The Importance of Preserving Creativity

Where did the Creativity Go? The child’s mind is an adventurous place. The world is a big jungle gym full of places to explore and visit. They create stories for everything they see, to explain the cause of a situation. This is what makes them so hilarious, and so creative. As the child gets older, they seem to lose that sense of creativity. Picasso once said, “All children are born artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

” Where did that creativity go? Did it merely fade away? Was it outgrown? The importance of creativity has been underestimated in the society today.

The creative spirit has been killed by school. The once creative and curious child learns in school that there is only one way to solve a problem, one answer, and only one correct choice. Everywhere in the world the education system is the same; Mathematics and Languages on top, then Humanities, and then Arts on the very bottom.

The children are taught that the logic side of living is more important than your creative side. There is a story about a young girl in second grade that was coloring during Arts in class. The teacher instructed the children to draw a red rose with a green stem and a couple leaves. When the teacher walked past the desk of the young girl, she saw that she was drawing a blue flower with an orange stem.

She stopped the little girl and corrected her, instructing her to color the rose red because that was what they were learning to draw.

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The next day the teacher walked by again and saw the little girl coloring a purple flower with a blue stem and several leaves pointed in random directions. The teacher took the young girl’s paper away and instructed her to draw the red rose. As the days went on the little girl eventually began to draw the red rose and green stem. That summer the young girl moved and started up at a new school. When they got to Art, her teacher told the class to draw whatever they wanted. The little girl picked up her crayon and drew a red rose with a green stem. The little girl the story was discouraged to think creatively and eventually over time lost her sense of creativity, sticking to one way to draw the rose as the teacher instructed.

She no longer thought of any other way to draw the rose, because she learned there was only one way to draw it. Children should not be discouraged to use their imagination. They should be able to express themselves the way they think is correctly. This way, as they grow, they still have that creative nature with them, instead of becoming the logic obsessed robots adults have become. School teaches the children to fear being wrong because being wrong means that they did not choose the only correct choice. Ken Robinson, an author, educator, and creativity expert said, “If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.” If we are afraid to make mistakes, then we will never create anything great. Take Thomas Edison for example. He did not consider all the time spent creating a light bulb only to be wrong a failure but merely “Found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

If schools put in more effort to make each child understand that there is not one certain way to act or live, then imagine how much more confident and creative the world would be. We would not be scared to try new things and be embarrassed when we failed because we would know that we could always try again, and try a different way. Creativity should become a priority in schools to help the children to grow to become the best they can be. Mathematics and Languages are not sun of our personal solar systems. They might not even be used outside of school, but creativity can be used anywhere. Creativity is in everyone, we just have to stop causing people to lose it. We were all born with a potential for creativity, so go ahead and find it.