Schools Kill Creativity? \"The Memoirs

¶ … Schools Kill Creativity?

"The Memoirs of Jesse James" I remember all those thousands of hours that I spent in grade school watching the clock, waiting for recess or lunch or to go home. Waiting: for anything but school. My teachers could have easily ridden with Jesse James for all the time they stole from me. Richard Brautigan (1970)

Eugene Geist and Jennifer Hohn (2009) note that many past figures of significant accomplishment such as Albert Einstein, Erik Erikson and Thomas Edison each were labeled as failures in school due to their in ability to conform. Though many educators advocate to the importance of creativity, imagination and divergent thinking in the classroom, and profess to make every effort to promote these traits, in reality children who exhibit these tendencies do not always make the best students. For the most part schools tend to emphasize conformity and homogeneity at the expense of creativity.

Fortunately these exceptional individuals were able to retain their creativity in spite of the pressure to conform. Unfortunately, most children are more likely to succumb to this pressure and conform to what is expected rather than fight to retain their creativity.

Geist and Hohn (1999) are not suggesting attention to task is unimportant, only that off task behaviors are not always what they appear to be to teachers. The current emphasis on math, science and reading as a result of No Child Left Behind as well as time restrictions, educational mandates from local, state and federal entities, the overwhelming requirements of testing and assessment, and a lack of financial resources has shifted the focus of educational priorities away from the creative arts.

Ken Roberson (2009) cites three reasons for this phenomenon: the preoccupation with certain forms of academic ability such as critical analysis and reasoning, chiefly with words and numbers, the hierarchy of subjects, with mathematics, science and language skills on top, the humanities a layer below, and the arts on the bottom, and the growing reliance on certain types of assessment forcing students to perform at a higher and higher level on a narrow range of standardized tests.

Robinson (2009) asserts that the current "back to basics" movement, designed to improve the quality of public education, is a mistake. The policies that have arisen out of this movement reinforce the old Industrial Revolution era hierarchy of subjects. The idea is that imposing a concentration of coursework in reading, writing and arithmetic will make us more competitive with the world and better prepared for the future. According to Robinson, what the policymakers have failed to take into account is that the world is changing faster than ever in our history. He believes that the best hope for the future is to develop a new paradigm of human capacity to meet a new era of human existence. We need to create environments where every person is inspired to grow creatively in order to meet the challenges that lie ahead.