I have shared this thought consistently for the past five or more years. The creativity in our students is stifled in many schools and in many homes. Society does not truly appreciate the creative quotient, whether in young children or otherwise because it seems often against the norm or status quo.
Children lose their creativity to growing up because much of the adults around them are not even living their own creativity. If someone is estranged from their own creativity and innate strength, how can they be of help to others in finding and developing their creativity?
How possible is it for schools to kill the very thing that they are supposed to help discover, promote and develop? How do we reconcile this seeming riddle?
Education is from the word "EDUCE." This means from within. Therefore, in an ideal situation, the first step in the learning process or in the education of the mind is to discover what is hidden within that mind.
As schools, we are first to discover the innate treasure that is hidden in the child and then seek to develop or nurture same to connect with the value that is without. It is not otherwise. Education today is not structured that way. Children are educated contrary to their natural giftings or strengths. This is the greatest killer of creativity and it is one reason we have many formally educated persons who cannot help themselves, let alone be of help or support to others.
Teachers only teach what is in the curriculum; and they build their schemes from curriculum extracts. This is fine and in order, but what happens when children or students exhibit innate gifts that are contrary to these? These are the treasures that cry to be discovered.
A good school is one that is able to implement the curriculum, but what happens where there is insufficiency of funds due to lean education budget funding and curriculums that require constant reviews due to the changing requirements of education occasioned by societal needs?
This is where the government is culpable. Besides, the transformation and rethinking that education requires today depends largely on government backing first through policy thrust. The question is, how many in government legislative and executive arms are conscious and skilled enough to know what is essential for growth in the education system? This question is germane because for there to be any true growth in national development, there has to be an overhaul of the present education system.
Do you wonder why parents and teachers often argue about who the child is? The parents do not invest adequate time to know the child enough and the teachers are only focused on delivering on their KPIs and ace their termly or yearly evaluation or appraisal based on the curriculum and scheme.
If a child exhibits anything outside the curriculum and scheme, such a child or its creativity is not encouraged, even if it holds in it the seeds of promise to help promote national development through innovation. How possible can this even be when we only mostly have analogue teachers who teach digital students? It is a wonder how teachers are to support such children.
Professor Ken Robinson said, “The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn’t need to be reformed--it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalise it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.”
I have pondered what it means for charity to begin at home. How can charity begin at home when the supposed custodians of charity are far from the ideals of true tutelage and mentorship? Charity must align with the gifts from the Divine. The parents are hardly there for the children. Children are dumped in the hands of strangers long before they bond with their parents. Tell me about charity starting from the homestead.
In many places, there is not a single affinity between charity and creativity because, observation, the number one key to discovering and developing creativity, is missing from the mix. Unless there is an alliance between charity and creativity through the use of observation, creativity will remain stifled because the time for observation is not invested by the major actor, parents.
Schools only evaluate or test the students or children based on what they have been taught; not based on the creativity and curiosity of the child or student. That makes sense in a standard education space as it is structured today. But, is that what we need for growth to happen? What happened to personal learning that is driven by discovering the talent in a child?
Of course it is expensive, but it is the only solution that is readily available now. The earlier we embraced this reality, the better for us as a people and our national development.
At the moment, a curious question is, “What happens to those quaint or weird ideas that some children exhibit, which may hold audacious promises?” Are teachers even conscious or skilled enough to connect with the children in order to be able to adequately decode and channel the strange ideas that they exhibit during the process of delivering instruction?
Professor Ken Robinson told a story of a young girl who was said to be drawing the picture of God. Someone asked her what she was doing, and she said she was drawing the picture of God. The reaction was, but nobody knows what God looks like? She replied that they would know in a moment.
What would you have done as a teacher or parent? Would you not scold the girl and accuse her of committing blasphemy? Yet, the girl was only exhibiting her creativity. We must truly and sincerely encourage different perspectives, regardless of who shares such perspectives.
Yes, the foolishness that is said to abound in the heart of a child requires the cooperation of an adult to spark exploration and come up with great resource for collaborative learning. There are no wastes anywhere. We may only lack the knowledge and expertise to utilise it properly. There is wisdom to earn from curiously observing what we may term foolish endeavours. Let wise adults tap into this foolishness.
There is something about the mind of a child. That something is the gift in the child. It is on that template that the child’s creativity is embedded. That creativity seeks engagement. That creativity seeks nurturing. That creativity seeks development. We are to tap into it and bring it alive; not kill it.
We cannot develop what we do not know enough. We cannot develop what we have not accepted. Our attitude to the creativity and curiosity of our young children and students is neither enterprising nor collaborative. This is the grim reality today. The consequence is that the children grow up oblivious of who they truly are and that is because we do not invest enough to support them. This is one of the biggest problems that our education faces today.
As we inch towards conclusion, let me add this thought from Professor Ken Robinson, “We have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education, and it is impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.”
Teachers and adults have experience and wisdom earned through age, but students have intelligence. This is not to say that adults are not intelligent, but it is wrong to imagine that adults are more gifted intellectually than children. We must realise that some information we have as adults today are not only obsolete, they were wrong from the start.
Teachers must be models of the creativity that they want to see in their children or students. This is another cup of challenge that teachers find difficult to drink from. Teachers must not just mouth creativity; they must be creative and should exemplify creativity in every way.
Educating a child contrary to natural giftings and creativity, is a threat to personal identity, an abuse to the ideal of true growth and an offence against God. It is grave injustice done against creation, but unfortunately, we are ignorant of this. Curiously and regrettably, too, ignorance is not an excuse because man is given to know, if man seeks.
“There is a path within everyone. Let your brand of education be such that would help children discover this path [self-awareness] and then guide them to use same by working collaboration [self-actualisation]. This is true education [Educe] and it is the key to fulfilment and ultimate prosperity in this sphere.” Joseph Ayeni
