Overview
It’s imperative that curriculums (especially for early education) are built on more than just core subject matter. They also need to be strongly founded upon core ideals, values, and principles. The teaching of such values (although much harder to guide, manage, and track) is absolutely essential to the intellectual growth and prosperity of emerging generations.I’ve posted about holistic education before and creativity is one of the three main pillars of such education – It’s seen in the SunWALK model of holistic education as “one of the three intrapersonal ‘primary colours’ or modes of engagement, of the human spirit, that are utilized in facing, individually and interpersonally, progressively more challenging tasks to nurture the development of abilities.”
Creativity is essential to the development of other abilities and the fundamental ability to engage/interact with people, nature, and the world in which we live. It’s from creativity that the purest dreams and ideas are born.
So how is creativity defined? Let’s look…
Wikipedia: “Creativity is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts. Creativity is fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight.”
Children’s Health Encyclopedia: “Creativity is the ability to think up and design new inventions, produce works of art, solve problems in new ways, or develop an idea based on an original, novel, or unconventional approach.”
Some more definitions can be found at a great post by Dr. Leslie Owen Wilson of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point “On Defining Creativity”.
- Impulsivity and spontaneity – Just do it! / Just think it!
- Nonconformity (not going with the majority) – Stray from the beaten path.
- Courage – Naturally be unafraid of trying new things.
- Self-Confidence – Have no susceptibility to peer pressure.
- Persistence – Learn when to maintain thoughts or set thoughts aside.
- Balance – Convergent / divergent thinking – Learn to hypothesize, speculate, and evaluate multiple conclusions while reserving the ability to logically find and support a single conclusion.
- The “One Brain” Concept – Right brain thinking and left brain thinking together are the best engine of creativity.
- Need to create good inner resources in children. Multi-dimensionality is key.
- Give children an active role in their own learning.
- Educators need to be aware of the “blocks to creativity” or things that can interfere with it. SunWALK says there are two types of blocks: Environmental (the lack of a motivating physical surrounding, trustworthy acquaintances, or positive leadership) and Cultural (the fear of making bad choices, lack of an appetite for chaos, and the general lack of enthusiasm). It should be noted that the positive case of “blocks” would be that Environment and Culture become “enablers” of creativity.
- In order to foster creativity in schools, education should be based on the discovery of knowledge and the development of critical attitudes, rather than on the passive absorption of knowledge.
Simple Creativity Exercises
- Spell all the letters of the alphabet using letters other than the one you are spelling. Now try it without using any vowels. CAY-YII-FEE-EYE-EHDT (that ‘N’ was very hard)
- Draw an adjective, act a noun, describe a verb.
- Create an equation that has never before been created. Describe its elements, fundamentals, and purpose.
- Contemplate a newly-shaped earth. What would a cubed earth be like? What if the world really was flat? How would business, transportation, politics, weather, etc change?
Quotes
- “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” – Erich Fromm
- “The world is but a canvas to the imagination.” – Henry David Thoreau
- “Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist.” — Thomas Disch
- “Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” — Mary Lou Cook
- “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” — Maya Angelou
- “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” — Joseph Chilton Pierce
- “Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” — Goethe
- “To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” –Osho
- “We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own and other’s people’s models, learn to be ourselves and allow our natural channel to open.” — Shakti Gawain
- “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” – Einstein
- “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” – George Bernard Shaw
kevin berardinelli 