Thursday, May 1, 2008

Creativity

The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.

Topic: Creativity in U.S. Schools

Title: Review of Tough Choice, Tough Times: the Report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Work Force. National Center on Education and the Economy, 2007. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 169 pp. $19.95 in Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 08), 617, A publication of the International Reading Association.

Quote: “The single most important difference in comparing schools in the United states with China’s and India’s schools is that creativity will be stressed [in future American schools] in the hopes of giving students a competitive edge by creating more innovation in services and products at a faster rate than other countries.”

[Comment: Can we teach the process of creativity directly? I used to emphasize brainstorming as a method of preparing for writing and the resulting compositions were often very creative in content. It might be worthwhile to share with students the research on creativity and biographies of creative people. Sounds like an interesting research project. But something strikes me as wrong when the purpose of education is limited to economic gain. What do my readers think about the preceding quote? RayS.]

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