Zdenko Kodelja

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION AS INSTRUMENTAL VALUES

One of the most important aims of EU education policies is: “Enhancing creativity and innovation … at all levels of education and training”. But, it seems that, in this context, both creativity and innovation have predominantly – if not only – instrumental value. This means that both are supposed to be something good not because of their intrinsic properties but rather because they lead to other good things: “enterprise development and to Europe’s ability to compete internationally”. Since, here, creativity and innovation have a value only in virtue of being a means to an end, they are instrumental values. However, if this end (“enterprise development and Europe’s ability to compete internationally”) is not something that is valuable for its own sake but for the sake of something else to which it is related as a means to another end, then creativity and innovation have instrumental value only if this other end (that one which is the final end in the given means-end relation) has intrinsic value. For, there can be no instrumental value without intrinsic value. The main purpose of this paper is to show that creativity and innovation in the context of EU education policies have, at best, instrumental value and that the genuine aim of education is not “enhancing creativity and innovation” but rather “enterprise development and Europe’s ability to compete internationally”. For this reason, education is treated by politicians primarily as a means of improving the economic situation in the EU, by helping to provide the kinds of workers that are equipped with the kind of competences which involve creativity and the ability for innovation.

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