English 101
November 2014
Do Teachers Kill Creativity?
We see creativity everyday of our lives through things we do, objects we see, minds we encounter, or events we imagine. A lot of things that we value the most are not physical things and exists within human minds, for example are: humanity, integrity and creativity. We appreciate beauty, innovation and development. We hold dear thing we value and hopes that it will not perish as time fly by; for example, creativity. In a TED Talk, Ken Robinson mentioned that people get educated out of it creativity. This is not true. Contrary to popular belief, school don’t kill creativity. It is agreeable that schools take a big role in shaping students’ creativity, and able to …show more content…
Picasso once said that “Every child is an artist; the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.” Society has this idea that school kills creativity, that as children grow up, only a few will continue to be creative. This perception is wrong. How can creativity decrease? To think that the older people are the less creative they seem are a bit absurd. Creative skills slowly fade away because society’s definition as creative evolves as people grow older. Maksić (2011) developed a qualitative study on the development of creativity on children. He explained that during pre-school, teachers deemed a student’s creativity depending on how active, explorative, or imaginative he/she is. For example: answering questions in a peculiar way, or questioning things out of blind curiosity. At this age, students do not have a clear concept of how things are supposed to be, so their imaginations and curiosity play a huge part on their actions, thus, making them creative. Creativity in this stage is based of behaviors …show more content…
An important environmental factor is represented by the type of the task. Almost all identified open-ended tasks and divergent-thinking problems as most likely to facilitate creativity. Open ended tasks are those that require pupils to produce their own answers or solutions as opposed to selecting them from a set of choices. Divergent-thinking tasks and problems are those that can take more than one correct answer. Teachers who believe creativity as a general ability are more likely to look for creative results in various occasions and prefer creativity on problem-solving. On the other hand, teachers who believe creativity as an artistic and/or literary ability will not favor those that use creativity in subjects such as math, science and