Growing Tomorrow's Citizens in Today's Classrooms by Cassandra Erkens

Author:Cassandra Erkens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Solution Tree Press
Published: 2018-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Considering Creativity Now and Going Forward

Teachers need to teach and assess creative thinking both for the future benefits of learners and the world they enter after graduation. Everyone has the capacity to be creative; as Robinson (2009) avows, “One myth is that only special people are creative. This is not true. Everyone is born with tremendous capacities for creativity. The trick is to develop these capacities. Creativity is very much like literacy” (p. 56). Creative literacy is as important as reading, writing, and mathematics literacies. All learners deserve to understand and develop their full creative potential.

Creativity, however, is often sacrificed for the benefit of traditional literacies (reading, writing, and mathematics) and conformity. Experts (Catmull, 2014; Csikszentmihalyi, 2007; Robinson, 2006, 2009, 2013; Robinson & Aronica, 2015) all lament that schools maintain a too narrow focus on what’s essential. As Robinson (2009) writes:

We place tremendous significance on standardized tests, we cut funding for what we consider “non-essential” programs, and then we wonder why our children seem unimaginative and uninspired. In these ways, our current education system systematically drains the creativity out of our children. (p. 16)

Likewise, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2007) notes that educators could teach creative and critical thinking through the more traditional literacies, but most often do not.

Before educators can teach creativity, they must wrestle with and develop creative solutions for many challenges, including the following.

■ Allowing for nonconformity

■ Embracing productive failure

■ Understanding the multifacets of creativity

■ Removing bias

■ Addressing value and plausibility

■ Teaching the creative process

If not addressed, each individual challenge will ultimately undo an educator’s best efforts to teach creativity.

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