Post by The Creativity Crisis on Aug 9, 2011 9:59:23 GMT -5
Mr. Po Bronson has an interesting opinion on why exactly creativity is disappearing. Bronson says it's because we are teaching young Americans like the Chinese have been teaching for decades. We drill information in, memorize it, then spit it back out whenever we are asked about that topic. There simply is no creative process involved. I found it very interesting where in the article Bronson said, "...he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ” The quote pretty much sums up all of the problems we are having with creativity.
As the article said creativity scores "...inclined, until 1990." This is simply because we began focusing strictly on the curriculum. In essence, "the curriculum" is quite a bit like Big Brother. It is always watching and if you don't teach it right, the scores from "the tests" come in and you get "vaporized" or terminated before you even know what happened. In order to teach all of the curriculum, teachers in America HAVE to implement the drill-and-recall approach in order to get through all of the sheer information. There is no way anyone could possibly teach it all in 52 minutes for 150 or so days when really nothing gets done for the first 10-15 minutes of class and the last 5 are for cleaning up. Therefore, realistically, we get 32 minutes, and that leaves no time for creative questions or to get distracted on an interesting topic.
Interestingly enough, the Chinese want to move towards the model of education we had in the 1950-1980's. They currently have the model of education that Americans are running towards head-on and frankly, their creative scores suck. China now wants to improve their creative scores because they have migrated towards which is more capitalistic than before. We need to look at China's creativity scores from the 1970's because in 20 years, that could easily be us.
As the article said creativity scores "...inclined, until 1990." This is simply because we began focusing strictly on the curriculum. In essence, "the curriculum" is quite a bit like Big Brother. It is always watching and if you don't teach it right, the scores from "the tests" come in and you get "vaporized" or terminated before you even know what happened. In order to teach all of the curriculum, teachers in America HAVE to implement the drill-and-recall approach in order to get through all of the sheer information. There is no way anyone could possibly teach it all in 52 minutes for 150 or so days when really nothing gets done for the first 10-15 minutes of class and the last 5 are for cleaning up. Therefore, realistically, we get 32 minutes, and that leaves no time for creative questions or to get distracted on an interesting topic.
Interestingly enough, the Chinese want to move towards the model of education we had in the 1950-1980's. They currently have the model of education that Americans are running towards head-on and frankly, their creative scores suck. China now wants to improve their creative scores because they have migrated towards which is more capitalistic than before. We need to look at China's creativity scores from the 1970's because in 20 years, that could easily be us.