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
Read the following articles,
underlined by yours truly Sasaki, and make sure 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.
☆Let’s think
1.
Why
is creativity important?
Note: critical thinking,
flexibility, innovation, self-expression, emotional intelligence, ability to
question norms, collaboration, confidence, social skills, etc.
2.
How
can school teach creativity? What are creative classes?
☆Hints for Points
Creativity
(arts, experiments, and extracurricular activities)
1.
Whether
one is creative or not will be crucial in the near future as the impacts of
climate change becomes serious and more routine 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.
Another
pandemic may happen. (economic conditions, social trends)
☆Sample Answer
【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 large amounts of homework reduce
their free time, which helps children 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, and therefore, although it is paradoxical,
school should not prioritize creativity so that children can grow up to be
creative.
(245
words)
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