks that Neville truly “gets” the Room of Requirement. And although we are not told why or how, Neville eventually becomes a Hogwarts professor. I suspect there was both talent and inventiveness combined with knowledge. It’s a reminder to me as a teacher to encourage my students. It’s a reminder to me as a sort-of-student to continue persevering in my own learning. I can still be inventive!

P.S. Thus closes my re-reading of the Harry Potter books. My last five blog posts highlight my thoughts from the first five books – and I’ve mostly focused on education!