The Real Value of Creativity in Education
i have been writing
since before i could physically hold a
pencil in my hands
i would sit on my parents bed and tell
my dad what to write and he would type
it up for me
i then got promoted to crayons and then
pencils
and then my computer which is thankfully
what i use today
and i’ve always had these weird crafty
phases
like a cardboard phase a duct tape phase
a hot glue phase and super glue face a
costume phase and even a tying phase
where i would tie as many things
together as tight as possible
and hope for the best when the knot had
to come undone but i think a common
misconception of creativity
is that creativity equals craftiness
or that to be creative you have to be
good with your hands
today i want to pull us away from this
stereotype and talk about the real
importance of creativity
and why it needs to be a priority in
education systems across the nation
so let’s dive into the science real
quick there is a biological difference
between
creative brains and non-creative brains
but over dozens of studies
this difference is really hard to pin
down
i’m sure we’ve all heard that creativity
is based in the right sides of our
brains and the left sides
are dedicated to logic and reasoning but
this suggests that creativity
and logic are opposite things i believed
they were designed
to co-exist consider this quote by
bradley wojtek
who has a phd in neuroscience imagine
asking
where is video located in my computer
well
that doesn’t make any sense your monitor
is required
to see the video your graphics card is
required to render the video
your software is required to
excuse me to generate the code for the
video
but the video isn’t located anywhere in
the computer
in terms of creativity creativity does
not inhabit one part of our brains
instead it lives and breathes constantly
so then who are the people who are most
creative i’m sure we can all think of a
few political activists or celebrities
pretty quickly
let’s think of maybe malala who used her
talents to change
education systems in countless countries
martin luther king jr
whose words change the minds of an
entire nation
elon musk whose inquiries will be the
future
and what did all of these people have in
common they were all
ridiculously famous but also
their creativity wasn’t crafty they
probably
didn’t sit on their bedroom floors and
hot glue designs
into the bottom of their mother’s
porcelain plates
instead they used their creativity in a
different way
it allowed them to think differently it
allowed them a new approach
to things they were passionate about you
might not think that
creativity comes from these attributes
but these attributes come from
creativity
it is scientifically proven that
creativity improves your mental growth
your dedication
your mindset and even your mood it
allows for new and spontaneous ideas
it allows real world thinkers to tackle
real world subjects
superpowers like these could save the
world not just
in a superman catch his car flying
through the air kind of way
but in a linked hand in hand brilliant
minds can save the world
kind of way and where will these
brilliant minds come from
who will harness creativity like captain
marvel harness the tesseract
us kids and teens
which is by training and teaching
students to be more creative
in the classroom is vital for growth
i’m sure we could all remember the days
when our teachers would teach us
not with numbers on a whiteboard but
with food
and soil and real examples i learned my
fractions by watching my teacher cut up
a brownie
i learned what commas were when my
teacher said one sentence
in five different ways with commas in
five different places
i never knew how much could be in the
soil until my class went outside and we
dug in the dirt
from a young age we were taught in very
engaging ways and if a lesson wasn’t
engaging
enough it was a lot harder to learn from
it but eventually
students learned to take information
from the teachers
plain words instead of those engaging
examples and we became devolved beings
the decrease in creativity can be shown
in this study
done by george land when he tested
sixteen hundred children
on divergent and creative thinking
children ages four to five years old
tested an average of 98 percent
out of a hundred now the same children
took this same test and in five years
their scores were down
to 30. interesting
and when the children turned 15 they
sucked they took the same test again
and their scores averaged 12. now the
same test
has been given to over 280 000 adults
and their scores average was two
from 98 percent
to two i think a lot of this
is just how we age and mature we learn
to prioritize being right
over being different but i also think a
part of this
is schools not because they drain it out
of us
but because teaching us to be more
creative in the classroom
is no longer a priority but how
how can we possibly teach something that
is so intangible
and abstract well today i’m going to
give you one example
that can hopefully lay the foundation of
many other possibilities
in the classroom let’s say a room
maybe this room is 30 feet wide 20 feet
long
and another 15 feet high there are some
couches in the back corner
a bookshelf a desk and a globe sitting
on top
and what if we bring this room to math
class
in math we learn to plug and chug we
learn by the numbers
and sometimes we don’t even know what
we’re doing
but what if we used a real world
application to finally understand
what’s going on my teacher does a
phenomenal job of this
we use those real world applications to
make the math tangible
students could be asked to find the
volume of the room
including or excluding the furniture
precalculus students
could find the angular displacement of
the globe if it were to roll across the
desk
calc students could find the velocity of
the globe it were to fall off the desk
in the exact moment in time in which it
would hit the ground
geometry students could find the
dimensions of the bookshelf
the desk the chair given just a few
dimensions
using theorems and proofs and suddenly
the math does become tangible
and what about an english class
sometimes in english we’re given a page
number
and maybe even a subject but what if we
used
this room as a rubric in english
one student could write about a
professor who maybe works in this room
and has a horrible fear of globes
but to overcome her fears she puts a
globe right
on the corner of her desk one day
without her touching it the glow moves
a mystery has begun in civics students
could be asked how this class could best
serve the community if it were given
over to the government
would it serve the community best to
rent it out
maybe to store and hide government
secrets to give it over to the homeless
and what about in history how would this
room look
if it were a greek courtroom and what’s
the size comparison between this room
and a room of a peasant living under the
control of assyria
what about queen victoria in the
victorian era
and what about science how much helium
would it take to lift this
room up is it even possible
and if we were to fill this room with a
bunch of people and
spin it around and impose g-forces on
them
or their heart rates accelerate or
decelerate
and if you were to take the people out
and fill it with gas again and freeze it
how much and how long would it take for
the gas to sublimate
would it even sublimate i’m not here to
criticize any part of the education
system
but instead to encourage a greater
emphasis on creativity in the classroom
as i said before this room can be the
foundation of
endless possibilities minds can change
perspectives can alter and the next
generation
of young thinkers will be ready to
engage the world and know how to improve
it
malala will be joined by new innovative
thinkers
ready for change martin luther king jr
will be a hero of a new era of advocates
elon musk will be joined by
mathematicians
engineers and scientists ready to build
a future
creativity isn’t crafty i still want
to hide in the corner of my bedroom and
write fantastical stories
i still want to make a dress out of duct
tape but the real value of my creativity
doesn’t come from my craftiness instead
it comes from my ability to make real
change
because creativity gives me empathy and
world-mindedness
leadership and social skills a drive to
seek the unknown
all things i can’t get from a roll of
duct tape
instead creativity is a tool anyone can
use and everyone can learn
so let’s work together to bring our
creativity scores back
to 100 thank you
hmm