Embracing creativity the wrong way

May 03, 2004

On the subject of creativity, allow us to quote the School of Education party line:

Embracing Creativity is a wonderful idea. Schools are so rigid with all their rules and procedures, it just kills children's spirit. Over time, this harms their self esteem. We don't want to extinguish the light within our students, we should instead kindle this spark into a flame.

Pardon us while we throw up.

Don't get us wrong, we think creativity has its place, most notably in the arts. But parents do not send their children to school so we can encourage creativity, they send us their children for us to teach them academic subjects! The teaching of reading, writing, math, science, history, and geography must be our primary concern every day a child is in school.

If you think we sound like old-fashioned fuddy-duddies, you haven't been paying attention. The whole idea of creativity versus complete lack of creativity is yet another false dichotomy upon which a great deal of Progressive education precepts are based.

If you think about it for more than a moment, you realize that there are plenty of places a child can be creative, and plenty of places where teachers for eons have encouraged it, all within the quote-unquote "confines" of traditional instruction.

• Rule: Textbook must be covered. Solution: Creatively cover the book and decorate it to your liking.
• Assignment: Book report must be double-spaced with an introduction, body and a conclusion. Solution: Creatively use adjectives and adverbs in your report to make it interesting! Add a cover and illustrate a scene from the book.
• Instructions: Draw a bar graph of the data from the science experiment. Solution: Creatively shade or color in the bars. Make your graph not only accurate and easy-to-read, but pleasing to the eye as well.

The real problem with this obsession with encouraging creativity and self-expression is that some schools have lost all perspective. For example, sometimes students "express themselves" in ways that are inappropriate for school. The phrase "expressing themselves" is simply a smokescreen, for this behavior is classic limit-testing, and it is a natural part of growing up.

The adults in this scenario need to do their part and respond with reinforcing the limits, while encouraging creativity by more acceptable means. Unfortunately, too many adults don't have a grown-up response, worrying about harming the child fragile self esteem.

This is a crock.

Students can express themselves with their clothes and jewelry, so long as they are within the dress code. The same goes for any student's "creative" interpretation of other school rules and procedures.

Extend this problem further, some students are so used to having their egos massaged, that when they encounter a teacher or school that enforces rules and procedures, the student thinks it is just about harrassment.

For example, one of our students displays buttons on his backpack expressing gay pride, but unfortunately some of these use profanity or vulgar phrases. When asked to remove the obscene buttons, the student made a big scene, for no one else had ever said anything to him! He for all the world believed he was simply being harrassed.

Do kids a favor, and teach academic subjects as rigorously as possible, and leave most of the creative lessons to art class. And when kids find ingenious ways to test their limits, do the right thing and reinforce the limits, redirecting their creative juices elsewhere.

Students will find that there are a myriad ways to be creative in a traditional, structured classroom, one just has to . . . be creative.