Session 4: Creativity

Creativity seems to be all the rage in education these days. This summer Newsweek had a whole magazine dedicated to the issue. Yet, I wonder how much of this focus is coming about as a counter balance to the government mandated standards that are in place? It is hard to encourage creativity when students have a set of facts they are required to memorize.



For this course, I was asked to take a look at Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity. Intermixed in this comedy routine were a few points worth mentioning. Ken says we should treat creativity as importantly as we treat literacy. He wonders out loud how we manage to kill a childs ability to take a chance and be wrong as they progress through the years of schooling. Then he says that the education system punishes mistakes. I agree with that point because the government mandated standards are either right or wrong. You don't have room to make mistakes. Students who make mistakes cost schools. I particularly liked his comments about the hierarchy of subjects in education. He says that math and science are at the top, followed by the humanities, with the arts bringing up the rear. Even in the arts some like music and visual arts are more important than something like dance. This jelled nicely with a comment I heard recently from Diane Ravitch. She said every child should be required to learn to play a musical instrument just like we require math or science. Her arguments in favor of this were that it required practice to get good, brought benefit to society, and when you got good at it you could do it with others. I digress, the final point from the talk that I agreed with was his comment that our educational system was designed for the 19th century industrial world. On this I agree whole heartedly. We can not prepare students for 21st century work in a 19th century system.



As part of this session, I have also had the opportunity to explore the TED videos more closely. So far I am pretty impressed. I plan to spend more time exploring some of these short informative videos.