Creativity in education

This article was interesting to me because it brought back quite a few thoughts reguarding my own personal education. From the very beginning of the paper, I liked "the sheer volume of facts to be digested by the students of today" made me laugh. There are so many things we learned (and relearned throughout the years), it's interesting to think that this volume of information is why there wasn't time for creativity.

"The result has been a generation of technicians rather than visionaries." I only have one thing that I would like to say about this, and that is that I agree.

There are a few things I'd like to add reguarding the ideas about what creatvity in education "should" be. The things that stick out to me include
(1) thinking or behaving imaginatively in a purposeful way to generate somthing original and of value. (My thoughts: does one need to create somthing "original or of value" to be creative?)
(2) Having a creative classroom means that the teacher takes risks on a daily basis and encourages the students to do the same. (My thoughts: creative classrooms shouldn't be just about taking riskes, there is much more to it than that. Not to mention, taking risks on a daily basis could be harmful to teacher or student. Also, students wouldn't learn importance of being cautious if they took risks ALL the time.)
(3) A school system that recognizes that learning is natural, and a love of learning is normal (My thoughts: I beleive this is incredibly important. I think if kids learn early on to like school/learning they will do so much better in life. I base this conclusion on my eight cousins, the two who learned to like learning previous to attending school have done much better and actually enjoy school.)
(4) values questions above answers, creativity above fact, individuality above uniformity, and excellence above standardized performance. (My thoughts: It's hard to imagine a class that values creativity above fact and questions above answers. It reminds me of one class that I took in high school. It was a history class but the teacher didn't beleive in memorizing dates and such, but instead in remembering concepts and ideas. Tests wern't typical history tests, but intead covered ideas and such. Also, another way this sits with me was about excellence above standardized performance. I'm not exactly proud of this but I've never strived for excellence in school, but seem to know exactly what to do to acheive a solid 3.7 gpa, but never work any harder than necessacary. If the school had recognized excellence rather than expecting only normal performance, I may have gotten more out of school other than only floating along.)

The difference between teaching creativity and teaching for creativity. In my personal experience, my teachers taught creativity but rarely did they teach for creativity.

The quote about the kindergartener failing art because he refused to color inside the lines shocked and angered me because who can forcing a kid to color inside the lines help anyone? I remember when my cousin Rebekah's other grandparents wouldn't let her color anymore because she couldn't stay in the lines and didn't use the "right" colors. I found this to be so angering. Rebekah and I often colored together and I taught her more about art then most kids twice her age knew. For someone to tell her she couldn't color because she didn't do it "right" made me angry.

To sum up the rest of the writing, I beleive that if I had kids I would want them to be raised in this kind of creative education environment.