Education and creativity

It can be a revealing exercise to consider what happens to creative thought and artistic expression through the different stages of a person's life. There is general agreement among experts that it tends to decline over time as people begin to accept themselves as being "ordinary" and therefore inferior in creative thinking and artistic expression. As a product of educational practices and cultural attitudes, many adults take on the idea that innovation and artistic expression are largely the terrain of those with greater talents than their own; artists. This thought that education could be actually responsible for thwarting creative potential rather than enhancing it is rather disheartening, yet there is considerable support for this point of view.

The description of the decline of creativity is not an unfamiliar one. Most children start off in life as naturally curious and highly imaginative; however, as they attend school, they learn to be more conformist, to be cautious and less innovative. They learn the rewards of playing it safe. Worst of all, they tend to become spectators instead of participators. But who is responsible for this deviation from what could be considered an educational ideal? Is the school system suppressing creativity on purpose? Or is it due to the misconceptions of adults about the value of creativity? One study that compared the assessment of the creativity of pre-schoolers with the ratings of their teachers concluded that, in fact, teachers are not very good judges of creativity. The study brought to light three common mistakes that teachers make. The first is that of confusing measures of intelligence with measures of creativity. Creativity is a form of intelligence, but is not one that is targeted in tests and does not show up in grades. What's more, creativity can be quite localised. A musical genius is not necessarily going to be good at languages or maths. In fact, schools tend to focus on linguistic and logical domains to the virtual exclusion of other areas. Nevertheless, teachers may assume that students who receive the highest grades are automatically the most creative students in their classes. A second mistake often made is that of being overly influenced by norms of acceptable social behaviour. Academic establishments are not always accepting of children who are branded as daydreamers or troublemakers, even when history tells us that many highly creative geniuses in later life were, in fact, thought to be underachievers at school. Finally, adults tend to react more favourably to an uncommon rate of progress, like learning to recognise words at an early age, than they do to a child's unconventional or creative behaviour.
 
So, how do these common misconceptions about creativity ...