General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsInside the Box: People don’t actually like creativity.
In the United States we are raised to appreciate the accomplishments of inventors and thinkerscreative people whose ideas have transformed our world. We celebrate the famously imaginative, the greatest artists and innovators from Van Gogh to Steve Jobs. Viewing the world creatively is supposed to be an asset, even a virtue. Online job boards burst with ads recruiting idea people and out of the box thinkers. We are taught that our own creativity will be celebrated as well, and that if we have good ideas, we will succeed.
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Unfortunately, the place where our first creative ideas go to die is the place that should be most open to themschool. Studies show that teachers overwhelmingly discriminate against creative students, favoring their satisfier classmates who more readily follow directions and do what theyre told.
Even if children are lucky enough to have a teacher receptive to their ideas, standardized testing and other programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top (a program whose very designation is opposed to nonlinear creative thinking) make sure childrens minds are not on the wrong path, even though adults accomplishments are linked far more strongly to their creativity than their IQ. Its ironic that even as children are taught the accomplishments of the worlds most innovative minds, their own creativity is being squelched.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)education system has primarily taught conformity and obedience above all for many generations.
There are very real and critical problems in our education systems, even though turning it over to profit-seeking parasites is no answer at all.
NJCher
(35,730 posts)I am going to use this in my work. I am a former advertising creative person turned college professor.
I rarely find creativity in my students. When I do find it, I feel like doing the happy dance. It is so rare that I can go for years without seeing a creative student.
My techniques are creative and classes don't like it. They want the same-old same-old so they know what to expect. All they can do is by rote. Read the book, answer the questions.
Don't ask them to demonstrate a technique or show they can do something as a result of this learning. They can't.
For years I would get these comments on my teaching evals that said they thought the course was disorganized. When I approached my department head for help, he looked at my organization practices and found nothing amiss.
We eventually figured out that what the students were saying was they did not know what to expect at each class (the way the class was "organized" . So now I give them the same-old same-old. They eat it up. Everybody's happy (except me--that I can't use my creative ideas).
Yep, it's sad. I wonder what we're going to do for creative people in the future. Thank dog for immigrants.
And as for me, I'm trying to find teaching opportunities with the gifted. That is one place where creativity is valued.
Cher
bhikkhu
(10,724 posts)especially in math, sucked all the enjoyment and creativity out of it. In working toward my degree online a few years back I re-took a more difficult version of a math class I'd barely passed in school. I found that it was really interesting to be able to research and play with problems outside of a strict time schedule and without supervision. If a type of problem was hard to "get", now you can google up and survey different explanations and techniques from teachers and universities all over the world.
The "right way" to solve a problem is usually far from the only way, and being able to range around the different perspectives in a leisurely manner, being able to turn a problem over upside-down and backwards over a period of days, is a great way to really understand things. Of course, that's not how anything is really taught, and if you don't use the quickest-path solution (which is often a memorized shortcut that hides the real mechanics of the problem) you probably fail any timed test. To some extent, school itself is a timed test, designed to pack in the maximum volume of learning in the minimum time.
I'm encouraged that the Common Core testing is bending things back to word problems, which do put more emphasis on actually understanding problems and being able to communicate real solutions. What I tell my kids when they complain about how its hard is that nobody gets anywhere without work, talent or genius included. The best strategy is to find a way to make the work enjoyable, and then practice as much as you can get away with.