We have been discussing a lot on the reasons why schools do not provide creativity in education. There are many reasons for this, but I like to focus on the following. These reasons consist of teachers being structured with a mandated curriculum to follow set by the government, teachers having to teach students subjects that they will then be tested for on standardized tests, and lastly, teachers believing that creative students are most likely to not follow the rules set in their classroom. From reading about all of these reasons, I am not positive what it is going to take in order to change the education to prefer more creativity involved. The government is involved to create this curriculum to establish goals that students must accomplish in order to achieve academic standing, to make sure there is a future for the students. This coincides with the fact that standardized tests are mandatory for students to take in order to test where they are academically and to note progress. We understand that in classrooms all teachers want is to have well-behaved students that do what is asked of them. And when teachers think that one student shows more "creativity" than the other, they believe that student is more likely to misbehave or stray from the guided rules. With all of this being said, the relationship among education and creativity is seen as impossible for our society at the moment. We would need to change the way education is portrayed and change it to be more structured with hands-on activities with some instruction or have a focus of non-traditional education, such as how to survive on your own.
In class we began to watch the TED Talks video on creativity in education. The speaker on this video discussed that creativity needs to be introduced into schools for education. That in order to educate the students now, we need to incorporate things they need to know in order to be able to function for their future. We are not sure of the future, so instead of having a curriculm of topics, we need to teach them things that they will be able to use in order to solve situations to function in the society's future. He says that "creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status."
I can agree that because of the issue of not knowing what the future holds, that student's education needs to incorporate creativity. Education now only consists of government structured subjects that does not allow the teachers to have room for teaching or using creativity. Because of this, creativity has declined while not allowing students to have a wide range of answers. Students are taught that there is only one answer, so they are always questioning for that one correct answer. This leaves no room for divergent thinking, that involves creativity.
When the speaker stated that literacy and creativity needs to be of equal importance in education, it caught me off guard. Knowing that my education has always been striving to learn "the one right answer", I could not see how education would transform into teaching the importance and use of creativity. I do not know when this transformation will be possible, or how teachers, government, and students will go about it, but I believe the change could transform the way we look at our education.
