The Future Thrives on Innovation

Many structural features about our current education system limit student creativity. Ken Robinson’s famous TED talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity? discussed how our current system of schooling in the United States comes from the Industrial Age, and works from a factory model. This type of a model rewards standardization, conformity, and compliance. This connects to several themes in Cathy Davidson’s lecture from Module 6: problems with our current model of education, the importance of creativity, and what skills our students will need in the future. The current system squashes creativity, and is no longer relevant for a twenty-first century world that thrives on innovation.

Our standardized and test-obsessed education system sends the message that mistakes are horrible, but Ken Robinson says, “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original”. As children grow into adults, their willingness to take risks, make mistakes, and get creative decreases. How can educators foster an environment that encourages and celebrates creativity, playfulness, and risk-taking?

I think the U.S. education system does need a revolution, but there are small changes teachers can make to foster creativity in their classrooms. Julie Burtsein says artists must embrace experiences, challenges, limits, and losses in order to maximize their creative potential. Beghetto and Kaufman, say to give students structure, but allow them enough wiggle room to be creative and make choices. They found that competition and peer evaluation limit student creativity (Beghetto, Kaufman, 2013).

Beghetto, Ronald. Kaufman, James. February 2013. Fundamentals of Creativity. Retrieved Feb. 21st, 2017 from: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb13/vol70/num05/Fundamentals-of-Creativity.aspx