Killing Creativity
There are tremendous pressures on public schools to “perform” these days. Many of these pressures are political (think “No Child Left Behind,” private school vouchers) and others come from parents and communities who may perceive that their schools are not fully serving their children. With regard to the latter, there are plenty of data to support the notion that some schools are underperforming when compared to US standards (check SchoolMatters for an excellent data source) and particularly when compared to students from other countries. (Perhaps this is not surprising given that our current administration routinely disregards science for political gain and that three current Republican presidential candidates do not believe in evolution, but we’re not going there today…)
Given these pressures to demonstrate yearly gains primarily through standardized test results, it’s not surprising that schools are often criticized for squelching creativity and suppressing academic behavior that may be perceived as tangential to the norm. Kris (no last name given) presents an excellent case for the suppression of creativity in her Wandering Ink post entitled “How To Prevent Another Leonardo da Vinci.” Based on ideas from the book How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci [Amazon link], Kris provides us with some interesting insights into the nature of creativity and how public schools tend to prevent its appearance. Here’s an example:
“2. Dimostrazione (from “How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci”)
What? Constant testing of knowledge through experience and persistence; accepting of and learning from mistakes
The Murder: Except in the sciences (and sometimes even then), knowledge is simply given and expected to be absorbed rather than questioned and tested. On tests and labs, wrong answers cost the students their grades, therefore it becomes unacceptable to make mistakes. Mistakes are less about learning experiences and more about losing marks. Questioning societal norms is a very negative thing, even if they don’t make sense.”
Kris’ observations should be required reading for all educators, K-12 through post-secondary.
Why am I writing about this in a blog about Web 2.0 issues? The answer is that we tend to look at Web 2.0 technologies (as well as others) as being the answer to allowing creative expression back into the pedagogical model. Blogs and wikis and social networking sites allow up to communicate, interact, and collaborate in ways that have never before been available. The web gives us information at our fingertips, potentially allowing us to explore interests (passions?) individually at out own paces. Therefore, unleashing these technologies in our K-post secondary classes will result in a veritable cornucopia of creative expression, right?
Not necessarily. Lecturing to students about the efficacy of blogs is the same as lecturing to students about constructivist teaching. If you’re not modeling the behavior you are advocating, you are proving that the behavior is just another concept to be learned for a test. Web 2.0 technologies are not inherently empowering–they must be used in empowering ways. Students learn much more from the model of pedagogy they are presented with than from the content of the presentation. To teach the efficacy of blogging, you must become an active blogger. To teach a constructivist approach to classroom teaching, you should model constructivism in your own teaching. Creativity comes not from the tool itself but from the context in which it is used and presented.
It’s not just about lip service…
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