Phipps, Ronald P.  “A Whiteheadian Theory of Creative, Synthetic Learning and its Relevance to Educational Reform in China.”  In Alfred North Whitehead on Learning and Education: Theory and Application.  Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005: 159-198.

Abstract

The theory of creative synthetic education holds that curiosity should function as the driving force in educational systems.  Education must concurrently transfer the knowledge resultant from antecedent processes of discovery and enhance the lure felt by students for future discoveries and innovations.

     Educational systems must lead students on journeys of curiosity and develop a passion in students for discovery.  To do so, synthetic and relational modes of thought are essential to achieve the generalizations of insights that are the foundation for wisdom.  Research processes appropriate to local conditions, interests and abilities must pervade educational processes from primary to secondary to advanced stages of learning.  Analytic and synthetic modes of thinking must be integrated and harmonized.

     The reform of education systems is vital to China and, moreover, constitutes a task of increasing global importance.  Education, as Whitehead stressed, must move beyond passive absorption of inert ideas and facts.

     Progressive educational systems must develop forms and modalities to stimulate and nurture the innovative, imaginative and creative capacities and passion of students.  These methods and modalities requisite to stimulating creativity and synthetic modes of thought must transcend the limitations inherent in over reliance upon standardized examinations.  Only if and when educational systems do so, can education contribute to the vibrant and vigorous advance of human civilization from lower to higher levels.  Synthetic creative education guides students and teachers as co-participants on journeys of curiosity amid communities of related problems and related phenomena, which journeys are resolved through adventures of discovery and generalization of insight.  Such processes form the foundation of wisdom and provoke the experience and emotion in students of exhilaration for the intrinsic value of learning and discovery.