Writing for Academic Discussion Should schools prioritize teachig children how to be creative? - revised -

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

【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 in a real sense. 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 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)