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 Building off of what Ameneh said above, I certainly agree that asking creativity in school, and then in some way qualifying or assessing it, is a sticky realm. I volunteered with an organization that brought visual art classes to middle school kids for a few weeks in San Francisco. During training it was explained to me that we, the mentors, were not allowed to give our opinions on any of the kid's work. When a authority figure tells a child that their painting is good, nice, or well-done, they naturally try to re-create that response, playing to our aesthetics as opposed to their own, and recreating old work as opposed to being truly and spontaneously creative.

In school settings surrounding creativity, what is the role of the teacher at all? Besides to make sure that we were not eating paste or running with the scissors, I personally felt that all of my art teachers in school did more to hinder my creativity then nurture it. They let us know what the objective was for our project, and inevitably certain students stood out as "better" then the others. The teacher was partially impressed by their work, they developed the ability to draw an apple or paint an accurate self-portrait before the others.