Maharashtra Board Class 12 English Chapter 3.2 Do Schools Really Kill Creativity Textbook PDF Download

Do Schools Really Kill Creativity?

Ice Breakers

Observe the given figure and complete the activities that follow:

Replace the main idea by any other thought or title of your own.

Add three supporting ideas to the main idea as their branches.

Add two ideas to one of the branches that explains the meaning of the branch.

Complete the given blank spaces and balloons with your ideas in the figure that describes your basic preparation for the HSC Board Examination. Also complete the activities that follow:

Teacher's Note

Mind mapping helps you remember things better because you draw pictures and lines instead of just writing words. Like when you plan a trip, you write the main place in the center and draw branches to show food, hotels, and travel.

Exam Trick

Remember: Mind map = one idea in the center with branches going out. Just like a tree has a trunk and branches, your mind map also has a main idea and smaller ideas coming from it.

Points to Remember

Mind mapping helps you see how ideas connect to each other.
You can use shapes, arrows, and colors to make your mind map more interesting.
The main idea goes in the center and smaller ideas are the branches.
Mind maps help you study better and remember more information.
You can use mind mapping for essays, notes, and group projects.

Activity

Complete a similar type of detailed graphical figure in your own style showing the thoughts and ideas that keep on generating in your mind. Then you choose a particular style, design, or graphical representation to describe the same idea, facts, or situations. This type of presentation can be called Mind Mapping.

Use different shapes, arrows, lines, connectors, balloons, boxes, curved arrows, callouts, scribbles, scrolls, and explosions to describe your point of view.

For Example:

Julian Astle is the Director of Education at the RSA. Previously, he worked in No. 10, Downing Street as Deputy Director of the British Prime Minister's Policy Unit and Senior Policy Advisor to Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. Previously, he was the Director of Centre Forum, a Westminster-based think tank.

He has also worked as a Post-Conflict Advisor to the British Government in Whitehall, and to the United Nations in Bosnia and Kosovo.

In the most watched TED talk of all times, educationalist Sir Ken Robinson FRSA claims that schools kill creativity. He argues that we do not grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather we get educated out of it. Yet to Robinson, creativity is as important as literacy and we should afford it the same status.

Teacher's Note

Sir Ken Robinson is a famous teacher who said schools can kill creativity in children. This means schools teach children to follow rules but do not teach them to think in new and different ways like an artist does.

Exam Trick

Remember: Schools kill creativity = children are told to follow the same rules and do things in the same way. But creativity means doing things in a new and different way. So remember this main idea first.

Points to Remember

Sir Ken Robinson says schools teach children in the same way for everyone.
Creativity means thinking in new and different ways.
Some children are good at art and music but schools only focus on reading and math.
A good school teaches both creativity and normal subjects like math and English.
Teachers should help children find their own special talent like dancing, painting, or music.

True creativity is based on knowledge which in turn is based on literacy. Our schools, where children develop the literacy skills on which all further learning depends, are therefore not killing creativity, but cultivating it by providing the foundations young people need to be properly creative.

As evidence of how schools kill creativity, Robinson cites the example of a young girl called Gillian Lynne who, at the age of eight, was already viewed as a problem student with a probable learning difficulty due to her inability to sit still and concentrate. When her mother sought a medical explanation for Gillian's constant fidgeting and lack of focus, the doctor suggested they speak privately.

As the two adults got up to leave, the doctor turned on the radio. Left alone in a music-filled room, young Gillian began to dance. Observing her through the window, the doctor turned to her mother. Gillian is not sick, he said, she is a dancer. Today, at the age of 92, Gillian can look back on a long career in ballet dance and musical theatre which saw her become one of the world's most successful choreographers, with hits like Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Cats and Phantom of the Opera among her many achievements. Yet her school had all but written her off, mistaking her extraordinary talent for some form of behavioural problem or cognitive impairment.

Teacher's Note

Gillian Lynne was called a bad student in school but she was actually a great dancer. Her school did not see her talent because they only looked at whether she sat still in class. This shows that schools sometimes do not notice what children are really good at.

Exam Trick

Remember: Gillian Lynne = problem student in school but became a famous dancer. This story shows that schools can miss a child's real talent if they only look at test scores and sitting quietly in class.

Points to Remember

Gillian Lynne could not sit still in school so teachers thought she had a problem.
A doctor found out she was actually a dancer and loved music.
When she danced, she became one of the world's best choreographers.
Her school did not know about her special talent in dancing.
This story shows that schools should help children find their own talents, not just teach reading and math.

A huge amount of research on skill acquisition has found that the skills developed by training and practice are very rarely generalised to other areas and are, in fact, very closely related to the specific training.

It is certainly unhelpful, and probably wrong, therefore, to talk about critical thinking skills. Critical thinking is an important part of most disciplines, and if you ask disciplinary experts to describe what they mean by critical thinking, you may well find considerable similarities in the responses of mathematicians and historians. The temptation is then to think that they are describing the same thing, but they are not.

The same is true for creativity. Creativity is not a single thing, but in fact a whole collection of similar, but different, processes. Creativity in mathematics is not the same as creativity in visual art. If a student decides to be creative in mathematics by deciding that 2 + 2 = 3, that is not being creative, it is just silly since the student is no longer doing mathematic. Creativity involves being at the edge of a field but still being within it.

Teacher's Note

Creativity is different in each subject. Being creative in math means finding a new way to solve a problem, not making 2 + 2 = 3. Being creative in art means making a new painting style. Teachers should teach children to be creative in the right way for each subject.

Exam Trick

Remember: Creativity is different in each subject. Math creativity is not the same as art creativity. So you cannot be creative in any way you want. You must stay within the subject rules.

Points to Remember

Creativity in math is different from creativity in art or music.
A student cannot just say 2 + 2 = 3 and call it creativity because it is wrong math.
Creativity means finding new ideas but still following the basic rules of the subject.
Being creative in history means finding new ways to explain what happened in the past.
Teachers must teach creativity in the right way for each subject they teach.

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