Are we killing creativity in our learners?

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I spent time in a new entrant class recently. I gave them a photo of a head, and a blank piece of paper and told them to finish the picture. I told them to be creative, I wanted to see the most wacky, out there picture I'd ever seen. I wrote down some of their stories...


This is a sheep in the city in Africa, and this thing is oxygen that is going into his body. 

A bear got bitten by a lizard and now he is half bear, half lizard. Everyone thinks he's a monster but he's actually friendly.

The bird ate a bug and grew some horns and squids legs. 

This is a horse, and when it stands on grass it's body changes colour into a rainbow. 

The bird eats a flower, then he found out it was poisonous. It came out his bum and went on a bee. The bee put it into a flower and it went up into the sky and the whole world became poisonous. 


These young learners are so creative, and so full of ingenuity. What if we could somehow keep hold of this creative side until we were old enough and knowledgeable enough to do something great with it. The few of us that keep a slim grasp on it through our education system become our greatest musicians, or greatest artists, or greatest dancers. 

Sir Ken Robinson discusses creativity in depth in his famous Ted Talk, and talks about killing creativity in our schools, and silo-ing students. Making them sit still, keep quiet and find the 'right' answer (but don't copy anyone else). 


How can we keep this creativity? What does the education system as a whole need to change to keep it? 

What if schools reported on creativity alongside reading, writing and maths? Could this move alone allow schools turn creativity into a valued skill in our young people? This is something that schools could do. Just because we have to report on National Standards, doesn't mean we can't report on anything else. 

Comments

  1. Anonymous14 August 2015 at 16:31

    "if we force kids to learn things they're not interested in for 7-8 years, after a while you tend to extinguish that natural ability to learn" Sir Ken Robinson. I agree the most important thing we can do as teachers and parents is to protect creativity. Creativity motivates us to learn to ask questions, to flow. And if at any age we are 'forced' to learn anything derived from meaning to us,it in fact kills our want to learn. And without that we become robots unable to think for ourselves.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown23 August 2015 at 19:36

    Cool activity! I just did this with my 5 year old and he loved it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jono Broom24 August 2015 at 18:59

      Awesome! It's heaps of fun for the adult too I found. A great experiment in creativity.

      Delete

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