«Education and Creativity Development» - Free Essay Paper

The authors of “The Creativity Crisis” Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, altogether with Ken Robinson are convinced that creativity as a kind of a human brain function plays a crucial role in the formation of the highly developed and intelligent society. Despite the fact that creative and inventive personalities made the greatest accomplishments of the humanity, schools continue to fill children’s minds with the systematic knowledge via the intensified curriculum which, in turn, suppresses common natural creative abilities of children. Furthermore, while dreaming about the future success of a child, it is most likely to persuade parents that scientists, doctors and engineers but not artists, are a bulwark of the modern consuming society. As a result, they purposely “kill” the creativity in children with a double portion of educational demands. Nevertheless, this standpoint should be overviewed because creativity is not only an inherent talent but primarily the way human mind can be taught to entertain so as to produce key ideas and solutions of the important issues. Thus, it is a complementary part of the children’s education, which is equal to intelligence in the way it can be rather developed than suppressed.

The whole world seeks for hundreds of creative solutions to the issues of the international importance, while educational system continues to overwhelm with curriculum standards, which have a power to enrich children with knowledge but suppress their creative abilities. The mentioned in the article by Bronson and Merryman (2010) results of the Torrance’s creativity tests exemplify that children who have a high level of CQ reached the greatest accomplishments in their adult life (para. 4). Nevertheless, the humanity is anxious about the level of IQ. People have thrown many efforts in order to increase this level, which growth might be evidence of the highest human intelligence as well as its enormous capacities for development. Phenomenally, IQ scores are growing year by year, while CQ scores are falling. Nevertheless, having a great store of knowledge, children are taken their natural creativeness, which helps to generate new useful ideas, involving both “divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result)” (Bronson & Merryman, 2010, para.2).

Agreeing with a statement that creativity is one of the crucial screws of the progress engine, one can skeptically admit that it is hard to believe that educational systems may suppress something, which depends on the natural abilities of a person and is impossible to take away. Ken Robinson (2006) is convinced that “the really extraordinary capacities that children have - their capacities for innovation” and “all children are born artists” (para. 6). He thinks that the main problem is to be able to save this capacity of being artist when a child grows up. In other words, it is vital to encourage every talent and in case of creativity, one can develop it as well. Furthermore, he insists that education has powerful vehicles to develop creative abilities among children before they stop being curios about everything around them, get stuck in computers and TV’s, and become overwhelmed with the high educational standards that schools provide them.

Many countries have already started to make creativity development a national priority, while American educational system still makes it hard to find free time for some creativity class. People usually undervalue the poor musical classes or fine arts, while ignoring the other creative subjects. Being a lively child that cannot sit still and concentrate for a while on the same part of studying, teachers and parents started to treat them as children with ADHD (Robinson, 2006, para.15), while they could produce many ideas in some other class / school activities. While my imagination was full of different images and ideas, I had no opportunity to develop the talent of writing in my secondary school because days by days I had to teach math, biology and a whole range of subjects. Over time, these ideas began to fade. These are the examples how education both under the impact of schools and parents can really suppress the creativity in children, taking it as a less important thing in the process of child’s development.

If to take into account that creativity is vital not only in arts but also in many other fields, it does not matter if a person is a musician or engineer. The same things are happening inside their brain during the process of ideas’ generating; it becomes clear that the development of creative thinking among pupils might be useful in many disciplines (Bronson & Merryman, 2010, para.19). It also can improve their general grades. Furthermore, teachers, some improvements of American educational systems and the particular attitudes of parents may have a great influence on the encouraging creativity among pupils. Ken Robinson makes a great statement, saying that “many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized” (para. 11). In the pursuit of high grades, students simply lost the possibility to develop their skills in many other fields than just established one with the educational systems worldwide. Thus, to create new additional classes with various activities in schools means to encourage creativity processes among students.

Teachers and parents are also responsible for creativity development of their students and children. Being engaged in the series of children’s curious questions, they might use the questions to make them search for the right or possible one (Bronson & Merryman, 2010, para. 29). Bronson and Merryman’ article provides a great example of how students of the fifth grade had the quest of solving the problem with outdoor’s noise in the library. In fact, they were able to use all the imagination and knowledge they had to produce a considerable number of excellent and useful ideas (para. 31). As a result, parents, teachers, and students were involved in the process and got an insight that education can strongly influence the development of students’ imagination and knowledge.