"Teaching" Creativity?

While most discussions of 21st century skills cite creativity and innovative thinking as essential—in fact the crux of America's future economic competitiveness—the discussion has not yet begun in earnest about how schools will meet this need. In a February 2008 article in The School Administrator (American Association of School Administrators), Yong Zhao lays the groundwork. As director of the U.S.-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence at Michigan State University, he ties the creativity gap between American and Chinese schools to culture:

"To be creative is to be different," he says. "Creative people have ideas, behaviors, beliefs and lifestyles that deviate from the norm and tradition. How deviant people and divergent ideas are treated by others has a defining effect on creativity. Research has found that, in general, tolerance of deviation from tradition and the norm resulted in more creativity."

Clearly, China has a long way to go in this respect, but they are working on it, as are Singapore and other contenders in the global economy.

"Creativity cannot be taught, but it can be killed," he says. "It is clear how Asian education systems kill creativity more effectively than the American system. The creativity gap exists between Americans and Asians not because American schools teach creativity more or better than their Asian counterparts. They just do not kill it as much as the Asians."

American educators' concern with "making AYP" (Adequate Yearly Progress as defined in the federal No Child Left Behind law) may be jeopardizing the creativity of America's future workers, he says. "Instead of becoming more like others who are eager to be more like Americans," he says, "American education needs to be more American — to preserve flexibility, protect individuality and promote multiple intelligences."

As an alternate way gain understanding and a powerful form of expression, learning in and through the arts certainly play a role in preserving flexibility and protecting individuality. For some students, arts experiences mean stretching—thinking in an unfamiliar way. For those whose dominant intelligences are spatial, musical, or kinesthetic, the arts are an opportunity to excel. And for some of the those students, the integration of arts learning with learning in other subject areas is a way to transcend barriers that impede their efforts to explore ideas and exhibit knowledge. Yet the concern over the narrow measures required to make AYP has drained time and resources away from the arts. NCLB calls the arts a core subject, but like other core subjects outside the AYP realm, the arts are being marginalized.

Yong Zhao also stresses the need for American schools to "adopt a global perspective, add foreign languages and cultures and advocate global citizenship." The arts are an excellent vehicle for understanding and appreciating other cultures and finding commonalities.

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