Essay #1- Creativity in Schools PDF

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A paper for Prof Delaurentis...

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Nicole Tipple Writ 105 9/18/2017 Essay #1 Final What the Nation’s School System is Lacking

What is the purpose of school? Ask anyone in the world and the answer is most likely to be the same. I mean what isn’t clear, obviously we go to school to learn, to educate the youth of today and have a more competent adult population. The problem is that this is such a closeminded approach to answering this question; we don’t just want our children to be book smart-we want a well-rounded generation. America’s youth of today will undergo more than just reading books throughout their 12+ years in school-- they will participate in a wide array of extracurricular activities, learn how to socialize with other people, as well as possibly find a career interest and make connections in the world. The education system is so much more than just knowledge on World War II, the basics of chemistry, and writing five paragraph papers. Schools today mold our youth to be individuals that can advance America into a new era, if given the right tools. Despite all the things our school system does well, it lacks in a lot of areas-- the major one being creativity. Creativity is just as important if not more important than your average everyday math class. In a passage titled “Hidden Intellectualism” the author, Gerald Graff, discusses the narrow-minded approach of our kids just needing to be book smart. He states that, “We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that we consider inherently weighty and academic” (Graff 957). Graff later talks about how kids would be more entertained and involved in schooling if it included all the

things kids enjoyed rather than just the regular, mundane day-to-day tasks. Neglecting things like the arts as well as sports gives Americans a different vision of what the classroom should look like, tricking them into believing our typical, text-book learning classrooms are what is best for our youth. The average American has the belief that school is just about making our kids book smart, and this creates a blatant disregard for the purpose of school-- to create individuals. Schools teach so much more than how to multiply or write a basic essay. While schools have a shortage of creativity, they are strong in teaching our youth how to be responsible. They educate our students on how to be responsible, especially when it comes to work ethic and completing things by a deadline. By teaching our youth how to meet due dates we are giving them a major life tool to succeed in the future. One day most of America’s youth will be employed, fighting for higher positions and better jobs and in the workplace and if an employee misses a deadline it can cost them their job; whereas if someone is late with a paper in school they probably are taking a zero, an outcome that although is not ideal also isn’t going to be detrimental to their everyday life. This gives our youth a chance to learn that all of their actions have consequences without the dire results that would happen from missing a deadline later in life. The problem lies in that despite the fact that our kids will be responsible it will never make up for the lack of creativity. Schools are teaching our youth to learn from their mistakes so that when the same scenario happens in the workplace they already know to be responsible, but also limiting them from possibly getting a job over someone else because the other individuals were more creative. Talk to any college professor and they will say that a key part of doing well in college is to have an organization system and proper time management-- which are lessons that we learn throughout our years in high school while preparing for a higher education. Despite our schools’

inadequacy of creativity, schools do a phenomenal job teaching our students time-management, which will be vital in their futures. In the reading “Blue Collar Brilliance”, the author Mike Rose talks about his mother who had time management down to a tee. To her, the answer was simple, if someone works smart they are making every second count, and that was one of the most important lessons in her book (Rose 1035). Although effective planning is taught throughout all our years in school it starts becoming more and more relevant as America’s kids become adults. Through seminars and class work we are slowly taught how to optimize our time so that by the time we reach college we are well equipped to keep an organized planner and use our time wisely so that we can accomplish everything we need to be happy. If our school system taught an approach to time management that was much more open-minded, then our youth would be able to use their new-found creativity to plan their time more effectively. By prioritizing the things that are most important to us, we can work through our time in an effective way, completing everything we need to do while still having time to relax and keep up with ourselves and we would have even more time if creativity was prioritized in education. Despite all the positive things our school systems do while constructing the next generation there is one thing that is severely lacking-- creativity; one of the largest shortcomings that our school system could have. In preschool and kindergarten classrooms the creative side of the lesson is almost more important than the lesson itself. 5 year olds can’t practice their gross motor skills just by jumping from dot to dot they need to be told they are going to fall in the fire below, or even get eaten by the alligator swimming through the water to make it across the line of rubber circles. By the time kids get to late elementary school they are already being taught to find the difference in pictures and take a more scientific, straight-forward approach towards their problems-- draining all creativity out of their problem solving. By the time our kids are in middle

school playing pretend with their friends is taboo and all of their imagination is dissipating because they are being taught there is only one way to do things. Because schools tell them that there is one solution to 2+2 and that even writing, a creative outlet, has a very distinct definite structure. Creativity easily is tossed in the back burner, and if our school systems continue with the neglect is will burn into nothing but ashes. So how do we teach creativity? The same way we teach anything else! The goal is to create a more open-ended version of all the things we currently teach in our schools. Rather than teaching our English classes this very distinct “hamburger” structure we can teach with a less “by the book” approach. Instead of our five paragraph papers our kids could develop their ideas into a more freeform flow, allowing for more ideas and less limitations. The same can be done in a math class, instead of 2+2 being such a close-minded idea we can take a look at what other approaches we could use to answering our questions. If we lay 2 basketballs on one side of a table and 2 on the other than we could make different combinations-- 2+2 can the equal 3+1 or 4+0 rather than just having a straightforward answer. This allows for the more open-ended thinking we need as individuals to explore ideas creatively, and also allows for our children to know that a lot of the time there isn’t just one correct answer. While creativity can be taught throughout the curriculum of every secondary school class, there are some classes, like art class, where creativity is designed to be the main focus of the class. Logically, if we wanted to increase creativity within our youth we would treat creative classes (like the fine arts) the same way we treat any other academic class, but instead of increasing our creative classes and teaching our kids things like art and music these programs are being defunded so the money can get put somewhere “more important” like test tubes for a chemistry class. When a school’s budget gets cut typically the first thing to go is the fine arts

because “they just aren’t important”. The problem with this is that for a lot of students, art is their safe haven in a world that might be falling apart around them. A first-hand case on the importance of the visual arts comes from Lynda Barry, an artist that found her passion after spending extra time with her elementary school art teacher. In her passage, “The Sanctuary of School”, she emphasized that “(Her teacher) believed in the natural healing power of painting and drawing for troubled children.” (Barry 859). People like Barry find a solace in the arts and thinking creatively, giving them the chance to look outside the box. In the future, they will be the employees that go above and beyond with what they are asked because they have a different thinking process- one that doesn’t believe in one correct answer. If our fine arts continue to be defunded eventually all of the creativity in our children's’ daily schedules will be diminished to nothing. Art will forever be a major part of our youth’s education, and it needs to be just as important as any other subject to mold our children into well-rounded individuals. America’s youth spends around 1,000 hours in a classroom during just one year's worth of schooling. Our schools do exceedingly more than we could ever ask for by teaching responsibility, working on time-management, and building our kids into the next generation but they still lack a proper education in creativity. After approximately 12,000 hours spent in classrooms, our schools spit out new people (that aren’t just book smart), that can manage their time and responsibly do things on time, except for the fact that they aren’t going to have the more imaginative thought process that will give them the edge over their competitors. By pushing creativity and open-minded thinking we are creating a more versatile generation, that will go above and beyond what a strictly book smart generation could ever achieve. By encouraging divergent thinking from the time our children make it into grade school we will create an unstoppable generation abundant with ideas that will carry the world in a new direction.

Works Cited Barry, Linda. “The Sanctuary of School”. Everyone’s an Author, Edited by Lunsford, Andrea, et al, W.W. Norton, 2017, 856-860. Graff, Gerald. “Hidden Intellectualism”. Everyone’s an Author, Edited by Lunsford, Andrea, et al, W.W. Norton, 2017, 957-962. Rose, Mike. “Blue-Collar Brilliance”. Everyone’s an Author, Edited by Lunsford, Andrea, et al, W.W. Norton, 2017, 1033-1041....