Creativity

The Need for Creativity

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  Genesis 1:1

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  Genesis 1:27

Humans are creative beings. We are because God is and He created us in His image. Creativity is a wonderful gift of God and its value should be encouraged in the educational setting. 

Often when we think of creativity we think of visual art, music or creative writing.  However, creativity is equally important for science, mathematics and even sports.  Without creativity we no longer have innovation, research or originality.

Recently I watched another TED talks video on the subject of creativity.  Ken Robinson spoke on the topic: Do schools kill creativity?   His premise is that they do.  Consider the following two quotes:
"We are now running national education systems this way; where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is, we are educating people out of their creative capacities."
"We don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it."  Robinson believes that we are squandering children's talents of inate creativity by creating a heirarchy of subjects--mathematics and language being at the top and the arts being at the bottom.

 

Now, I question whether many of Robinson's premises are true.  The fact that he states them and gives a cute anecdotal illustration has not quite convinced me. Who is to say that it is the educational systems and not just brain growth and development that changes how much risk people are willing to take in creative pursuits?  In addition, my view of humanity is quite different than his.  Whereas he believes the world would be a better place without humans, I disagree. However, what we do agree on is the importance of creativity in education.  I also agree with his statement that,  "Many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they are not because the things they were good at at school wasn't valued and stigmatized actually."

Often we tend to teach content.  We become curriculum driven.  At least I have felt the need to get the curriculum "done" by June and I have heard many of my colleagues express a similar sentiment.  What we tend to forget is to encourage creative thinking and allow for flexibility in the curriculum.  I need to remember to encourage curiosity in all subject areas and allow some freedom in how learning is demonstrated.  I try to remind students that mistakes are something we can learn from, but I am not always successful in getting this message across.

What I try to do regularly is celebrate different abilities.  Not everyone has strong literacy or math skills but quite often those individuals have strong artistic, athletic or people skills.  I try to create opportunities where those who may have weaker academic abilities can showcase their strengths.  I also try to remind parents in parent-teacher conferences that some "disabilities" can become marketable "abilities" if given the right context.

I wonder if the rise of technology is going to shift education away from content learning (you can just Google it anyway) to more skills-based learning. Perhaps with more digital technology in the classroom there will be more emphasis on creativity.  I only hope that the pendulum doesn't swing so far over to the other side that we forget that we have much to learn from what others have discovered and developed and that we will accomplish more if we stand on the shoulders of giants as Isaac Newton once said.