Creative illiteracy! How schools are making students ILLITERATE

CREATIVE illiteracy? How schools are making students Illiterate

We often talk about illiteracy with respect to students. Teachers are evaluated constantly on their ability to make their students meet the mark.

Meeting this mark is the measure of literacy. This paper identifies and discusses the relationship between teachers’ creativity and students’ literacy. It argues that creative illiteracy on the part of our teachers can lead to the big ILLITERACY that we fear for our students. It is based on observations and discussions  with teachers and students in a number of schools over a period of 6 months.

CREATIVE vs UNCREATIVE?

Teacher Education for Social and Economic Development?

CREATIVE ILLITERACY. How schools are making students illiterate.

CREATIVITY?

• The ability to create

• To make new

• To make something

• To imagine

• To bring to life

• To imagine and bring to life something new and something of value

TO THINK AND DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY

• Inadequate reading or writing skills in English

• Inability to express important ideas in English

• Inability to read and comprehend at Grade level

ILLITERACY/LOW LEVELS OF LITERACY?

CREATIVE ILLITERACY?

• Inability to understand the importance of creating new things

• A commitment to maintaining the status quo

• Inability to create new things of value

• Inability to experiment with ideas

• Inability to ask questions

A broader definition of literacy for students

• Awareness• Know how• Understanding meaning• Understanding context • Explaining and expressing ideas• Understanding relationships• Living in and shaping the world with and

through language

Or our most commonly used definition?

Inability to express ourselves in English

Our inability to think differently as school teachers/school administrators and policy

makers is making our students illiterate

JAMAICAN SCHOOLS?

What should an education do?

Examples of CREATIVE ILLITERACY

• Curriculum • School Buildings• Classrooms• School procedures• School events/activities• Books• Teaching methods• Relationship between teacher and learner• Language use

TELL US HOW CREATIVE YOU ARE?

RESPONSES FROM TEACHERS

Could Bloom be wrong?

Quote from KEN ROBINSON who says school kills CREATIVITY

• …kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go...? They're not frightened of being wrong. (being wrong is not the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original --

• …if you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong…

Is this what has happened to US?

How does CREATIVE ILLITERACY make students

illiterate?

Limited stimulation

Learning vs living

Limited notion of the world/reality/life

Rewards for following and not leading

How do we develop CREATIVE ILLITERACY ?

Some ideas..

• We identify creativity with art • We prefer professionalism• We compare ourselves to other people/countries• We borrow/imitate in most things• We are always afraid of trying new things• We don’t read interesting things• We don’t dream/we don’t act our dreams• We leave it to young people

a CLASS room?

• How many teachers’ conferences do we have per year?

• How many presentations talk about creativity/creative schools appear in any of these conferences?

• How many courses at teachers’ colleges use the word creativity?

• How many creative schools exist?

Creativity

Is this presentation even creative?

LA.LEWIS (self-proclaimed conceptual artist)

Sobolious?

• when you are above all; bigger than your surroundings

• I am so sobolious; soboliously speaking

What if L.A LEWIS was a teacher?

That, with what, I wash | 2012

Plastic bleach bottle and two laundry scrub-brushes containing the artists hair.  Signed by the artist in ink (Sharpie). ₤ 30,000;  ₤ 35,000 (with Sharpie) 

Want more?

• Reading: A whole new mind Daniel Pink

• Viewing: Ken Robins-Schools kill creativity.TED.com

• www.methodsanddevices.wordpress.com

• www.twitter.com/methodsndevices