Creativity in Schools
SHERILL S. SALES
In this time of global advances and technological progress, the call for our school to increase its level of creativity and to sustain it is a must. When our children leave the school, they will be facing a world that is divergent in nature, one that is so advance and so much creative. The questions is, can our learners cope up with the challenges of the 21st century on its demands for creativity?
This is now the challenge for us educators, especially for the school heads who would be catalyst of change in their school. The schools have to see the world creatively in order to produce holistic learner, a graduate who is not only “learned” but someone who is a thinker and a tinker.
“When we are creative we see the world in new ways, we ask new questions, we imagine new possibilities and we see to act in such a way that makes a difference.”
-National Advisory on Creative and Cultural Education ( 1999). Unfortunately, many of our graduates cannot cope up with the exigencies of the 21st century needs. We all have creative potentials ( Runco 2009 ) but Kim ( 2011) in the creativity study in more than 300,000 students in the U.S. from Kindergarten to the 12th grade found out that their creativity scores have significantly decreased since 1990. Where would the blame and criticism fall? If we have produced learners who are contented with the “scripted answer” ( Sawyer 2004). Torrance ( 1970) stated that our children are accustomed to one correct answer only or one best answer and they seem reluctant to think of other possibilities or build up a pool of ideas to be evaluated later. If this was the findings on students’thinking more than thirty years ago, it is very alarming and our schools should be doing something about this.
Creativity now is the name of the game in schools . Creativity is an “employability” skill in terms of the creative industries and beyond, including within the sectors of science and technology (DCMS, 2007). If the industries defined creativity this way, school should be doing their assignment in order to prepare our learners for the future.
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THE AUTHOR IS T-III AT DAPDAPHIGH SCHOOL