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As someone with a great appreciation for music and art, I've often wondered “Can creativity be taught in schools?” or is it an innate gift predetermined in our genes. If creativity cannot be taught, I then question whether being educated on a creative discipline helps one become more or less creative. Is one becoming formulaic? Learning someone else’s approach to creativity? These are questions I will be tackling in my paper.From my personal experience my foremost belief is that creativity is something you know from yourself and not something someone can extrinsically teach you, only expand upon.

To start off, I will list my initial experiences with creativity and education. I am someone who has been drawing most of my life; it has been my passion for as far back as I can remember. So naturally creativity in education has been an area of growing interest. I am questionable to the general procedures and general benefits of teaching creativity. Being taught something that is natural seems a bit awkward to me. From my experience of being taught by art professors“the formulaic way to draw” and “the artistic modes of art” was always sought with slight scorn. I do however see the initial benefits of one learning techniques and methods they are beneficial;rather teaching one to be creative is a much harder task, if not impossible.

In my explorations and research of this topic I found many who disagree/agree and some who were in the middle,for instance Erica McWilliam, who states “some aspects of creativity appear to be teachable – thinking and application skills that are amenable to acquisition can be developed through appropriate pedagogues. And no, some aspects of creativity remain idiosyncratic and mysterious, despite the plethora of research literature that is dedicated to pinning the frog of creative endeavor.” To some extent I think basic forms of creativity may be teachable; I am not opposed to this idea but much less so in the context of art/musical creativity, of which there are much more complex forms of creativity. Everyone has creativity ability, at varies levels, in my opinion those with lower creative ability will respond better with the formulaic approach towards bringing out creativity. Those with higher levels creativity will struggle and become bored, this in lies the uppermost problem. In this case it is the,not one size does not fit all scenario.
In a study conducted by Adobe called “Creativity and Education: Why it matters” research was conducted to show the statistical evidence of the need to teach creativity in schools. Directly from the study it states “71% of college-educated professionals say that creative thinking should be taught as a course like math and science”. It is a staggering number who think this; they certainly see the benefits of being creative thinkers but that to me does not prove necessarily that it can be taught just that it is desired to be. Creativity is an admirable trait such is being good at mathematics or science. From my experience it is rare for someone to be great at something as formulaic/procedural as mathematics/science and also be great at something so creative/boundless as art/music. I am suspect to believe the authors of this Adobe article are themselves quite creative and pushing for more creative professionals in their fields. I do think that schools do poorly in providing the necessary tools needed for both the creative and un-creative. These two groups should be indemnified early on and have specialized programs suited to their needs.

I understand that when teacher goes over the formulaic ways of creativity that these are mere guidelines for students. But if these models for teaching are to be implemented and classes try to emulate creativity in a school environment I honestly don’t think this is possible, as my main argument naturally occurs. I see that scenario as problematic, for one can for example, learn anything in theory but find myself awful at applying it to the real world. This principle applies to many people with natural talents as opposed to it being taught them. Secondly someone that is a natural talent will always be better at creating “original material” than someone who has learned through the formulaic process of creating. You can teach anyone how to draw but you can’t teach them to draw naturally, that they must do on their own and the ones who do are usually the best at it.Which correlates to my original idea that creativity is something intrinsically known not extrinsically taught.

I now want to cover what I see as the “destruction of creativity” which the aforementioned course could effectively do better than all my art and music classes combined. Teaching art and music to children who like it may (but not always) begin to view it as a task, and thus lose interest. If they aren't given the opportunity to discover these activities on their own it may be seen as forceful and intrusive. Now packaged this into a course, creativity could be viewed in much the same way as a choir. It is in my view that creativity is about absolute freedom to explore to the realms of one’s mind. You cannot have this same framework if freedom is tested, evaluated, scrutinized, discriminated and judged. When you are taught how to do so, boundaries are now set, restrictions to the location of your mind are then established. This is in my opinion the wrong approach and creates a negative connotation of being creative and as a result kills ones naturally omni-directional spirit and vibrant desires of creativity.

Upon researching this topic I have come to the conclusion that learning/teaching creativity as I see it is a hindrance to the natural order of life. Learning new techniques and methods can certainly be enriching and may improve the ability to one that is already creative. By my account creativity is something inheritable to a human being, nothing can force this. I think education should let creativity take its place within the minds that have it, those who are creative will be creative and we are as society should let this take its course. This means not establishing rules for creativity or classes for cultivating/exploiting certain creative traits. If not we may as well imagine a fate as bleak as one without any creative people at all.