Part II: Can school’s foster creativity?

I love the video of Sir Kenneth Robinson that I posted last week, and am glad to have a reason to discuss it. While it is not about the 21^st Century Skills Movement, it certainly is about 21^st century education. Sir Ken makes the case that while we can’t know where the future will lead us we do know that solutions to problems require original ideas and we can’t afford to squander our children’s capacity for creative problem solving. Near the conclusion of the talk he says, 

We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children… our task is to educate the whole child for the future. We may not see this future, but they will, and our job is to help them make something of it.

Sir Ken defines creativity as,

The process of having original ideas that have value.

This is not an “artsy-fartsy” definition. I believe whether children are educated to be creative, or to discourage their creativity, is one of the great equality questions of our time. It’s no longer accepted in our schools that we can choose groups of people and educate them for the jobs we believe those kinds of people are suited. We call that racism. However, when education fosters creativity in some and not others it can have the same discriminatory effect. 

As Sir Ken says, children start out creative— and then we educate it out of them. We may not be able to educate children to become creative, however, I do believe we can make changes that will keep from educating creativity out of them. One way we can keep from doing this is by expanding what we value in education. I believe the best part of the 21^st century skills movement have the potential to do this. It is that part that I (selectively) embrace.