The Importance Of Teachers For Children Through Their Youth

Creativity drives today’s world, with new technology arriving daily and science conducting itself further. We need creative and imaginative people in today’s atmosphere to bring the world to the next step forward. “Standardized college admissions tests assess only analytical skills, as well as the knowledge base on which they act, and completely ignore creative and practical skills (Sternberg 7)”. Without creative people in this world, where do you think we would be? Not very far. We need practical skills to go throughout everyday life. The standardized tests don’t test for that knowledge base, they test how much short term memory a

Ken Robinson is a university professor who challenges the way we are educating our children. He uses passion and humor to emphasize the importance of creativity and the need for a learning revolution. From Ken’s personal experiences, he has concluded professors tend to only live from their heads, and “slightly more to one side”. Having these professors responsible to teach us what is right and wrong is no dought steering new generations views on what we should value. Creativity is becoming stigmatized, causing individuals to ignore many career paths and conform to our set standards. He states, “we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather we get educated out of it”. There are so many more types of intelligence, however we categorize one above all. Potential talent is being wasted.

Creativity is defined as the ability to produce new and unique ideas that diverge from established customs and norms. Over the years, however, it has diminished greatly in today’s society. From a young age, schools as well as some business force people to learn certain skills in order to please others. For quite some time, colleges based a student’s intelligence on their GPA rather than creative abilities. Those who are creative are restricted in their abilities; it is acceptable for a mathematically inclined person to lack artistic skills, but heaven forbid a creative student find a science based class challenging. Currently, Academy School District 20 has not implemented a creative thinking class in Liberty High School. I believe we should include such a program, seeing that creativity in students continues to weaken nationwide. By requiring students to think creatively, we can encourage students to innovate, grow, and learn.

Children are no longer encouraged to be creative in the test prep environment. Instead, they are being taught to perform well on standardized tests and are labeled as unintelligent if they don’t. Young children are born with creativity and we see that when they are playing and pretending. According to Sir Ken Robinson, in Slon’s (2013) article, “by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity” to be creative. The fundamentals of creation and experimentation are not part of the standardized testing mechanism.

Another major issue and concern with the Common Core State Standards is the lack of creative freedom and control due to the enforcement of it curriculum. The current common core curriculum focuses so much on its blind faith in standardization of tests and curriculum that it promotes uniformity instead of customization. It doesn’t allow students to synthesize latent creativity, restricting their mindsets to a narrow path. With their performances directly tied to test scores, teachers are now held to a higher standard of academic performance. Karen Lewis, the President of the Chicago Teacher’s Union has said the Common Core to be a “poison pill for learning” because it eliminates the sort of imaginative and critical thinking that teachers need to

In this age of high-stakes standardized testing the idea of creativity in the classroom has become less and less popular. Susan W. Cress and Daniel T. Holm present a compelling case study for keeping creativity in the classroom in “Creative Endeavors: Inspiring Creativity in a First Grade Classroom” published online April 1, 2015 in the Early Childhood Education Journal.

As the years go by, there are many changes within our country’s educational system. However, standardized testing is still a requirement for students and must be eradicated once and for all. Now, of course there needs to be a bridge between grade levels. The answer is simply letting kids communicate their answers through creativity. The fear of shading in a instead of b would finally be over if students were able to show what they know in alternative ways. Whether it’s artistic or verbal, the outcomes would be more positive than negative. A solution that solves one of the many problems in the United States education system would have to be eliminating standardized testing because it would provide a more efficient learning environment by focusing on learning rather than testing, it allows more students to further their education, and it results in less pressure for everyone.

“Do Schools Kill Creativity?” by ken Robinson is a very powerful speech, as well as a good insight on the other side of the spectrum. Mr. Robinson begins his speech he mentions the amount of creativity we as humans have and how we have no such idea where we are headed in the future. Ken makes a point that we are educating and have been educating people to be prepared for the future. He asks why. We do not know what the next few years bring, how do we educate people properly for it. As Mr. Robinson continues he makes a point that creativity should be as important as literacy within education. Throughout the speech he gives countless examples where simple creativity and being different has brought people success and lead them down a path that math or literature never could.

If you search almost anywhere on the internet about creativity and public schools you will run into a video by a man named Sir Ken Robinson. He emphasizes that schools kill creativity in every way. On the other hand, President Barack Obama disagrees whole heartedly. Both of these men agree that creativity is important to children and schools but they disagree on whether or not creativity is being implemented in schools. Robinson stated in his lectured at TED 2006, “I believe this passionately, that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it” (Ken Robinson. TED2006). He goes to say that

At a local level and as an educator and parent, I see no indication that schooling is preparing students for innovation and creativity. Even when influenced by constructivist or universal design ideas, school tasks - starting in elementary school, up until CEGEP- are generally highly structured, predictable and offered in cookie cutter format. There is little room for creativity and few subjects are regularly offered, such as music or visual arts, that support creativity and out of the box thinking to allow for a more well-rounded approach to education as suggested in the discussion forum (Hector,

A smart man said “Creativity is as important as literacy and we should treat it with the same standing.” (Ken Robinson-“Do schools kill creativity?”). There are multiple studies on how creativity helps improve a student’s mind. Project based learning is a huge creative booster for students. A math teacher from California uses projects to do math instead of using the text book. From doing this, she’s had more students pass her class then from when she was teaching straight from the text books. Instead of having standardized tests, using more creative techniques for students to enjoy the learning they’ve done and for them to show the higher officials what the students are learning. Creativity is the process of turning real world problems into an understanding by extending the minds cognitive processes. In Alabama, kindergartners are studying different ways to be creative.

Even though Standardized tests are beginning to rise, they do not help students be creative thinkers (Gonchar 1). High stake tests do not cause “standard” thinking (Gonchar 1). Schools are heavily focused on the use of google, standardized tests, computers, calculators and other gadgets to provide quick answers leaving creativity in danger (Gonchar 1). Creativity has not died, but it has lessened (Gonchar 1). “From the high-stakes tests in K-12, ...to the economy’s focus on short-term return on investments, American society’s reward structures tend to discourage unconventional thinking and limit risk-taking” (Gonchar 1). Students are given high stake tests through grade school for the economy's advancement (Gonchar 1). The government's way

Creativity is equally as important as literacy, and we need to start treating it that way in schools around the world. According to Ken Robinson’s claim in his, “How Schools Kill Creativity” speech, he believes this to be exceptionally true. All children are creative and talented, however, we have grown up in a world where we believe that it’s wrong to exemplify our creativity. Robinson uses both, pathos, and ethos to help make his claim. He arises emotion in you; he causes you to really think, to trust him, and to question ultimately, how things are being done in the educational system. We as a world have become so consumed with the idea of putting each child into a category of what they’re going to be successful in, regardless of their creativity or passions. You’re either good at math, science, or English; everything is based on your academic ability. What happens then to the people who aren’t academically smart, but are more creative? They are then made to feel that what they have to offer the world simply isn’t good enough, but the truth is, it is good enough. Over time however, we are taught out of our creativity. Schools around the world kill creativity by instilling a sense of fear in the child that what they are doing, and how they feel is wrong, this ultimately discourages them, and they fall victim to the industrialized educational system that we have present day. Robinson believes now more than

The Industrial Revolution was one of the most significant developments in America History; it was the era in which the country supplanted itself as one of the world’s leaders. It is no surprise than that the education system still reflects that era. That is to say that the education system promotes knowledge in math and reading and not skills. Frederick Taylor calls it scientific management, that practice of educating students in order to succeed in America’s new factory oriented economy. This thought has been echoed in the present day by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, well-known entrepreneur and multi-billionaire, who has said knowledge workers are needed to make America more competitive on the global scene. In a similar way the Bush administration in 2001 launched the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA), which essentially made the function of the American education system based on standardized testing. The overarching idea of the act was to make reading and math the most important subjects in school while testing them continuously. This is a dangerous precedent because students have been turned into test taking robots, incapable of creating new and meaningful ideas. Without creativity students will lose the motivation to learn, or even attend school. Students already lack the will to be in school each day and by focusing solely on teaching toward the test it is easy to estimate this will only get worse. Since the focus is on testing

Over the past few decades, society has come to an astonishing conclusion that the public’s “Creativity quotient,” especially amongst children from kindergarten through sixth grade, had steadily crept downward in America. Creativity is an essential key for a nation's future, and its necessity are matters of international importance for the world. Although some others may argue against the creation of a class in creativity, many more others believe in the necessity of creating a class to explicitly teach creative thinking, the ability to create new solutions and think outside of a box, in school.