Do schools kill creativity?

Today we discussed main stream education and the national curriculum is effect on creativity. Ken Robinson: who is well known for his ted talk ‘do schools kill creativity?’(2006) was mentioned as Robinson argues that school’s devalue creativity: This is not an uncommon opinion.

Lucas(2001) argues that most schools have fundamentally uncreative pedagogies and that all schools must create an environment in which creativity can thrive. Main stream education limits pupils creativity through a series of pedagogical practices (Craft,2005): such as strategies which place pupils in the role of receiving knowledge and following instructions as opposed to having control over their own learning (Craft,2005). This having been said Craft (2005) also argues that strategies which involve the pupil learning through self-lead discovery with no guidance can also prohibit a pupils creativity as well as strategies which assume the pupil will understand concepts in the same way as the teacher(Craft,2005). Lucas (2001) argues that the lack of creative pedagogies in education is a result of examinations and league tables as well as teaching methods: this is not dissimilar to Robinson’s argument. According to Murphy et al.(2004) the lack of creativity in schools risks creating individuals with shallow understanding of subject matter and the inability to transfer knowledge to new situations

  However Craft (2005) states that the use of creativity within education has risen in popularity in the past 20 years as it has been acknowledged that creativity is essential in identifying and solving problems and finding opportunities in places where they may not have been found (Craft,2005). The ability to be creative is alive in everybody and can certainly flourish then if given the opportunity(Craft,2005). Despite Craft (2005) claiming creativity has grown in popularity I feel the education system is still restricting and narrow minded in the way of creativity and knowledge. There is little opportunity for finding talents or individual strengths,instead the focus is on becoming a contributing member of society and meeting the needs of said society. There are clearly benefits from creative learning such as problem solving skills as mentioned above.

References:

Craft, A. (2005) Creativity in schools: tensions and dilemmas,London : Routledge 2005

Cropley, A. (2001)Creativity in education and learning: a guide for teachers and educators, Routledge Falmer:Oxon

 Murphy,P.,McCormick,B., Lunn,S., Davidson,M. and Jones,J.(2004) Electronics in schools, Final Evaluation Report, Executive Summary. London:the department of trade and industry/the open university