Ken Robinson asks, in the TED talk embedded at the end of this post, why don't we teach children dancing everyday, the same way we teach them mathematics? I am going to make posters from this, that's how much I love what I see embedded into this question.
You see, I agree with his basic argument, that creativity is a skill, or an orientation, or a collection of attributes, that we need to teach just as much as we need to teach literacy and numeracy. One of the things that makes it hard, though, is the fact that people think that creativity is a kind of a gift that some people have and others do not.
Wrong. You only have to watch young children playing in sandpits to realise that the capacity for imagination and creativity can be found in all of us. I mean, what is there to get excited about in sand? But when you have a truck and can create a city (or a farm or a spaceship) - then sand is fun.
I was thinking about the key things that keep me creative, and that I think helped me when I was growing up. I blame books, a lot, but also having plenty of quiet time away from other people. I might not have internalised all the lessons about cooperation, but I learned how to entertain myself. I got to try things out and make mistakes - and that's there in the title.
Now that I am a teacher, I've worked hard to find ways to encourage creativity. I model it, by bringing in projects that I have been working on or talking about something that I have tried recently. If I finish a sewing project that I am pleased with I will bring it in and show it off - and talk about what went wrong and how I fixed it. I talk about the whole body and start senior physics classes with a few minutes of yoga or stretching. I have a whole unit in junior science about playing round with diy and everyday materials. I encourage students to use interpretative dance to present ideas (ideal for waves).
But I find that I am fighting all the time to incorporate creativity and learning about creativity. I want to make it like metacognition, a thing I slip in all the time. Perhaps I should start thinking about it that way.
And, finally, the TED talk that sparked all this in the first place. Here's Ken Robinson, kicking it old school about creativity and schooling:
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