Teaching Creativity RISING TO THE CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY Edwin Malet
West Chester Friends School
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N 1961, PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY CHALLENGED the nation to land a person on the moon by the end of the decade. By mid-1969, Neil Armstrong took a “giant leap for mankind.” At the end of 2019, when the deadly COVID-19 virus emerged in Wuhan, China, scientists worldwide began searching for a vaccine. Less than a year later, vaccines began entering arms. Until then,
Wilmington Friends School
it had taken a minimum of four years to develop a vaccine for such a serious disease. These tasks demanded enormous creativity, problem-solving, inventiveness, imagination, persistence, motivation, risk-taking and teamwork. As we consider current and future challenges, we wonder whether and how our schools develop these attributes in today’s students, who will be tomorrow’s leaders. Preparation at this level is a far cry from the basic 3 Rs. How are local schools teaching these essential skills? IS CREATIVITY TEACHABLE? The answer, almost universally among the independent schools in County Lines country, is yes, creativity is teachable, at least to some extent. Paulo Machado, Visual Arts teacher at Wilmington Friends Middle School says creativity is taught by “helping students imagine multiple solutions to a problem, to brainstorm, to not fall in love with the first idea that comes to you, to ask ‘what if’ questions, and to be open to failure and criticism.” Machado believes creativity is the ability “to bring something new into the world. Many people are imaginative, but they may not be creative. Creativity implies an idea, a medium and an art. To create is to make our thinking visible.” CountyLinesMagazine.com | February 2022 | County Lines
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