A Creative Education Revolution

Maakestad 1

Hannah Maakestad

E. L. Ziemba

English Composition II

13 May 2014

Creativity: Revolutionizing Education

Introduction:

The education system in America has become too big, and

too standardized. With the implementation of No Child Left

Behind (NCLB,) by the Bush administration, focus in

schooling narrowed to the “so-called STEM disciplines,”

standing for science, technology, engineering, and math, as

the most important subjects (“How to Escape”). Statewide and

national testing was called for to assess students and

teachers in the hope of raising performance in schools that

were falling behind. Each state was called upon to reach

certain academic goals judged with the use of standardized

tests. However, this pressure from the federal government to

reach “100 percent proficiency” did not improve test scores;

in fact, in many cases, these scores were lowered (Ravitch).

Maakestad 2

Though the American government has made sweeping changes to

the education system, and has lowered class sizes more than

most countries, the results have been suboptimal. The United

States may spend more money per student than most countries,

but according to the Programme for International Student

Assessment (PISA) “higher expenditure on education is not

highly predictive of better… scores” (“How to Escape”;

Ryan). This is clearly demonstrated by America’s math

ranking of twenty-sixth out of thirty-four countries

involved with PISA. Public education in the United States

needs to be completely rethought, taken out of the federal

government’s hands, and replaced by a system with a renewed

emphasis on creativity and innovation to prepare students

for an uncertain and challenging future.

History Of Public Education:

Public education in America first started during the

Enlightenment Period and was refined during the Industrial

Revolution in the late nineteenth century (“Changing

Education Paradigms”). Before this time, education was

Maakestad 3

strictly for the wealthy. The idea of a whole population of

educated people seemed not only inconceivable, but also

impossible. During the late nineteenth century, education

was mainly about learning to read and write, basic

mathematics, and preparing students to enter the factory

work force. Though the world’s culture and job market have

drastically changed since the introduction of public

education, the system has remained almost exactly the same.

In fact, the structure of education itself is quite like a

factory: students are educated in batches by age, as if the

most important part of each student is their “manufacture

date.” There are “separate facilities, specialized into

separate subjects”, and bell systems, which was how

factories originally controlled their workers (“Changing

Education Paradigms”). In an industrial age this was a great

system that truly did prepare students for the work

available to them after graduating, but it has not evolved

with the present, and will fail students in the future. The

creation of public education was a revolution in itself,

Maakestad 4

brought on by the economic need for industrial workers. If

nothing else, education needs to be revolutionized again for

the same reason—economics. We live in a constantly changing

technology-intensive world, and therefore need an innovative

educational system, which will best benefit that type of

market.

Relation Between Intelligence And Creativity:

The link between intelligence and creativity is largely

unknown today, but that does not mean they are not

symbiotic. Intelligence is defined as the ability to acquire

and utilize knowledge (“Intelligence”). With education as it

is today, students do learn how to acquire and memorize

knowledge, but often do not learn how to actually utilize

this knowledge outside of taking a test. Students are taught

that there is only one right answer to every problem, and

that the answer is usually “C” on a bubble sheet answer

card. Unfortunately, this standard of right and wrong—black

and white—does not hold up to the reality of the world we

live in, where most decisions fall in the shades of grey

Maakestad 5

between. Being wrong, and making mistakes, should not be

stigmatized for students, for it discourages students from

thinking critically, and finding new answers that may not

fall under A, B, C, or D (“Do Schools Kill Creativity?”). If

Thomas Edison had grown up this way, the light bulb may have

never come to fruition. But as Edison said, “I have not

failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000

ways to not make a light bulb." Sometimes being wrong is the

only way to learn something new, in fact, being wrong is a

quite important part of creative problem solving—just ask

Thomas Edison.

Creativity Explained:

Creativity is a term for which there is no universally

agreed upon meaning, but one definition states that it is

“the ability to come up with new ideas through a mental

process of connecting existing concepts” (Christensen). So,

in order for students to truly utilize the knowledge and

Maakestad 6

concepts they acquire in school, their creativity must also

be nourished along side their intelligence, and should be

given just as much attention. Educator Sir Ken Robinson’s

definition for creativity is the process of coming up with

“original ideas that have value” (“Do Schools Kill

Creativity?”). This is an important distinction because many

people have the misconception that creativity simply applies

to the arts, but creativity can—and should—be utilized in

all subjects in school. Integrating more creatively fueled

classes into school curriculums teaches students that

“creativity takes many forms” and can be “applied in all

aspects of life” to imagine new solutions to unsolved

problems (Allbritten).

Current Issues In Education:

Our outdated educational system is past the point of

reform—it needs to be rebooted and revolutionized. Today,

public schools are rewarded and punished based on

standardized test scores, which arguably do not accurately

assess learning (Popham). Though these assessments evaluate

Maakestad 7

basic knowledge of subjects, “qualitative evaluation is

neglected,” including important variables like homework and

class participation. This type of evaluation is more

important to overall education, and the “goal of promoting

development” than “quantifiable evaluation,” like that of

standardized tests (Dongfeng 171). Continually increasing

the federal government’s role in education does not help

students grow, as has been clearly demonstrated by the

failure of the NCLB policies. Education needs to be dealt

with on a smaller, more personalized scale to enable an

accurate assessment of students’ needs, and how their

teachers can help them achieve this (Allbritten) After all,

it is not policy makers who shape the children of this

country into what they will become; it is the teachers that

these students see, and learn from, everyday.

Mechanical vs. Organic Education:

In order to reshape public education, changes must

start, not with policies by the federal government, but at

the ground level. This means that students and teachers must

Maakestad 8

be the first to make changes, otherwise the government will

continue to fundamentally “misunderstand the process of

education” (“How to Change Education”). From a top-down,

governmental point of view, education should run like a

machine—if education “could just be fine-tuned enough”, and

all educational stakeholders were to “conform to the

system”, education could run perfectly (“How to Escape”).

But, the education system should not be viewed as mechanical

because it is a human, organic process (“Bring on the

Learning”). Each class of students is unique, and therefore

must be educated differently than others.

Ground-Up Changes In Education:

Today education is distracted by “testing regimes,

testing companies, political ideologies, political purposes,

subject loyalties, all of those timetables and schedules”

(“How to Change Education”). All of this is getting in the

way of teachers actually educating students. Learning takes

place in classrooms—not boardrooms—and therefore, the

responsibility should devolve to the school level—starting

Maakestad 9

with teachers. Unfortunately, educators in America have been

de-professionalized, when they should be considered the most

important workers in our country. The government has

continually looked to improve education “by alienating the

profession that carries it out,” but teachers have more

power than most realize (“How to Change Education”). They

have the power to change their practice, to change the

environment of schools, and to potentially change the

culture in which these schools are a part of. The

relationship between educators and learners has the power to

create social movements and revolutions, which are exactly

what America needs.

Defining Open-Type Teaching:

Open-type teaching, a process “based on consideration

of students’ individuality and their independent exploration

and learning,” as well as mutual respect and openness

between teachers and students, is one way to accomplish a

ground-up approach to education (Dongfeng 168). The current

system in America has created an environment in which

Maakestad 10

teaching cannot truly happen, because students are not

really learning—they are, instead, just temporarily

memorizing what will be on the next test. With open-type

teaching, educators are viewed as “learning facilitators”

instead of “traditional knowledge transmitters” (Dongfeng

169). This means that students are encouraged to design

their “own qualifications and requirements” instead of

“passively receiving ready-made knowledge and conclusions”

(Dongfeng 169).

Why Open-Type Is Viable:

Embracing open-type teaching would benefit every

student because their personal learning needs would be

respected, and their unique abilities would be challenged.

Because students’ “development is multilevel and multi-

sided”, there are many different approaches within the open-

type method of teaching, including: discovery, interaction,

experience, questioning, and doubt (Dongfeng 171-172). Each

approach is different, but has the potential to engage

students through creativity, self-discovery, proactive

Maakestad 11

interaction with others, and hands-on experience. If

teachers and administrators were to implement this type of

teaching at the ground level, expensive federal programs

would be unnecessary.

Who Curriculum Cuts Affect:

Across the country, classes are being cut based on the

academic hierarchy that puts mathematics and languages at

the top, then sciences and humanities, and arts at the very

bottom (“Do Schools Kill Creativity?”). The reduction and

abolition of art programs especially, in order to focus more

on math and reading, is an atrocity. While these “core”

classes are obviously important, the arts, as well as the

humanities, should hold the same weight of importance, and

should not be abolished. Sadly, these cuts are mostly

happening in low-income and poor neighborhoods, where

programs like the Turnaround Arts Initiative, put into place

by President Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities,

have raised attendance and students’ GPAs, lowered the

number of visits to the principal, and increased parent

Maakestad 12

involvement in their children’s’ education (“Case for the

Arts”).

The Turnaround Arts Initiative:

This program targeted eight of America’s lowest-

performing schools, incorporating “an intensive arts

program” as an experiment to see if it will help raise

proficiency (“Creative Classes”). Though the program is only

part way completed, many of the schools “assessment test

scores [have already] gone up” (“Creative Classes”). Child

psychologist, Ellen Winner, said that though she has not

found any studies that show a strong link between arts and

test performance, this is not surprising, because “the type

of thinking skills and habits of mind that students learn

when they study the arts are a far cry from what is tested

on multiple-choice, standardized tests” (“Creative

Classes”). The Turnaround Arts Initiative has, however,

engaged and interested students and teachers, and it is

reasonable to expect that increased engagement on the part

Maakestad 13

of all educational stakeholders will lead to better test

scores.

In fairness, the Turnaround Arts Initiative would be

hard to replicate on a large scale across the country. From

a ground-up perspective, on the other hand, it could be

possible if local and state governments were to incorporate

similar platforms, like open-type teaching, into school

districts, instead of being driven by the federal

government. With this plan, much “less money would be wasted

and misused,” because smaller governments have a better idea

of how best to deliver educational services for the benefit

of the population (Allbritten).

Different Types Of Minds:

According to doctor, professor, and autistic activist

Temple Grandin, there are many different types of thinkers

and learners in the world, none of which should be ignored.

Unfortunately, the current educational system in America

does not work for all of these different types of people.

There are visual thinkers, who tend to think in images and

Maakestad 14

colors, and often times excel in visual arts and design

(Grandin). There are pattern thinkers, who succeed not only

in math and music, but engineering and computer programming

(Grandin). There are verbal thinkers, “who make great

journalists” (Grandin). And, there are even movement

thinkers, who literally need to be moving their body to

think, many of whom are dancers and actors (“Do Schools Kill

Creativity?”). Unfortunately, classes and curriculums in

which these types of thinkers could excel have been slowly

cut from curriculums across the United States. Classes like

auto-shop, drafting, music and art have been taken out of

curriculums, leaving students with a smaller and smaller

range of subjects offered in schools (Grandin). “Kids

prosper best with a broad curriculum that celebrates their

various talents, not just a small range of them” (“How to

Escape”). A broader range of subjects has also proven to be

“the catalyst for students achieving better math and reading

scores, [and] schools mustering better graduation rates”

(Woodside). Without these classes, these different types of

Maakestad 15

thinkers and learners are ignored, and their creative

ability goes unrecognized.

How Curriculum Cuts Affect The Future:

Effects of these types of curriculum cuts have been

seen even within the job market with “vacancies in the

skilled trades,” while we continue to see “an increasing

labor supply-demand disconnect in hard-skills areas such as

electricians, plumbers, [and] engineering technology

robotics” (Henderson). These types of jobs are important

because “human communities depend upon a diversity of

talent, not a singular conception of ability” (“Bring on the

Learning”). Society is held together by countless different

types of jobs, yet students are being steered away from many

of these professions by the education system. Students

deserve a wide area of subjects to study from, especially if

they are expected to fill all the positions needed in the

future to keep our society running.

Looking Towards The Future:

Maakestad 16

If the pattern of education continues as it is,

students will continue to be left unprepared for the future.

In the past fifteen years alone, America’s job market has

changed completely. Industry no longer commands the job

market— innovation does (“Do Schools Kill Creativity?”). We

have “watched technology evolve over the past twenty five

years in business and… anticipate a continuation of that

rapid evolution over the next decade” (Henderson). With this

rapidly evolving technology, it is guaranteed that the job

climate will continue to change, leaving the future, as soon

as the next fifteen years, a mystery. Incorporating

creativity back into curriculums in America will arm

students with the ability to innovate, to think differently,

and to evolve with the changes of the present and the future

(“Do Schools Kill Creativity?”).

Why Innovation Is Important:

“While there is a lot of exciting exploration into

creativity, and while we hear a lot of people talking about

innovation, we need more creative thinkers” (“Case for the

Maakestad 17

Arts”). Companies like Google and Apple, for example, thrive

on creativity and innovation, and look for employees who

“think differently” (Henderson). In fact, many founders of

similar companies never even graduated college. That goes to

show that more education does not always mean more

intelligence. These companies have climbed the ladder to the

top by innovating—by creating a demand that previously never

existed, by seeing past what was, and looking instead at

what could be. Unfortunately, there is a disconnect between

these talks of innovation, and what is actually being taught

in schools (“Case for the Arts”). We no longer live in a

world where the majority of students go on to work in

factories, yet students are still being educated in a system

that was developed for industry. Students are being shoved

into a standardized mold, and told to fit in, or fail. “Our

education system has mined our minds in the way that we

strip-mine the Earth: for a particular commodity. And for

the future, it will not serve us. We have to re think the

Maakestad 18

fundamental principles on which we are educating our

children” (“Do Schools Kill Creativity?”).

Conclusion:

Our world is in a technological revolution, and if our

students are to keep up, there must also be a revolution of

the public education system. No Child Left Behind has,

ironically, left millions of children behind, and the

current reforms are hardly better. We have created an

educational system focused on testing, rather than teaching

and learning, and it is completely failing the students of

America. If our overly standardized form of public education

continues, students will continue to be ill equipped to face

the problems of the future. Our world will be in their

hands, and it is the education system’s responsibility to

educate their whole being—to “awaken them to what they have

inside of themselves” (“Changing Education Paradigms”). If

we continue to fail at this, then the future will no longer

be secure for students. “Reform is no use anymore, because

that is simply improving a broken model” (“Bring on the

Maakestad 19

Learning”). America needs a revolution of its public

education system that incorporates creative thinking and

innovation back into curriculums. We need to create a

climate of possibility, because though we cannot predict the

future, nor the outcome of human development, like a farmer,

we can create the conditions in which students can flourish

once again.

Maakestad 20

Works Cited

Allbritten, Maranda. Personal Interview. 2 April 2014.

"The Case for the Arts in Overhauling Education." Host

Rachel Martin. Byline Elizabeth Blair. Weekend Edition

Sunday. National Public Radio. 14 Apr. 2013. Web. 16

Apr. 2014.

<http://www.npr.org/2013/04/14/177204419/the-case-for-

the-arts-in-overhauling-education>.

Christensen, Tanner. "The Relationship between Creativity

and Intelligence ." Creative Something, 21 Jan. 2013.

Web. 30 Apr. 2014.

<http://creativesomething.net/post/41103661291/the-

relationship-between-creativity-and-intelligence>.

"Creative Classes: An Artful Approach to Improving

Performance."  Host Robert Siegel and Melissa Block.

Byline Elizabeth Blair. All Things Considered. National

Public Radio. 16 Apr. 2013. Web. 7 May 2014.

<http://www.npr.org/2013/04/16/176671432/creative-

classes-an-artful-approach-to-improving-performance>.

Maakestad 21

Dongfeng, LIU. "Strengthen Students' Self-Awareness, Foster

Their Creative Spirit: "Open-Type" Teaching Philosophy-

Based Art Design Teaching Discussion and

Practice." Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental

Culture (2013): 168-71.EBSCO Host. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.

Grandin, Temple. "The World Needs All Kinds of Minds." TED

Conference. Feb. 2010. Web. 7 May 2014.

<https://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_nee

ds_all_kinds_of_minds/transcript>.

Henderson, J. Maureen. "The Critical Skills You Need To

Succeed In The Job Market Of 2020." Forbes.com. Forbes

LLC, 12 Sept. 2012. Web. 7 May 2014.

<http://www.forbes.com/sites/jmaureenhenderson/2012/09/

12/here-are-the-skills-you-need-to-succeed-in-the-job-

market-of-the-future/>.

"Intelligence." 1a. Merriam-Webster. n.d. N. pag. Web. 30

Apr. 2014.

<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intelligence>

.

Ohlsson, Stellan, and Kershaw. "Creativity." Encyclopedia of 

Maakestad 22

Education. Ed. James W. Guthrie. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. New

York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2002. 505-507. Opposing

Viewpoints in Context. Web. 16 Apr. 2014.

Popham, W. James. Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational

Quality. Association for Supervision and Curriculum

Development (ASCD), Mar. 1999. Web. 7 May 2014.

Robinson, Ken. "Bring on the Learning Revolution!." TED

Conference. Feb. 2010. Web. 7 May 2014.

<http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the

_revolution>.

---. "Changing (Education) Paradigms." Royal Society of

Arts. 13 Apr. 2011. Web. 7 May 2014.

<http://www.thersa.org/events/video/archive/sir-ken-

robinson>.

---. "Do Schools Kill Creativity?." TED Conference.

TEDTalks, Monterey, CA. 27 Feb. 2006. Lecture.

---. "How to Change Education from the Ground Up." Royal

Society of Arts. 18 July 2013. Web. 7 May 2014.

<http://www.thersa.org/events/video/vision-videos/how-

to-change-education-from-the-ground-up>.

Maakestad 23

---. "How to Escape Education’s Death Valley." TED

Conference. Apr. 2013. Web. 7 May 2014.

<http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_ed

ucation_s_death_valley>.

Ryan, Julia. "American Schools vs. the World: Expensive,

Unequal, Bad at Math." The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly

Group, 3 Dec. 2013. Web. 12 May 2014.

<http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/a

merican-schools-vs-the-world-expensive-unequal-bad-at-

math/281983/>.

Woodside, Christopher. "Thinking Beyond the Bubbles:

Developing a New, Broader Minded Argument for Music

Education."Broader Minded. National Association for Music

Education, 2014. Web. 12 May 2014.

<http://advocacy.nafme.org/files/2014/02/Broader-

Minded-Backgrounder.pdf>.