Weekly Significance

    Within the past four weeks we have covered countless ideas and theories. While some did not exactly grasp my attention, there were a few that did. One in particular, was an article we were asked to read, called The Creativity Crisis. It expressed the importance of creative thinking and how it is slowly decreasing in America due to our educational institutions.
    I had never really thought of relating my past education to my creativity. It never occurred to me the significance of those growing years and the impact certain influences had on me. When I recollect my experiences in elementary school, I always look through past projects and art work. I remember how much fun I had coloring, cutting, pasting, and creating. How much my education was devoted to such things and thus how big of a role they played in my life. After reading The Creativity Crisis, I started to think about those times with much more depth and naturally, attempted to connect them to the article. I remembered specifically, I loved coloring. I recalled all the downtime I spent filling in colorless templates. I thought about the amount of effort I put in to never break a line; how I would immediately trash whatever I was working on if I did, regardless of progress. I was taught color was supposed to be inside the lines and if it wasn't, it was wrong. I remembered using unusual color placements a lot, each time having to be reminded of what the color should be.

    I kept thinking about all of these small instances, where I was unable to explore my creativity due to constant rules of what should and shouldn't be. It frustrates me to think that all of this is still going on. Children learn and become who they are through their own creativity. By teaching them that their desires to veer away from what's expected is wrong, the schooling system is tearing away at what truly makes them who they are.
    
The Creativity Crisis was my weekly significance because it brought these ideas to my attention. I found the article to be extremely interesting as it justified the importance of creativity and the impact our schooling systems have upon it. These systems argue that structural learning is the most important factor of our education, and therefore should not be cut down for art programs or other means of creative learning. However, the article explained that by incorporating creativity in structural learning, students use advanced thinking strategies and produce better results. This is what I appreciated most about the article, that it did not just expose the problem, but provided a solution.