I watched the video on creativity by Ken Robinson. Here is the link: http://sites.google.com/site/drasresources/awareness-videos
Robinson is a proponent of promoting creativity in our school systems. He defines creativity as "the process of having original ideas that have value." He believes that all kids have talent but that it gets squandered in school. He stated that creativity is as important as literacy. In the video, Robinson tells two stories of kids being creative. One little girl was drawing a picture of God. The teacher said to the child, "no one know what God looks like." The child responded, "They will in a minute." The other story was about a boy who was in a nativity play. His role was that of the wise man who brought frankincense. Instead of saying frankincense, the child said, "Frank sent this." The point Robinson was trying to make with these stories is that children are not afraid of making mistakes or being wrong. Children will take chances until they learn in school that it is a bad thing to make a mistake.
I honestly did not enjoy this video very much. I felt like much of it was just Robinson making jokes and trying to be funny. I did not catch any main points that I strongly agreed with. I do think creativity is a very important aspect of a child's development and learning. However, I do not agree that creativity is as important as literacy. I believe that literacy is one of the main foundations for all learning. Robinson seems to believe that language and math should not be at the top of the "curriculum hierarchy" and that art and music should be important parts in a school curriculum. He believes that schools prepare students to be university professors. I can see his point, but I disagree. I think that schools teach students the basic knowledge they need to succeed in life. In high schools there are different tracks for students to take. At my high school, there was a university track for students planning on attending a university, and a technical track for students who did not plan on attending a university. My school had classes that prepared students for work in technical areas such as car mechanics, hair stylists, and cooking/homemaking. Students had choices as to which classes they enrolled in.
I do believe that creativity is important and that schools should work to foster children's creativity. I believe this can be done through music, dance, and art classes. I still believe that core classes such as math and language are important parts of a child's curriculum. I also believe that within the subjects of math and language, creativity can be fostered through projects and activities that draw on student's creative abilities.
Please feel free to agree or disagree with me and leave your comments! :)
I enjoyed reading your post on Sir Ken Robinson's video. I agree with you when you say that schools should work on fostering children's creativity. Some teachers push dance, music, and art aside because they don't have to teach it. There are other teachers in the building who teach these subjects. However, these are a few of the many ways that children express themselves. Why can't we as classroom teachers, teach some of our lessons through a song or dance? Why don't we have children draw and color pictures on a lesson we taught to show what they learned? We as teachers have to allow children to be creative in our classroom, while still teaching our core subjects at the same time. I liked that you said that creativity can be fostered during math and language by using projects and activities that draw on student's creative abilities. This allows student's to use individual thinking and be creative in their own way when completing a project or activity. Good blog!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments Amber! I like your ideas of teaching through a song or dance and allowing students to draw about what they have learned. I think these are some very simple and fun ways to integrate creativity into the classrom.
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