Creativity in Education

I enjoyed the educational video by Sir Ken Robinson.  His speech was not only funny and entertaining, but also informative and eye-opening.  He said that public schools kill creativity in students by telling them that new methods of doing things are wrong.  Children are born being unafraid of wrongness.  However, He said that when children become frightened of being wrong, they don’t find any new ways to complete tasks.  Therefore, I think that it seems that they are like little robots in a way, which are given an input and produce an output using a given formula rather than actually exploring how to do find an answer creatively.  The killing of creativity in students is a very sad, but true problem that hopefully I can prevent when I become a teacher!  Another good point that Robinson said was that “creation is as important as literacy” and educators should treat it like it is.

According to the reading one interesting way in which creativity can be promoted is by putting students into groups and allowing them to brainstorm.  I think that this would be effective because everyone knows that “two heads are better than one.”

One thing that I wish that my teachers knew about me as a learner is that I find it much, much easier to remember material when assessments are given frequently (as in quizzes after each chapter or two) rather than all at once (as in one comprehensive final exam).  This would probably be true for elementary students as well, which are who I will be teaching.