Education, the death of creativity?

When I was in highschool, I transfered to a different school at the end of my sophmore year. The first school I attended, was your normal city school. 3,000+ students, run of the mill classes etc...
The second school I attended, had around 140 students, and classes on whatever you wanted to learn about. You still had to get math credit etc... but if you wanted to learn about something, and there was no class dealing with it, you were allowed to create your own class, and teach it, along with one of the schools teachers for credit, or, you could create an independant class, and make your own assignments, get them approved by staff and get credit for completeing the class. It was the best school I ever went to, and it was the most challenging. people would show up expecting it to be easy, and be gone as quick as they came. I learned far more at that school in 1 year than I would have in 4 years at the other school.

anyway, I say that, to post this.... http://youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&feature=related

what do you folks think about this whole topic?
do you think a complete overhaul of our approach to education would be a good idea?

Very interesting.
There are so many variables involved I guess.
It seems most of us have something, somewhere an aspect of us where we can excel at. Maybe more effort should be put on spawning what ever that trait is.

I do think that society as a whole is too scared to fall out of a set curriculum.
Schools more so. But those are often mandated, that is the problem.

Even if teachers see this in difference in children, how much can they do when they have chosen parameters.

Parents should be the ones to foster the growth of their children. Same as they should hold a good portion of accountability for their kids behavior.
Isn't that easy for me to say having no kids!!!! :lol:

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Originally Posted by awoke

what do you folks think about this whole topic?
do you think a complete overhaul of our approach to education would be a good idea?

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I'm sure it would be. Unfortuately the federal government has decided to take over the schools and tell everybody what tests they have to pass, so that's what they teach for now--passing a test.

I guess they can refuse to do it and lose the funding. That would be the best thing for them to do. Unfortunately the money probably isn't there to change anything if they were to do that. Their kids' education is the last thing on most people's list of financial priorities, it seems.

Interestingly enough the exact opposite happened to me. I moved from a 4000+ school to a school with about 150 kids. The education here at the small school is much more limited, and unfortuinately doesnt offer any classes besides the basic.

It's sad how imagination is basically taken away from us in school. The goverment just wants us to follow this certain curriculum. As MoonBeam said the schools cant refuse because they will lose the funds.

It's sad, but it's how it is.

I guess it depends on what you want to study. You can allow creativity and a more flexible curriculum for subjects like the arts, but things like natural sciences need a rigid structure where the student is basically crammed with as much information as he can handle (it's the only way to get anything done in such a short amount of time). Human sciences fall somewhere in between.

Curriculum is often based upon textbooks that are designed to be ineffective and, as a consequence, the instruction of a class is confined to the boundaries of a book that impairs learning instead of promoting it. As many a scholar has remarked, students learn in spite of their books, not because of them.

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Originally Posted by R.D.735

Curriculum is often based upon textbooks that are designed to be ineffective and, as a consequence, the instruction of a class is confined to the boundaries of a book that impairs learning instead of promoting it. As many a scholar has remarked, students learn in spite of their books, not because of them.

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Not the case for me, I rely almost solely on my books, but then again, all they contain is formulas and examples.

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Originally Posted by R.D.735

Curriculum is often based upon textbooks that are designed to be ineffective

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What do you think is the reason for that? Other than the life-sciences and the evolution and sex-ed debate idiocy, I mean.

I've always believed that schools should start at a later time. To me everything 5th grade and before is, well, time that could be better used developing at home with family, with friends, with hobbies and what have you. With the internet and with the means within the reach of the average person I don't think there's any excuse for the death of creativity. Schools, however, are trying to compete for standardized testing scores and the students are almost a non-issue in the whole thing.

I would ask for an overhaul if, for no other reason, to stick one to "the man". heh. :p

How would you feel to take John Dewey's appraoch to education? I ask because this seems to be significantly inspired by him.

Dewey proposed that we ought to be guides and encourage practical learning methods to education. Acting as guides and encouraging adaptation, we can adapt the educational curriculum day by day and certify students based on the requirements they would need in order to function a job. (ie. even in a creative educational world, we still need requirements to teach such as verbal skills and presentation skills).

How these requirements are taught ought to be practical and more familiar to John Locke's philosophy; guiding principles utilizing creativity upon a blank slate.

What we do with the tabula rasa is very important and since the blank slate has the capability to learn on its own, we ought to simply guide them. By guide I mean something like the following:
- 1 represents 1 object or thing or a place on a number scale. Since two represents the next point or two objects, what is 1+1? (This is a difficult example but encapsulates a problem with encouraging creativity.

On the other hand:
- Giving the equipment and a goal idea for students to consider and allow them to experiment on their own to reach a thesis for the question. So, we can ask, "What makes objects fall to the ground instead of falling up?" and see what they come up with, etc.

I think you see where I am going.

What do you think...?
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^I think that would be a step up. It invlovees thinking for yourself. Education today is more about regurgatation. Your head acts as a container to store information until test time, when it dumps it all.
You read a textbook which has all these facts, then you write those facts on a different peice of paper to prove you read those facts. thast a poor way to educate people.
I think it should be, you read this book about something, put that information into your head, and twist it around. mash it up and think about it in different ways, and your assignments ahould be about what you made of it.
Granted that wouldnt work with some subjects, but just making a point.

It's like were not educating people, were just training them to be good workers.
The human mind and spirit is capable of so much more than being a good employee, but thats all we teach for. to make good employees that will be good in the work force and continue the march of our consumer society.
I think we need to rethink not just HOW we educate our kids, but WHY we educate them.