The role of creativity in the classroom
Print Edition
TECHNOLOGY is developing so fast it is impossible to say what the world of work will look like in 10 years, much less so by the time a kindergarten child is entering the work place.
Although learning is an essential, intrinsic part of being alive, and Plato was teaching Greek students to “know yourself” in the Akademia 2,300 years ago, mass education is a relatively recent phenomenon. It has only existed in the form that we know it since the end of the Industrial Revolution, and still follows the same design, to prepare children for academic life or create workers to support industry. This is why school systems around the world view subjects in the same hierarchy, from ones that help workers to communicate, follow instructions and be able to deal efficiently with machinery and money (language and mathematics) as most important, with the social sciences a little further down the ladder and the arts at the bottom.
It is also why we measure our children’s success with a binary testing system where answers are either right or wrong. This was justifiable in preparing children to work in factories, shipyards and construction sites. However, it teaches them to be afraid of making mistakes which does not encourage the innovation and risk taking that is vital in the fast changing modern world.
Think about when you last had to sit and complete a timed maths exam as part of your daily work. Surprisingly, you are more likely to have taken part in exercises that more closely mirror teaching of the arts. In my drama classes I typically teach a skill (say, still image or frieze), demonstrate how to use it, put children into small groups with a problem (create a three-minute sketch involving two still images), give them a fixed time to work cooperatively to solve the problem (rehearsal), then present it to their peers (performance). For a subject that most think has little application in the usual working world this is much closer to many people’s work experience than sitting a Maths test.
To give the next generation a chance in our fast changing world we must move away from what Sir Ken Robinson calls “the fast food model of education.” We must teach children to keep thinking creatively and not be so afraid of making errors it stultifies their thinking. As Picasso said, “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once one grows up.”
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