Schools are stifling children's creativity

Every child is born with imagination and creativity.

The good news is every child is inquisitive, doesn't know failure and has an unending ability to imagine. You only need to watch children play and make something out of nothing. Their intelligence is diverse, allowing them to learn by sound, visually, kinesthetically and by abstract thinking.

And with globalization, imagination and creativity are the talents needed to succeed.

The bad news is our schools today ignore that every child is born with those talents and seem to douse those qualities with their rigid structure, obsession with testing and strict adherence to regulations. Though we now know that each child learns differently, much of our educational system looks like a factory tooled to produce test takers rather than preparing creators and innovators needed for the new global economy.

"Creativity may be the key to your child's success," according to a recent study by the College Board, which administers the SAT.

"Traditional tests have some predictive value, but they look at kids narrowly. We're saying creativity is important to success and that you can measure it," said the study's lead researcher, Dr. Robert Sternberg. The study found that "adding creative and practical components, like writing and common sense, to existing exams" could make better collegiate success prediction. They also found the scoring differences between ethnicities decreased. (Newsweek, Aug. 14).

The American educational system was once the model for the world to follow. It educated individuals who made the United States the leader among industrial nations. The system designed for the agrarian and industrial eras worked so well that we still keep pouring money into it. In the meantime, the world has changed, but the special-interest groups keep making sure nothing changes. As a consequence, we are now burdened with an outdated system that was designed to prepare students for yesterday's mass-production economy.

The professional bureaucrats keep saying we have a teacher shortage but fail to acknowledge that the mass exodus of teachers leaving the profession is because of the oppressive working environ- ment they must face daily. Many feel unsupported and forced to run their overcrowded classrooms in assembly-line fashion, with "quality control administrators" making sure they follow the myriad needless and burdensome regulations passed by legislators who think more laws are the solution. Teachers are leaving because the environment no longer lets them ignite the love of learning in their students.