There has been much debate over the subject of creativity in education, and whether it diminishes the opportunity to develop/expand imaginations or simply help it.
To understand why creativity is important in education, we must understand its usefulness within today's society.
As mentioned in my previous post, without creativity we would not know much, or have many of the modern day things that we use every day. Various things such as telephones, laptops, even our clothing or the structure of our houses would be non-existent if they were not thought of by various individuals, our every day lives would be drastically different if humanity was without it, and its importance cannot be stressed enough.
The question of its importance in education is therefore answered, as creativity can be nourished and should be nourished in children, an efficient way of developing this imaginative state of mind is to be helped by teaching professionals at a location that stimulates the mind, in other words, school. But does it?
The famous TEDtalk by a man named Ken Robinson given in 2006 suggested not, raising points that got people across social media (which was gathering popularity at the time, such as Facebook being created two years prior), there are two main points that Robinson points out;
1) That every person begins with a desire to be creative and make things for themselves, and mainstream schools suppresses this desire.
2) It's importance in the 21st century is growing rapidly in personal, cultural and economic ways.
After watching the video you are inclined to agree, Let's first consider a child's daily routine within a school. Firstly, they arrive at a chosen time to the same location for a maximum of 7 years and do mostly the same activity every day. This involves a lesson, another lesson, break, lesson, dinner and finish off with another lesson, all given usually within a classroom (excluding the breaks & dinner). The lessons mostly consist of the teacher giving information to the pupils, and then asking the children to simply repeat what they have learnt, with the possibility of punishment if the answer is incorrect. Granted that these style of lessons are an effective way of teaching what needs to be taught, but this is proof that there is hardly room for stimulating the mind in a creative manner, there is not much imagining or problem solving skills happening in the classroom which raises the question; are we allowing the children to think for themselves or simply being told what to think? In this talk, Robinson mentioned something that struck me as a whole, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original". This got me thinking about our education system and the way we punish if a child has question wrong, they are sometimes even put on the spot with all of their classmates listening to see if they provide the right answers, this can create an overwhelming fear of trying something new for the child or reaching out in some way, therefore this natural love for simply doing in children is replaced with the thought of "Will I fail?" this can be emphasized by one of John Holt's book of "How Children Fail" (1964)
No comments:
Post a Comment