Across the Second Watershed: Reclaiming Educational Leadership and Creativity as Humanistic Processes

• In Event: Roundtable Session 52
  In Roundtable Session: Humans in Paradise: Coping With Educational Predicaments

Abstract

Around the world, the ideas of educational “creativity” and “leadership” have become important rhetorical tools for political school reform efforts. This paper seeks to trouble the political uses of these concepts that have pressed them toward what Illich (1973) called the “second watershed,” the point at which they are counterproductive to their authentic humanistic forms. We examine their conceptual links in educational settings and their close similarity as natural human phenomena (Simonton, 1988). As such, they pose problems for authoritative, hierarchical educational institutions.

Authors

• Roger C. Shouse, The Pennsylvania State University

• Chenwei Ma