Letting creativity trickle through the cracks

There is an abundance of things that can be said about the current state of education in the world. One area, however, has gathered a significant amount of interest - the area of creativity. Both the U.S and the U.K are re-evaluating their current systems of education to inculcate this very important factor. It is widely accepted that creativity is imperative for change and for progression. Just identifying this, however, is not enough. It leads to a plethora of questions that must be answered to decide what exactly should be changed in the system of education and how it should be done. The first step, then, is to define education and creativity. I believe the goal of education should be two-fold: first is what it solely focuses on today - to prepare the students for the real world, to get a job, be financially stable, and be successful in general. Unfortunately, we can not and do not educate simply to educate. Second, (this I believe the major education systems do not address) is to teach students how to achieve their full potential and to be the best of themselves. This entails evaluating where the student stands before the process of his or her education begins, and then enhancing the skills or talents they already have while at the same also keeping in mind what they aren’t naturally good at and teaching them. This ties in to creativity. An article on the subject defined creativity as when students were, “…alternating between divergent and convergent thinking, they arrived at original and useful ideas” (Bronson and Merryman). The question that arises, then, is whether or not something needs to be done. At one end is the suggestion that the overarching culture of education needs to be fully and completely reinvented. Society should learn to value creativity and the education system should be centered around it. The other extreme says that creativity is not on the decline at all. Evidence for this is from statistics that show that the U.S is till doing well on the creativity based of on how many Nobel Prize winners it produces, for example (Duncan). So which one is it? The answer lies, I believe, is somewhere in the balance between the two.

Having studied in Pakistan my whole life, my experience with education in school was drastically different from my experience with education in college. The school I went to followed the British system of education. The system was focused around exams and was simply put, a regurgitation of a hoard of information. School was supposed to be for rigorous academic pursuit and that was all.  A recent article on the subject says, “Four out of five university admissions officers believe A-Levels no longer encourage creative thinking, a survey shows.” (The Independent) Moreover, the system was not one that was hard to crack at all. Sample exam papers, mark schemes, examiner reports for British Advanced Level Examinations (A-Levels) are readily available. My education till the age of eighteen was not education at all, it was simply learning how to work a system. Another article recently reported, “Pupils now have access to online model answers, marking schemes and other information that has taken the ‘mystique’ out of what markers are looking for, according to Cynthia Hall, the headmistress of Wycombe Abbey” (Paton). Recently, however there has been considerable debate about creativity and education in Britain. As part of the system, I, amongst others, held the notion that the academic arena is not for creativity at all. An opinions section on CNN goes so far as to say that, “…the dominant systems of education  are rooted in the values and demands of industrialism…reforming these systems in not enough…we need a revolution in the culture of education” (Robinson). Ideally, society should have known the importance of creativity to begin with, but a complete revolution of the education system may not be the best goal. Changes in society’s way of thinking can not be made overnight. Personally, having been used to a structured, standardized way of education, a sudden dramatic shift to a system based on creativity would leave me baffled. It would defeat the purpose if creativity, too, become something you had to tested on. A better idea would be to incorporate creativity into the existing system so that students get the best of both: “There’s nothing wrong with demonstrating that a student has studied and done a good job of work. The problem is that we need to have ways of demonstrating originality and creativity. I don’t think that’s available, it does not provide that” (London Evening Standard).