Does school kill creativity?

[Globe]

Well, I'm applying to Simon's Rock for next year, and one of their essay questions has me writing a letter about an issue that I believe deserves greater attention. My idea was sparked by the following awesome TED video:

What does IBSurvival think about this?

Personally, I think school really needs to focus more on the arts, yeah, I know, some bigger schools/prep schools might have IB theater/dance/music, but most school's don't. My school in particular focuses only on biology and science, and the few music classes we offer we just learn to play pieces already made, and aren't taught to improvise.

I feel as if, at least throughout my academic experience, I've been taught just to memorize answers, and when I critically analyze a problem and try to deviate from the norm in my approach to it, my teacher's don't appreciate it.

The other point that Ken Robinson brings up is that our school systems makes us afraid to be wrong. What do you think about this?

[Drake Glau]

First of all, I didn't watch the link, sorry, can't at the moment, but I like the topic so I'm putting my opinion in anyway

I don't thing creativity can only come in the form of the arts. There is a lot of creativity used for science. Being creative does not mean someone has to create something original it simply means having a creative way of thinking. Thinking in obscure ways that aren't the usual way of thinking. This is how mostly ALL (aside from the accidental discoveries, but even these in a way) scientific discoveries came from some person thinking of an idea that most of the world said was ludicrous.

About the school thing, I do agree. My junior ToK teacher put it best I think. We're taught to be school robots, we play the system that was laid out to us starting with the standardized testing from elementary school. We we're brought up in school in a way that made being "wrong" bad, or even taught some false things! A lot of my teachers would avoid my questions about things that they were told not to teach (this generally happened during science class). This is why, after taking the IB program (almost done), I wish mostly all schools would follow its format. It always has an emphasis of curiosity and I like this. It's not a simple remember this and pass your test kind of system. Again, going to my science classes because I like them, after we learn a concept we do a lab that will show us how it works, or where we can even go "Hey, what happens if we do this" and then we can figure it out on our own instead of asking our teachers and then assuming they are right. I bring this up because my physics teacher all the time says how he loves our class because we tend to hit the extent of his physics knowledge with questions he does not know how to answer and we end up having a 30min discussion about just physics (he's also the ToK teacher so it kind of goes into that too, fyi physics and ToK merge VERY nicely ).

[azulverde:)]

I agree with "Walter Glau" about not needing arts to be creative but I also think that just plain memorization kills creativeness. Another thing is that schools do tend to kill creativity by making students have fear of being incorrect. Schools tend to just focus on memorization and test taking forgeting to teach students how to think for themselves, or just allowing them to think for themselves. I go to a private catholic school and we do have an arts department, I am currently in band, and dance (after school because my school decided to make band an IB class for next year so i cant join) and I am taking art... that doesnt mean though that students need those types of programs to be creative. That just means that schools should allow people more time after school to be creative and not kill them with the memorization of everything. As always you can still be creative with that... As for the being wrong thing its not only schools that do that its society as well.

[dessskris]

OMG THAT IS WHAT I THOUGHT!!!

My school has been veeeeery active in sports but not in arts. We have many sports teams and we join various competitions ranging from soccer, basketball, swimming, tennis and volleyball (there might be something else, I can't remember) but then, last year we had choir, drama and dance clubs but they were quite bad!

I am not the type of sportsperson so I do not join any sport EC/CCA. I joined choir and drama last year. Our choir was dead! The first time I attended class, there were only 4 girls including me!! And we were all new students. And guess what, the teacher said "woah I am so happy to see there are 4 students who want to join choir! I thought nobody would want to join!" then he asked whether we still wanted to be in choir or just quit. The other 3 said they wanted to stay! I was like...oh **** I want to quit! But I felt bad for the teacher so I chose to stay too -___- The choir lasted for a quarter (3 months) only. The teacher was also bad. We never performed and the teacher never taught us the techniques and stuffs -- we just learned songs. And yeah...

The drama club, it was new, I believe. Our teacher was very talented, but what I hated was the students! We did not have many people either.. Around 10-18, I think. And I was the only one from grade 10. The 9th graders in drama club were really hyperactive and they drove our teacher nuts. I felt so sorry for our teacher! And actually a lot of them often skipped class so sometimes when I came there were only 6 people or maybe 4.. It depends, sometimes we can have them all in, though. We were planning to have a musical production, but it was cancelled because we did not have enough time to prepare. We performed several times during the assembly, though, luckily.

Last year I also joined the ANPS (association of national plus schools) musical production. My school actually just turned international last year but we still joined this thing. So students (grades 7-12) from around 11 schools in Jakarta joined this musical production. Guess what, I was the only student joining from my school!! I really wanted to quit but then rehearsals took place at my school and the production itself was held at my school so maybe there should be somebody joining from my school...and it was me. Ugh. No problem though, at least I enjoyed it and it helped me to explore my creativity.. We did West Side Story, btw.

Oh and I didn't join dance but it was quite active, I think. They performed quite often in the assembly. And they were amusing!

This year, they are getting more active in the sports CCA and fortunately we are growing in the arts too

I am joining choir, drama and dance this year.

They got us a new (and better) choir teacher. He is very experienced, and talented! We have 13 people now we will be joining the First International Choir Competition in Vietnam, in March, even though we are new..but we are good and our teacher taught us the singing techniques so I actually learned a lot from this.

The dance club is very active, too. We have performed like twice or thrice, I think. And we are going to perform in ACS Singapore (idk which one, I forgot. probably ACJC). But I am quitting dance because choir will make me very busy next year and besides I don't think I am that talented

The drama, we have many more talented people. The problem is, some of us are in dance too, and the school does not want us to be involved in more than one artsy CCA (which is kind of why I am quitting drama and dance, too) starting 2011 so I think some of them will quit drama and some others will quit dance. Our drama club is much better despite of the need of more boys (there are only 3 boys in the drama club)

I think they are having another ANPS musical production. They are doing Les Miserables. I am not joining but I heard some 7th graders are in, and the number of them can be counted with one hand.

The sports CCA are veeeery active! They have games like every month..or maybe every two weeks! I envy that! And some people refused to join choir because they are already in soccer or something..phew

But then, for the IB students, right.. I think we would still be creative as we must have at least 50 hr of creativity. And yes we can be creative by just planning activities or events. It is not always about arts I still think my school needs to brush up with the artsy CCA, though, and balance the amount of sports activities and arts activities.

[Globe]

I'm putting my opinion in anyway

A lot of my teachers would avoid my questions about things that they were told not to teach (this generally happened during science class).

Exactly, I always find them teaching to the "lowest common denominator"

Again, going to my science classes because I like them, after we learn a concept we do a lab that will show us how it works, or where we can even go "Hey, what happens if we do this" and then we can figure it out on our own instead of asking our teachers and then assuming they are right. I bring this up because my physics teacher all the time says how he loves our class because we tend to hit the extent of his physics knowledge with questions he does not know how to answer

You, sir, are a lucky fellow. Experimenting with labs is why I want to go into biology in the first place.

However, I still think that it's wrong to say that education is only the brain in school, and not the body. I guess I've been reading too much Plato though .

And it's been proven, Gordon Shaw & Xiaodeng Ling come to mind, that music and math are codependent on the other.

Another thing is that schools do tend to kill creativity by making students have fear of being incorrect. Schools tend to just focus on memorization and test taking forgeting to teach students how to think for themselves, or just allowing them to think for themselves.

sums it up nicely. I think most of our societies are just going all 1984 on us and trying to keep us proleteriates and uneducated. Conspiracies FTW.

I am currently in band, and dance and I am taking art... that doesnt mean though that students need those types of programs to be creative.

I think not everybody does, but I am a kinetisthetic learner, and I for one learn stuff much much quicker if I review it while running or working out.

As for the being wrong thing its not only schools that do that its society as well.

Word.

Wow, Desy. It seems to me that people who don't start working in music or dance when they are young simply can't pick it up once they've been through school for awhile. I find this to be true, most of everybody in band/dance/piano have done it their whole lives. Interesting idea though, because we are a lot keener learners when we are young. Good job signing up for those classes!

The sports CCA are veeeery active! They have games like every month..or maybe every two weeks! I envy that! And some people refused to join choir because they are already in soccer or something..phew

Wow! This is really interesting. I'm from USA and here sports and arts must be WAY different from where you are! We constantly cut arts (we have 1 art class and 1 band class, and all of our dance/theatre is outside of school). But our sports are much more active than that! I'm a varsity track runner and we compete 2-3 times a week! It's like that for most sports here! Our basketball team plays 30 games in a 3 month season

[Drake Glau]

However, I still think that it's wrong to say that education is only the brain in school, and not the body. I guess I've been reading too much Plato though .

And it's been proven, Gordon Shaw & Xiaodeng Ling come to mind, that music and math are codependent on the other.

I did not mean to suggest that education is only of the mind. Many subjects, if not all of them, can mesh in some way or another. Music has math, physics, biology, chemistry, art, music, and I'm sure there's more.

But what you just said here kind of proves how I think that any education kills creativity to an extent. You just assume that Gordon and Ling are right. It makes since that math and music would go together with time signatures and tempo etc. but I can't follow music at all, partially because I never took a single music class, and I am very good at math, particularly doing somewhat complex mental math (problems that aren't hard, but most can't keep the numbers straight in their head. Personally I remember the rhythm and beat off memory alone, not figuring it out by counting out the beats or anything, it's just knowing how long to wait for the next note.

As for what Azulverde said, yes, schools never taught us how to think, simply how to memorize, and knowing the facts is not enough. This is why ToK is so frustrating to 98% of the IB people doing it

[Sandwich]

If the suggestion is therefore that TOK encourages creativity, I'd personally stamp on that with a massive steel-capped boot and then some. In my totally honest opinion, TOK shows people who've never considered them before truths that either would have occurred to some of us already, or never bothered us, and then gives us a prescriptive format to somehow 'measure' how good we are at using the IB's format to talk about them in an uninformed and disjointed manner. I say uninformed and disjointed because we basically have to write an essay about how essentially we aren't sure what truth is and actually we probably don't know as much as we thought we did if you asked us to define it. Then again I'm definitely in the anti-TOK camp, I thought it was a ridiculous waste of time. True, you don't have to learn anything really because there's no exam, but you can't have strict criteria for anything and then say it encourages creativity and free thought. It reduces those people who did have creativity and free thought and confuses people who wouldn't otherwise bother. Perhaps for some people it hits the spot because they'd not considered it before but were open to it, but those people are definitely an IB minority.

Personally I am of the opinion that any education system which has exams is automatically going to be low on creativity simply because creativity takes time and doesn't necessarily always hit all the criteria. I've sat in some classes where the teachers thought they'd be creative and (although I admit I'm a reasonably cynical person so perhaps it's just me to some extent) found the whole thing a waste of time when we're short of time and all I needed was to be told the material for the exam. They don't give marks for anything else. Even the 'design' section of science IAs is bogus.

However I think that the IB does try in some respects. Not TOK (which I have already covered as a waste of space), but the method of questioning does encourage creative thinking a lot more than other courses. For instance, my school was mostly A-Levels and a small minority IB students and whilst we often covered similar things, they would have a format like...

Part A) find out quantity X

Part B) find out quantitiy Y

Part C) convert quantity X into blah

Part D) what do you know about blah which would change quantity X?

Part E) how much do you get if you add quantity X and Y together (final quantity P)?

Whereas the IB is more like...

Question 1) Find out quantity P.

So it leads you through less and does make you think creatively to some extent because you have to use the information and apply it yourself, rather than be guided through every aspect. It's also harder because of that -- you could've been able to answer parts A-D, but whereas in A Levels you'd gain 4 marks for that, in the IB you'd get sod all, maybe 1 or 2 marks, unless you got P at the end.

I don't think the IB's very good at 'actual' arts. IB music, drama, art etc. seem to me to be a lot about theory and less about expressing yourself or going outside the box.

Generally I would say school kills creativity. I mean, I think I'm reasonably creative but at no point have I ever been able to express that at school, anything I do is something I do for pleasure in my own time. On the other hand I don't think you can have an objective education system which DOES value creativity.

The only 'creative' thinking I did in my whole school career is probably what I'm weirdly most proud of and that is my Extended Essay. The only part of anything I've ever done where you had to use your initiative and think things through yourself, creatively, even if it's within quite a narrow field. The EE criteria are excellent. If they could stick the EE into A Levels, it would be the ultimate course

[dessskris]

Sorry when I wrote my first post I didn't read Walter and Azulverde's posts and I didn't watch the video (and still haven't watched it haha). I just read their posts and Sandwich's, and realised my post was 99% off topic -_____- haha sorry

I think Walter's post is too TOK-ish even though it's inspiring.. I am considering writing my TOK essay on title #1

I think IBDP was designed in such a way to make IBDP students creative, and so IB schools do not kill creativity.

IBDP makes us take 6 subjects altogether with TOK, EE and CAS. Now think, the 6 subject groups are so comprehensive: literature, foreign language, human science, natural science, math and arts! (even though arts can be replaced by any subject from the other groups). If you are the type who loves lit, you'd still deal with math and science. If you are the type who loves math, you'd still deal with human science and languages. If you are the type who loves science, you'd still deal with art and human science! See how awesome it is??! A1 makes us very creative btw, even though we do not produce a poem or story, but IOC and paper 1 make us wonder why on earth the author chose to use this word, why this character is doing this and not that, what the author is trying to say by using this idiom, etc..

Then TOK itself makes us question: what do we know? and how do we know it? It will always make us wonder about questionable things, which makes us more creative.

I also think EE makes us creative. Even choosing a topic will require creativity, even if you are doing Math EE. I find that finding an EE topic is a torture and the research I have done so far made me know more interesting things in life. It does make us more creative because we would then need to ask a question (which would be the EE RQ) and that means we should think beyond what is already known, and we should find it out ourselves!

CAS, we need to get at least 50 creativity hours..

We need to plan and initiate activities, learn more about your strengths and weaknesses, develop new skills, etc..

Even the amount of HW and the IB exams make you creative! The amount of HW will make you manage your time well.. The IB exams will make you find out a good way to revise the whole syllabus in a number of days...

IBDP is awesome, and it enhances our creativity

[Globe]

As for what Azulverde said, yes, schools never taught us how to think, simply how to memorize, and knowing the facts is not enough. This is why ToK is so frustrating to 98% of the IB people doing it

Eh, ToK teaches you how to think in a way that IB wants, I don't see this helping me be original at all !

If the suggestion is therefore that TOK encourages creativity, I'd personally stamp on that with a massive steel-capped boot and then some. In my totally honest opinion, TOK shows people who've never considered them before truths that either would have occurred to some of us already, or never bothered us, and then gives us a prescriptive format to somehow 'measure' how good we are at using the IB's format to talk about them in an uninformed and disjointed manner.

May I bow down to you now? This is exactly how I feel.

Personally I am of the opinion that any education system which has exams is automatically going to be low on creativity simply because creativity takes time and doesn't necessarily always hit all the criteria.

It really is sad. I did really well on the SAT, but a few of the brilliant IB students got much lower. Standardized tests and exams really leave the creative kids out.

Whereas the IB is more like...

Question 1) Find out quantity P.

Yeah, I really like the IB science IA's (investigate some topic in bio/physics) as it lets you be creative.

I don't think the IB's very good at 'actual' arts. IB music, drama, art etc. seem to me to be a lot about theory and less about expressing yourself or going outside the box.

This is what I hear from the few musical students at my school. That they just learn to play pieces, and never improvise.

The only 'creative' thinking I did in my whole school career is probably what I'm weirdly most proud of and that is my Extended Essay. The only part of anything I've ever done where you had to use your initiative and think things through yourself, creatively, even if it's within quite a narrow field. The EE criteria are excellent. If they could stick the EE into A Levels, it would be the ultimate course

Word.

[dessskris]

Well being creative does not mean you are creating something original, even though if you create something original you are creative..

I think CAS is a great tool to sharpen your creativity. Like if TOK teaches you to think the IB way, you can think in your own way, produce an essay and do it as CAS (maybe..? submit it to a newspaper at least). If IB music students are not allowed to improvise in class, they can compose songs and perform for CAS. Or join a singing competition.

And yeah the design aspect in Group 4 IAs makes us creative too