Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

In his famous Rede Lecture of 1959, chemist and novelist C P Snow spoke of the separation of science and the humanities, and the lack of respect and understanding that often exists between the fields. He argued that this was detrimental to the future success of the country as many creative breakthroughs come from the interaction between the two cultures. Snow put a large part of the blame on what he called “our fanatical belief in educational specialisation” and focusing on “producing a tiny elite educated in one academic skill”. Unfortunately, not much seems to have changed.

I know a handful of people who are natural problem-solvers—skilled at identifying the root of an issue and taking keenly selected, highly efficient steps to achieve a desired outcome or change—but who claim they “aren’t creative.” Such attitudes and statements stem from a couple of things, not least of which is the false but lingering notion that creativity is for artists or the artistically-minded (untrue, as we’ll see below), and also includes the less commonly examined myth that problem-solving happens in the sciences and not the arts.