Recently I listened to a podcast/TED Talk on YouTube by Sir Ken Robinson titled “Do schools kill creativity?” Interesting topic – outside of my passion for all things education and especially foundation phase education (as a mother to a 7-year-old). For context: a school is a system with a variety of role-players – the community in which it is located, school management teams, teachers, learners, and parents, who all carry different roles in both their personal and professional lives. For example, a teacher could be female, a mother, a grandmother (which is not far-fetched considering the average age of a primary/FP teacher in a typical South African classroom) an aunt, daughter, elder in the church, AND responsible for, let’s say, a group of 45 learners; responsibilities which go beyond regular teaching and learning. For those 45 learners, outside of the roles and responsibilities prescribed by the South African Council for Educators (SACE Professional Teaching Standards), the teacher is a nurturer of young minds – feeding them with the grade-appropriate knowledge and skills they need to acquire to become life-long learners; spark a fuse of creativity and imagination, be a mother, psychologist, therapist and and and to all 45.
Back to Sir Ken Robinson’s podcast titled “do schools kill creativity?”. He argues that children are born with an innate ability to be creative, and as they enter and participate in the schooling system, this creativity tends to be stifled as they become more and more “schoolified”. He makes this brilliant example of a young girl in a class who was in a drawing lesson, 6 years old, sat at the back of the classroom. Her teacher knows her as someone who doesn’t normally pay attention in class but this time she’s involved in her drawing. Fascinated – the teacher walks up to her and says “what are you drawing?” she says “a picture of God”. Teacher says, “but nobody knows what God looks like” the young girl responds “they will in a minute”. This got me thinking and reflecting deeply about my 7- year-old, and his cohorts all over South Africa. My son enjoys tinkering, has an extensive vocabulary, is very opinionated (and respectful). Sir Ken continues to speak about how creativity allows children to essentially self-actualize, act and “be wrong” in some instances, correct themselves and iterate over and over; that by the time children exit school, they would have somewhat lost this ability. So, what he’s saying is children effectively get educated out of their creative capacities. *Clutches pearls”.
As a parent I asked myself, what are my roles and responsibilities (outside of making sure he attends school every day) towards ensuring that my child retains his creativity, through whatever means, balancing his formal education? Surely, I cannot expect the teacher to do it all, what role can I play? In some families, children get to tinker with LEGO bricks for instance, take chess and music classes outside of school (or in, depending on the school and the extra-curricular activities available there). Some children own and read books for leisure (the 2023 National Reading Survey 3 found that approximately 3 in 5 homes – *63% of South African households DO NOT have a single fiction or non- fiction book). I note the wave of developmental and often foreign organizations in the social development space focusing their efforts on the introduction and uptake of learning through play pedagogies, informed by several play theories primarily aimed at developing young children’s motor, cognitive skills, promotes critical thinking, socio-emotional skills, social interaction and cooperative learning, and also support their creativity and imagination as they tinker, but most importantly, learning in the process. Play based learning (or learning through play) is critical in especially pre-foundation phase grades however it can take place in any classroom given the availability of resources and that the teacher is sufficiently capacitated and confident to teach certain concepts in any subject, using this method.
Assuming the teacher is doing a stellar job at equipping my child with grade-appropriate knowledge and skills at school, what do we as parents do to build and maintain these skills and knowledge, both soft and hard, especially a child’s creativity, “after school”? We know that the future they are working towards will require creativity, innovation and such to enable them to find new ways of doing. They will need to be able to understand data, be agile and creative to explore and find ways to take advantage of the possibilities presented by the digital economy for one. We are (of have already) moved away from a knowledge driven economy where knowledge retention and application was key, but to a society which will be far less about knowing how to solve the problem but knowing the problem that needs to be solved so a critical thinking, creativity, problem solving framework will be a necessity.
What does this mean for our children? What do we do differently to ensure they don’t lose especially this creative muscle? If my child doesn’t get good marks at school – do I take him to extra classes, find him a tutor, have him spend two more hours a day in focused reading time at home, OR do I accept that he’s not too academically inclined and stop pressuring him. Naturally I’ll go with the option that will set him up for a better future. The argument remains the same in maintaining and sustaining creativity and other capacities. I find that we often delegate too much responsibility to the teacher and schools when this should be a partnership of sorts. There are both paid for and free activities that parents and caregivers can engage their children with either at home, in the neighbourhood at any time (doesn’t have to be weekends), outside of handing them a Tablet or the remote to a TV (free play is my personal favourite especially while I’m working). Look around you, there’s so much for them to tinker with. Let’s bridge the gap between home and school in fund and engaging ways to reinforce and support what the school starts and become Creative Partners. Also, community libraries still exist!
SOURCES:
1 Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson | TED
2 sace_84066-2019-06-11-SACE Professional Teaching Standards Nov 2018 X2.pdf
3 PowerPoint Presentation: National Reading Survey 2023 Findings Report