Welcome to ED 447: Secondary literacy pedagogy and assessment. Use this blog to post comments, files, and links relevant to our class, access course materials, and get updates on announcements.
Welcome to ED 447: Secondary literacy pedagogy and assessment. Use this blog to post comments, files, and links relevant to our class, access course materials, and get updates on announcements.
“Creativity now is as important in education as literacy. And we should treat it with the same status.” (3:05)
ReplyDeleteAt this time it seems more possible than ever to convince people of this idea.
The world is overrun with noise, and the only way any noise can stand out from the pack is if it is highly differentiated. Differentiation in any discipline cannot be achieved without a high degree of creativity.
In the not-too-distant past, differentiation was the worst thing that could happen. In the Industrial Revolution, differentiation would be synonymous to “mistake.” Everything had to be the same. There are still jobs that require people to be able to do the same thing over and over again without deviation from the norm. However, the general level of regard for these jobs is not very high in the United States.
While it seems possible to convince many individuals of Robinson’s idea, the challenge is convincing educational administration of this idea collectively. It will take some very persuasive people and some very brave administrators to swing the pendulum towards creativity to such a degree as Robinson suggests in the video. At the turn of the century, when the demand for creativity was rising faster than ever, Massachusetts was just getting ready to implement MCAS; a standardized test required for high school graduation, which grants no merit to any creative or artistic abilities. There seems to be a disconnect there.
I do not know much about working with educational administration and bureaucracy, so that is an area I might like to learn more about in this class.
It’s hard to measure creativity, which is probably why administrations fear to credit it very much. This reminds me of the struggle of Eastern Medicine vs. Western Medicine, where Western Medicine says that if it cannot be measured, then it cannot possibly be useful.
Somewhere in every state the next Shakespeare, Renoir, Tupac, and David Ogilvy are being forced into standardized educations at the expense of their creative talents. I wonder if they know.