Schools+Kill+Creativity

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I agree with Ken Robinson's basic premise. Creativity is as valuable a mental tool as intelligence is, or it is a crucial portion of //what// intelligence is. And schools, particularly the public schools that I have worked and volunteered in, don't do a very good job of teaching it.

One reason why Robinson seems not to be able to come up with concrete suggestions on how to fix this is that he is badly conflating "creativity" with "the arts." Let's make that distinction now: creativity is needed, instrumental, rare, in every field, not just dancing and painting and singing. Math teachers should be creativity teachers (them more than anyone). Science, history and English teachers too.

Robinson is so busy telling jokes that he has almost no time for concrete suggestions, but he hints at a few: stop penalizing mistakes through evaluations such as standardized assessment, and structure education so that it values creative endeavors like dance as much as it does math and science. These would not be bad programs, but educators can make small changes too. We can be creative without throwing up our hands and turning the math class into a dance studio.