*Creativity's place in education should be everywhere...*

I really enjoyed reading this article, Creativity- It’s Place in Education. This is something that is really applicable to me since I’m going to be a teacher. I totally agree with the basic premise of the article that creativity is necessary in schools. It absolutely kills me that in budget crunches the first things to go are art and music. I think that CSAP has everyone going crazy pushing for literacy because if a student is struggling on their literacy they are even losing science and social studies for more literacy practice.

I laughed out loud when I was reading Tom Peter’s vision about education. One of the lines states “a society that respects their teachers and principals, pays them well, and grants them the autonomy to do their job as the creative individuals they are, and for the creative individuals in their charge.” This is almost sadly unrealistic. Teachers get paid next to nothing for all the work they do. We are so vitally important to society, and a strike would show them that, but teachers would never strike and abandon their students. We are also so restricted with what we teach because of the greatly demanding curriculum.

I also thought the section “Why Should We Bother” was interesting. They said the main crisis in schools was irrelevance, as in music and art are not literacy, so they are irrelevant. I believe that is untrue. Music and art can help kids with their literacy. Arts integrated into every subject help the learning process greatly and makes for a more rounded education. They also say that “Creative students lead richer lives and, in the longer term, make a valuable contribution to society. Surely those are reasons enough to bother.”

I found the Jordan Aryn scenario appalling. A very creative kindergartener received an unsatisfactory grade in art for refusing to color inside the lines. A little part of my soul died as I read this. We are putting kids into little boxes and molds to be all exactly alike and that is just not the way kids are. I think it’s important to color outside the lines and be creative, imaginative and unique. We need to teach kids to strive to be individuals and not conform to the rest of society.

“We have an interesting paradox. We have industry commentators saying that, for a successful future, we need people who think, are creative and innovative and yet our education systems seems to be working against this.” Unfortunately, I find this totally true and I don’t see it changing anytime soon. It will be interesting to see what kinds of changes are in store for No Child Left Behind, but I don’t think anything will be enough after all we’ve been through.
No Child Left Behind is also known as NCLB or more appropriately nicknamed No Child Left Untested, No Teacher Left Standing, Everything Left Behind Except Literacy and I’ve even seen Harry Potter has done more for literacy than NCLB ever will.

They suggest some things in the reading of how to encourage creativity. Two of these are classroom climate and classroom environment. In our education program we learn all about how to create positive, creative and enriching classroom climates and environments. Everyone agrees this is important enough to be readily taught to future teachers. The others are time, materials and resources. These are not as widely recognized. With the curriculum restrictions placed on us we do not have the time to allow children all the time they need to explore their creativity. Materials and resources both require money. This is one of the reasons that NCLB didn’t work, because all these great ideas were proposed but then it was unfunded. We don’t have the money to provide abundant useful and interesting materials and resources. This is hurting our kids. When I become a teacher, there will always be music and art in my classroom because I understand just how important it is and how useful of a learning tool it is. The removal of arts and music from schools is bad and until people recognize that, nothing is going to get better. That makes me fear for our future generations.