Friday, May 7, 2010
anti-creativity checklist
Education has been hijacked.
If education reform can be saved, it must be done so by those closest to the action... I'm talking about the students, teachers and parents.
If we are ever to get education reform right, we are going to need to be creative.
We need to listen to Youngme Moon's 14 rules to avoiding creativity and refuse to follow even one of her suggestions.
If we are to save ourselves and our children from education hell, we need to both listen and ignore her rules,
We can't afford not to...
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This video is of course ironic. I have learned to discipline my behaviour rules into positive statements. It is not what I don't do, it is what I do. The anti-creative checklist is a little damning for me. If I search my mind I am sure I can identify times when I have responded to innovation in all of these ways. Perhaps at times an anti-creative response was even warranted. Innovation is not exempt from the imperative of critical reflection and logic. The most damaging responses on the list are those that stifle the creativity of others.
ReplyDeleteCynicism and conservative caution frustrate me now, despite my own impulses to be cautious or husband my own personal resources. I recall reading a poem by F.R. Scott (cannot quote it here). He wrote of his frustration talking with his liberal and conservative friends. Confronted with problems, they languished in inaction studying and pondering the alternatives: ever so cautious. They criticized Scott for taking the extreme position. He risked taking a stand and being an advocate.
Classroom teachers feel like they have been hijacked by the testing movement. Ironically, some of the approaches to this movement are clearly on the anti-creativity checklist. Pause to think about that. Joe Bower advocates no homework and no grades. Neither are new ideas, but I do think they are creative responses to improving learning in schools. Advocating a return to the classroom teacher's control of assessment, bringing assessment back to the context of an individual or classroom group's unique learning experience, is a conservative response in my mind. It is not innovative at all. I think it the right move, but I don't see it as creative. Despite what I think of them, merit pay, pay for students, standardized tests and America's charter schools are creative responses to the problem of increasing learning. How we oppose the elements of current educational reform is important. Do we need to apply the cautions implicit in the anti-creativity checklist to our own opposition?
i like how youngme moon is talking about how if you think that your idears are stupid then you wont get anywere in life.
ReplyDeleteThis is so right i think that kids learn more by not being so pushed to learn, if that makes since. if they are pushed to learn it seems to just get more and more boring for them.
ReplyDeleteMaybe kids do not even need to go to school where they are pushed to learn. Then they will "learn more" by not being pushed. :-))))
ReplyDeleteI agree with the general premise here, but demanding data and being skeptical are keys to critical thinking and don't necessarily damage creativity.I think by defining creativity...what it is and isn't, you pigeonhole creativity.
ReplyDeletePushing too far just shuts the kids. It will be better if teacher just let it loose and let the students learn at their pace without pressuring them, the academic advantage in that setting is overflowing.
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