15 - Learning for Creativity

Summary

Most educators believe that creativity and the arts should be an important part of the school day. But the arts have been struggling to hold their place in the curriculum. The No Child Left Behind Act, with its mandatory annual testing on math and reading, has increased pressure on schools to demonstrate that their students are proficient in math and reading. Low math and reading scores in some school districts have led to an increasing emphasis on teaching these basic skills. When these pressures are combined with tight budgets, as is often the case in districts with high percentages of underprivileged students, administrators often choose to dedicate a larger percentage of the budget to math and literacy instruction. In exchange, the amount invested in arts education is reduced or removed completely.

It is ironic that the arts are losing their place in school curricula at the same time that creativity is increasingly in demand around the globe. In the last several decades many of the world's most developed countries have shifted from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy (e.g., Bell, 1973; Drucker, 1993). Scholars of the knowledge age have argued that creativity, innovation, and ingenuity are today more important than ever before. Florida (2002) argued that “we now have an economy powered by human creativity” (pp. 5–6) and that human creativity is “the defining feature of economic life” (p. 21). Several best-selling books have extended Florida's argument to the international arena. Dan Pink, in A Whole New Mind (2005), argued that any activity that does not involve creativity will someday be automated; ultimately, the only jobs remaining will be those requiring creativity. Tom Friedman, in The World is Flat (2005), argued that creativity is becoming increasingly important due to increasing global competitiveness. And Tony Wagner, in Creating Innovators (2012), argued that schools need to change to better educate young people to become innovators.

Early in this new century, educators began to realize that if the economy was no longer an industrial-age factory economy, then our schools were designed for a quickly vanishing world (Bereiter, 2002; Hargreaves, 2003; Sawyer, 2006b).