Creativity in Schools...

"Do you agree or disagree with Sir Robinson? In the video, he makes some pretty serious statements such as "I feel creativity should be as important as literacy in today's schools." Do you agree or disagree with this statement. Why or why not? What have your experience with creativity been in the past? How do you express yourself?"

The first thing that I would like to reflect upon concerning Sir Robinson's speech is his statement that "All kids have tremendous talents, and we squander them". I completely and utterly agree with this statement. I feel that all students have talents, but the majority of them are not in the areas that we consider 'important'. So many students are talented in the art and trades like carpentry and machine tool, but these subjects are barely covered in our school systems. Schools look at students who are three grades below their reading/writing levels, or extremely behind in math and see them as 'unintelligent, untalented children', when in reality most of the are exceedingly talented in other things. For example, I know of a student that is pretty average academically (she maintains a B average or so), but she captures the interest of every single person in the audience when she is on the dance floor. I also know of a former classmate who has extreme literacy problems, but is making amazing money (more than I will as a teacher!) as an underwater welder. When our schools do not support talents other than those in English, math and the sciences, we are leading these students (often the majority) into thinking that their talents are nothing of importance. I love Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, because it supports the fact that everybody is intelligent at something!

I love Ken's statement about children that 'if they don't know, they'll take a go'. Children are always guessing at things, because they do not have the knowledge yet to know the right answer. Children use their imagination to come up with the answer to something that they do not quite yet understand. Our schools, however, frown upon the use of imagination to reason something- they want 'critical thinking' skills instead. They put so much pressure on students to be right, that slowly this wonderful skill of imagination is dead, with logical thinking in its place. In order to keep creativity, it is important not to concentrate so much on the 'right' answer, but the fact that they thought of an answer and were courageous enough to take the risk on it. Giving a wrong answer, or even just an answer that is different from the norm, opens the eyes of people. When the first person suggested that the earth might be round, everybody thought he was wrong, but in the process he opened the eyes of others to get them thinking. This is an extremely important process that we need for the future- people need to open their minds to possibilities that are not possible yet! Students need to feel that it is OK to be wrong and that sometimes wrong answers turn out to be not-so-wrong. Even if the students are wrong, it should be stressed that people learn from their mistakes and they grow as a person. If you never made mistakes you would not know what it would be like to learn.

Everybody has a different way of thinking and brains work in different ways. One of my best friends in high school had a thought process that was extremely different then everybody else. In physics, she would often times come up with the right answer but she had used the most original means of getting that answer. The method that she used could have been viewed as 'wrong' by the teacher because it was not what we were supposed to do, even though she did have the right answer at the end. Students should feel comfortable enough in their classroom environments to feel that it is OK to think differently and OK to be wrong sometimes. To be wrong means that you will ultimately learn from your mistake, and eventually be right. To be comfortable with being wrong means that you will take chances and risks. All scientists and engineers need to be comfortable with being wrong, because the majority of the time they are! To make our students believe that they need to be right all the time, diminishes their risk taking and subsequently squanders their imagination and creativity. They are too scared to think 'out of the box' or come up with something that the world views as out of the norm or impossible. If we continue to make our students believe that wrong answers are bad ones, then we are killing the next generation of engineers, scientists, doctors, authors and all other careers that need imagination.

I also completely agree with his theory of academic inflation. I feel that our society stresses way too much on the importance of getting a college education. In all honesty, I feel that I could have became a successful teacher without going through four years of college. Being in the classroom learning about how to do your job has suddenly become more important than actually being out in the field practicing the job itself. People learn from doing, not memorizing and taking tests on how to do. Our schools are built upon the idea that they need to educate students in order for them to be successful in college. Rather, I think our schools should educate to create well-rounded exceptional human beings instead. Our world would be a much kinder place if we emphasized the importance of human behavior more than human achievement.

I completely agree with all aspects of Ken's statements, including the statement that he thinks creativity is just as important as literacy. In reality, we would not have literacy without creativity. Someone had to come up with the letters to the alphabet, and that required original thought. All writers are writers because they are creative and have original thought, or else nothing new would ever be published. We expect our students to write creative stories, but limit their imagination and creativity by giving them constant boundaries and telling them what is right or wrong. We put so much emphasis on grammar, but its the fact that the student is expressing themselves that is important. Many famous authors have absolutely horrible grammar. What attracts people to new books is the plot point, the creativity of the story itself, not how the sentences are structured.

Fortunately, my education provided me with ways to express myself other than in the form of writing and academics. I enjoyed being 'different' unlike most students and I was able to experience gifted and talented classes, which always sought out to harbor our inner creativity. The gifted and talented students were able to put on plays and create inventions like Rube Goldberg machines. Unfortunately it was only the students who excelled in the 'regular' academics of English and math that were allowed to experience other ways to express yourself. In reality, the students who needed that other means of expression to boost their self-esteem by possibly finding something that they excelled in, were trapped in the classroom doing what they did not excel in. However, they were allowed to join band in fourth grade. I began to play the flute and explored other instruments until our band class was dropped due to finances when I was a senior. The most important class that I feel I took my entire high school career was drama. That year they had an extra slot open during the day for the juniors because they had dropped an SAT preparation class, so they put all juniors into two drama classes. We explored famous plays and were taught how to express our emotions on stage. At the end of the year we put on a play for the entire school, which each member of the class participating in some way (the one student who did not want to be on stage, controlled the lights and camera). I feel that every student should have to take a drama class at some point in their education. Drama teaches you how to deal with your emotions and put pain/negative emotions towards growth and positivity. The arts and shop classes allow those students who do not excel academically to find something that they do excel in, an important thing to find during your adolescent years when you are searching for your identity.