The
necessity of teaching creativity in schools is a topic of considerable debate,
especially in our rapidly evolving world. Some argue that fostering creativity
is essential for preparing children for future challenges and opportunities,
while others believe that traditional academic subjects should take precedence
to ensure a solid educational foundation. What is your opinion on this issue?
Should schools prioritize teaching children how to be creative? Why or why not?
☆Let’s Read and Think
Read the following articles,
underlined by yours truly Sasaki, to see what creativity is and how it can be
learned.
Article 1 Medical students 'raised on
screens lack skills for surgery'
Leading surgeon says lack of
hobbies and creativity in schools has affected children’s practical abilities
Matthew Weaver Oct 2018
The Guardian
New medical students have spent so much
time on screens that they lack vital practical skills necessary to conduct
life-saving operations, a leading surgeon has warned.
Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical
education at Imperial College London, said that a decline in hands-on
creative subjects at school and practical hobbies at home means that
students often do not have a basic understanding of the physical world.
Backing a campaign by educational
thinktank the Edge Foundation to encourage more creative subjects in the
national curriculum, Kneebone said spending hours engaged in virtual
worlds was no substitute for experience in the real world.
“Partly it stops [students] being aware in
three dimensions of what’s going on around them, because their focus is much
narrower, but also it takes away that physical understanding you get by
actually doing things,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live. “That has to be done in the
real world with real stuff.”
Kneebone said there had been a “very
serious knock-on effect” on practical skills among students since smartphones
had become so popular.
He said: “We have noticed that medical
students and trainee surgeons often don’t seem as comfortable with doing things
with their hands … than they used to even perhaps five or 10 years ago.
“People are no longer getting the same
exposure to making and doing [things] when they are at home, when they are
school, as they used to.”
He claimed that cutting back on creative
subjects at school had a negative impact on the tactile skills necessary for a
career in medicine or science.
Kneebone said: “We are talking about the
ability to do things with your hands, with tools, cutting things out and
putting things together … which is really important in order to do the right
thing either with operations, or with experiments. You need to understand
how hard you can pull things before you do damage to them or how quickly you
can do things with them before they change in some way.”
Kneebone said that by spending time online children
were missing out on practical skills acquired from hobbies such as cooking,
woodwork, playing a musical instrument or model making. He endorsed making
Halloween jack-o’-lanterns as a start for budding surgeons.
He said: “Pumpkin carving is one example
of using sharp instruments with great delicacy and precision on a hard surface
with a soft inside to create something that you have got in your mind and then
you have to make it happen.”
Article 2 The Guardian view on creativity
in schools: a missing ingredient
Imagination should infuse
teaching of science as well as the arts. Children are not pitchers to be filled
with facts Oct 2019
You can’t see it, smell it, hear
it. People disagree on how, precisely, to define it, or where, exactly, it
comes from. It isn’t a school subject or an academic discipline, but it can be
learned. It is a quality that is required by artists. But it is also present in
the lives of scientists and entrepreneurs. All of us benefit from it: we thrive
mentally and spiritually when we are able to harness it. It is a delicate
thing, easily stamped out; in fact, it flourishes most fully when people are
playful and childlike. At the same time, it works best in tandem with
deep knowledge and expertise.
This mysterious – but teachable – quality is
creativity, the subject of a report published this week by Durham
Commission on Creativity and Education, a body chaired by Sir Nicholas Serota,
the chair of Arts Council England, with input from figures including film
director Beeban Kidron, architect Sir David Adjaye and choreographer Akram
Khan. The report, put together in collaboration with academics from Durham
University, concludes that creativity is not something that should inhabit the
school curriculum only as it relates to drama, music, art and other obviously
creative subjects, but that creative thinking ought to run through all of
school life, infusing the way human and natural sciences are learned.
The authors, who focus on education in
England, offer a number of sensible recommendations, some of which are an
attempt to alleviate the Gradgrindish turn in education policy of
recent years. When children are regarded as pitchers to be filled with
facts, creativity does not prosper; nor does it when teachers’ sole
objective is, perforce, coaching children towards exams. One suggestion from
the commission is a network of teacher-led “creativity collaboratives”, along
the lines of existing maths hubs, with the aim of supporting teaching for
creativity through the school curriculum.
Nevertheless, it is arts subjects through
which creativity can most obviously be fostered. The value placed on them by
the independent education sector is clear. One only has to look at
the remarkable arts facilities at Britain’s top public schools to
comprehend this. But in the state sector the EBacc’s focus on English, maths
and science threatens to crush arts subjects; meantime, reduced school budgets
mean dwindling extracurricular activities. There has been a 28.1% decline
in uptake of creative subjects at GCSE since 2014, though happily, art and
design have seen a recent uptick.
This disparity between state and private is
a matter of social justice. It is simply wrong and unfair that most children
have a fraction of the access to choirs, orchestras, art studios and drama that
their most privileged peers enjoy. As lives are affected by any number of
looming challenges – climate crisis, automation in the workplace – humans are
going to need creative thinking more than ever. For all of our sakes,
creativity in education, and for all, must become a priority.
☆Hints for Points
Creativity
1.
Whether
one is creative or not will be crucial in the near future as it will be vital
to cope with the impacts of climate change and more jobs will be taken care of
by AI.
2.
Real
creativity comes from real contact with nature, people, and society.
3.
Establishment
of individuality is necessary for society to evolve.
Academic
subjects
1.
Creativity
requires solid foundation, essential knowledge and skills. To create something
new, you need to know what has already been created. What you think is new
might already exist.
2.
Breakthrough
in science often comes from interdisciplinary studies, integration of academic
studies.
3.
School
is the place to teach academic subjects. Children learn creativity outside
school, while school teaches academic subjects better than anything else.
☆Sample Responses
Disagree
【Thesis】Although I agree with Meg in
that creativity is the inspiration that is the key to solve difficult problems
and come up with new ideas, I don’t think school should prioritize teaching
creativity because in my view, school cannot teach creativity. It is not a
subject. Thus, I think school should prioritize providing quality education of
academic subjects for children, while reducing school hours and homework, to
help their natural development of creativity.
【Creativity】Creativity is not something that
you learn from school education but something you forget in school. Children
are naturally all creative. Yet, once they start school, they lose creativity.
Studies to get good scores in examinations of subjects in which they have no
interest stunts, I guess, the development of their neurons, which had been
budding freely by then. Long school hours and tons of homework reduce their
free time that would have helped them develop creativity through interaction
with the real world in each individual’s environment.
【Academic
Subjects】On
the other hand, academic subjects are indispensable to develop and mature a
creative mind. They provide knowledge and skills to understand and internalize
nature, people, and society in detail and deeply. Teachers should be here to
support children do these jobs by providing them with proper materials and
assignment.
【Conclusion】What school can do is to teach
traditional academic subjects well. Although it is paradoxical, school should
not prioritize creativity so that children can grow up to be creative. (239 words)
Agree
【Thesis】I believe school should prioritize teaching children how to be
creative.
【Supporting Details】School has long been dead and AI has
already become smarter than many of us humans. I have no regret to say good-bye
to conventional school where children write down what teachers write on the
blackboard and cram for examinations, where social norms, or prejudices, of the
region are instilled and unnecessary rules are forced to make children obedient
and banal, and welcome a new type of school that support children to gain
creativity by experiencing various things, such as nature, other cultures, and
jobs, because AI cannot fully replicate human experiences and thus this is the
area that future humans should explore to coexist with AI.
【Counterargument-treatment】Although conventional knowledge may be
necessary for our creative activities, it is said that all the academic
knowledge we need can be found online. As for the question whether school is
necessary when creativity can be learned without school, at least public school
should exist for equality and ensure that all children get as much experience
as possible.
【Conclusion】Therefore, school should support children to get ready to be humans
that can provide their personalized experiences, or individual data, for AI to
use to make the world a better place to live, as well as enjoying sharing their
precious memories with other humans through creative activities. (223 words)
DRAFT