You can’t see it, smell it, or hear it, and people disagree on how precisely to define it, or where exactly it comes from. It isn’t a school subject or an academic discipline, but it can be learned. It is a quality that is required of artists, but it is also present in the lives of scientists and entrepreneurs. All of us benefit from it and we thrive mentally and spiritually when we are able to wield it. It is a delicate thing, easily stamped out; in fact, it flourishes most fully when people are playful and childlike. Meanwhile, it works best in conjunction with deep knowledge and expertise.
This mysterious—but teachable—quality is creativity, the subject of a recently-published report by Durham Commission on Creativity and Education. The report concludes that creativity should not inhabit the school curriculum only as it relates to drama, music, art and other obviously creative subjects, but that creative thinking ought to run through all of school life, infusing (充满) the way humanities and natural sciences are learned.
The authors, who focus on education in England, offer a number of sensible recommendations, some of which are an attempt to alleviate the uninspiring and fact-based approach to education that has crept into policy in recent years. When children are regarded as vessels to be filled with facts, creativity does not prosper; nor does it when teachers’ sole objective is coaching children towards exams. One suggestion from the commission is a network of teacher-led “creativity collaboratives”, along the lines of existing maths hubs (中心)，with the aim of supporting teaching for creativity through the school curriculum.
Nevertheless, it is arts subjects through which creativity can most obviously be fostered. The value placed on them by the independent education sector is clear. One only has to look at the remarkable arts facilities at Britain’s top private schools to comprehend this. But in the state sector the excessive focus on English, maths and science threatens to crush arts subjects; meanwhile, reduced school budgets mean diminishing extracurricular activities. There has been a 28.1% decline in students taking creative subjects at high schools since 2014, though happily, art and design have seen a recent increase.
This discrepancy between state and private education is a matter of social justice. It is simply wrong and unfair that most children have a fraction of the access to choirs, orchestras, art studios and drama that their more privileged peers enjoy. As lives are affected by any number of looming challenges—climate crisis, automation in the workplace—humans are going to need creative thinking more than ever. For all of our sakes, creativity in education, and for all, must become a priority.
