whelkstall

Demanding that education be creative is to be extremely radical. Many schools proclaim their radicalism but most are driven back by the need to meet the demand for results. As a result there seems to be a tightening circle that is best summed up in the phrase, “teaching to the test.”

Creativity generates change. It is about freedom and allows people to experiment, to innovate to show independence and initiative. It is also not without its risks. If you take chances you will sometimes fail, but the evidence suggests that many schools are failing without taking any chances at all. One is reminded, albeit in miniature of Stalinist five year plans which achieved, so it was claimed, their objectives while actually producing a vast imbalance in output. Schools plan for the maximum five A to Cs and the cost is a loss of maths and science ability.

Creativity is the flux that has allowed human progress and those times when it has been stifled has often been accompanied by some of the worst periods in human history. If it is encouraged in the educational process it can allow for better use of resources and a learning process that is centred on individuals rather than institutional outcomes.

Creativity is about intellectual and cognitive effort, but it is also emotions, relationships and interacting with society and the environment. It is what allows the creation of novel ideas and the striving to solve problems.

It is often thought that creativity is an ‘artistic’ idea. It certainly isn’t. Walpert’s “The unnatural nature of science” was an exciting read because it pointed out quite clearly that science often challenges ‘common sense’ and needs that creative edge to see the reality in something that would otherwise, wrongly, be taken for granted.

When I cover maths I often introduce as a starter the story of Gauss and the lazy teacher who set the “add the numbers 1 to 100 problem.” The creativity of the outcome still has a certain mischief to it that kids find entertaining.

To be creative is to be anti-conservative in a conservative profession. It requires an atmosphere of freedom and the humility to realise that there is likely to be far more creativity in the classroom than that which the teacher brings. It requires that sense of adventure that allows children to experiment and explore, to not fear failure but to se is as a tool for taking the next, more informed step.

I suppose some insight into my feelings might help. I am teaching year 7s, 11and 12 year olds, how to use PowerPoint. The prescribed method is to get them to enter the text, about themselves, then the graphics, then the background colour… and everyone ends up with something very similar and not very interesting. I have always felt that the subject has to be something ‘important’. By that I mean that you are trying to persuade an audience that something needs to be done.

By giving them the freedom to use their imagination you release enormous potential and a lot of hard work for yourself because structure is important. What you end up with is always far more differentiated and always contains significant work that is rarely achieved in a tell, tell, tell environment. This is an essential element of the constructivist model.

Given freedom, children are released to develop their own strategies and are enabled to develop their own attitudes rather than just accepting without question the ones imposed on them. We are not only removing the chains from the children but also from ourselves.

Creativity allows a school to respond more realistically to the needs of the children. Able children are allowed to exercise their abilities with fewer constrains, while the teacher can direct his or her efforts to the less able child who may be transformed by encouraging them to reflect and apply creative solutions to problems. The teachers own creative instincts are also released to allow a flexible and more personal approach to delivering the subject.

It is so important that we move away from a psychology of mere learning of techniques and methods to one that allows the incorporation of these methods to real and meaningful projects.

Ambiguity and uncertainty are a part of life and instead of trying to shield children from them by driving learning by the rigour of the test, we need to help them be tolerant of the uncertainty and accept that problems need to allow reflection as well as calculation, copying and rote. Not all answers are immediate. Sometimes ideas need to ‘incubate’. Obstacles require perseverance. They need to be seen as opportunities, not threats.

Knowledge is not static and unchanging, except in some classrooms. ICT give us and the children the opportunity to step outside of the classroom and to find new meaning, new knowledge and new interpretations. This does not reduce the teacher’s role but makes it more important and demanding as a filter, referee, validater and arbiter.

Creative thinking is probably more difficult that imagined. Looking at what is currently served up by the media under the name of entertainment it seems that our society is driven by the need for instant satisfaction rather than reflection. Writing a play or sit com takes time and thought. Sticking a group of idiots in a situation and watching the outcome takes none at all. There is nothing inherently wrong with ‘reality’ TV, other than the misnomer, reality. Circus lions need to be poked to perform and so do ‘reality’ performers.

Conventional schooling favours the ‘right’ answer with the teacher being the holder of the ‘truth’. Creativity hands much more responsibility to the learners. One of the delights of teaching ICT in a creative way is the ability of the kids to astound with their interpretations of the task and the significant additions that they can make by using the media to present their meaning, rather than regurgitating the meaning required by the teacher or the exam board. Some of the current crop of examinations are dreadful in this respect, being so prescriptive as to actually mark down students who show any originality beyond that prescribed.

Prescribed originality is not originality at all.

Classrooms need to become places that surprise, astonish, entertain, mystify and demystify and encourage children to investigate and find out why, where, how, when, what and who. Rudyard Kipling’s servants are still powerful tools. Creativity is for children to take pleasure in the unexpected, to squeal with delight when something happens that they haven’t seen before

Ultimately, when he or she leaves school, the students must carry their own personal backpack of learning, thinking, creativity and ability to communicate and not simply a bundle handed down to them by their teachers.