Injecting Creativity in Society for Possible Futures of Improved Ethics and Equity

The notion of social justice requires our capacity to imagine possible alternative societies as well as the determination to work, collectively, towards actualizing them. By considering certain forms of social organization as natural, and obscuring their purely conventional character, we would be effectively denying the possibility of any competing societies from being imagined. The imposition of a unique model for society can become a strong source of social injustice and discrimination between diversified groups. Whoever is able to build the strongest castle of pre-conditions that affect the way in which other groups are perceived in their way of life holds a subtle but very real form of power. In this chapter, we show that creativity can provide a way out from this deadlock. The first element is to realize that in the Information Society creativity is not a luxury, but a real necessity. The second element is to analyze how the introduction of creativity in education has several benefits, and that the consideration of creativity has the potential to affect ethics and equity for admissions to higher education and gifted programs. The third element involves introducing a “pedagogy of the possible,” in which creativity becomes intertwined with powerful concepts like hope, anticipation, utopian thinking, and wonder. By nurturing these fundamental concepts in students, it is possible to push the boundaries of social justice and discover that what was considered an impossibility can be reached.