‘How to bring out creative faculty in pupils’

INSTITUTIONAL Data Manager, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Olatunbosun Obileye, has advised education managers across the country to avail pupils the opportunity of engaging in puzzles, chess and monopoly games, as it has the capacity to activate the creative faculty of learners.

This he said would be achieved through organised educational programme that would engender critical and analytical thinking, teamwork and individual responsibility among the pupils.

He said this during a yearly leadership and free entrepreneurial training programme, organised by soar communications for select secondary school students in Lagos. Themed, “Innovation and creativity: The hallmark of 21st century business,” Obileye said schools should help their pupils identify and hone their skills so they can make a difference in their academics, gain knowledge that can be applied in real life.

He advised the students to think outside the box, develop a positive mindset, and seek information that will reform their minds; identify problems in their environment and think of a solution to it.

He said: “Schools need to do some programme that will bring out the creative faculty of children, by simply exposing them to educative games and puzzles, like chess, scrabble and other interesting games. It helps in thinking and reasoning.

Schools should not help pupils to cram to pass examination, but help them to identify their potentials, identify problems and seek solutions to it. Students need to immerse themselves in knowledge of what they are studying that is the only way the knowledge can be applied.”

Chief Executive Officer of Chronicles Software, Oluwatosin Oluwakoyejo, told the participants that in this contemporary world, they need highlevel creativity and indepth innovation to be able to take over the future.

“You must be innovative and creative; you must have voracious appetite for good books, biography of innovators and great documentaries; build friendship with people with great vision; identify someone that have reached where you are going to and read about them. You all have potentials; all you need is to develop them. The picture of your future is in the scripture so embrace God and seek His guidance in all you do,” he admonished them.