Creativity in Education

Let me get it off my chest, I love the TED talks.

This one is of Sir Ken Robinson talking about the topic, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?":

A few snippets from the talk:
  • There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the same way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think math is very important, but so is dance.

  • I think you’ve had to conclude the whole purpose of public education through the world is to produce university professors.

  • Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.

While his talk directly applies to how we handle creativity in our school systems, I do think it applies to the church.

He uses Gillian Lynne as an example near the end of the talk. Due to Gillian's fidgeting in school, she was told she had a learning disorder. A doctor later diagnosed her with a simple case of being a Dancer. After an illustrious solo career, she went on to do the choreography for Cats and Phantom of the Opera.

Nowadays she'd probably be diagnosed with ADHD.

I think the church is one place that creativity is fostered. Take the innumerable opportunities for musicians of all levels in churches. There's a structure in place to serve those creative desires in the congregation.

What are some other opportunities for creativity in churches? Do you think the church should serve an active function in fulfilling some of those desires?

HT: The Aesthetic Elevator. Also, let me know in the comments if you watch any other gems from the TED talks. I'm always on the lookout for more.

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Comments (13)

Just a thought, but creative pursuits don't lend themselves to being evaluated objectively. How do you give a kid a grade for dancing? (Grade her if she participates? Give tests on the correct steps for a tango- but that's not terribly creative.)
There's a good chunk of objectivity in creative pursuits that needs to be learned. Ask anyone that's had to learn scales on the piano: there's a right and wrong way to play them. Same goes for all sorts of technical aspects of the arts.

If you'll let me probe a bit, why does it matter if the kids are being handed a grade or not?
I believe the church should foster creativity. The church was a driving force for both arts and science centuries ago. Maybe it is time for the church to rethink how it can be a force for creativity again. This same discussion is now raging in my profession of education. If both the church and the school change the question from how can we teach, to how do people learn and grow, creativity becomes an obvious part of the answer. I am praying for it!
Rob: has their been any consensus in your part of the education world about the importance of creativity?
Chris, education is coming to the realization that creativity is a vital ability. The current research and trends suggest that we are preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist yet. In the flat, globalized, ultra-competitive, time compressed world our students are heading into creativity will become a key to success.

If knowledge, data, and information are available to everyone the world over, then one of the things that will set our students apart from those whom they will compete for jobs with is their creativity. So, education is beginning to understand that, all things being equal, companies would hire the most creative people, because they tend to deal well with problem solving, innovation, collaboration, etc.

The current political reality is that schools are measured on test scores, which prevents or hampers increasing the time and energy spent on developing creativity, as has been mentioned in some previous comments.
"The current research and trends suggest that we are preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist yet. In the flat, globalized, ultra-competitive, time compressed world our students are heading into creativity will become a key to success."

That's so true. I've already had two jobs that didn't exist five years ago.

In your estimation is there a way to continue to still have objective tests, which are valuable to a point, while still promoting creative excellence? Or are they mutually exclusive?
It is absolutely possible to have both because they serve different functions. Creativity is a skill to be developed and included in both the learning and the teaching. Objective tests serve to measure how the the learning is going or how well it went.

Think of the tests or assessments like medical checkups (during learning to adjust the teaching) or an autopsy (what did they lean, but teaching is over)

Creativity does need to be excluded because assessment is done to improve teaching and learning. Teaching and learning benefit from creativity. Creativity is a way to interact with the content or develop new ideas and perspective on the content. Creativity helps to internalize the content and provides and great way for a student to feel empowered and individualized.
@ Elizabeth: You're right, but I think the idea of grading you're referring to is part of the model Robinson is debunking. Or trying to debunk, if you like.

@ Chris: I'll give you that the church has always fostered music of some kind, but I'm not ready to suggest it's a creative or imaginative kind. Just this week I was thinking, during the Sunday morning service, how simplistic and predictable the choruses we sang were. And we have a young, interested and talented music leader who's interested in things beyond the obligatory P&W, but he doesn't get into his creative box if you will on Sundays.

Part of that, in truth, may have to do with his relationship to the other older leadership in the church. Where, though, are the Bachs of our day? Bach, based on what I've read, created a new — BRAND NEW — work for every Sunday. Not every music leader can do that, but shouldn't the people in those kinds of positions want it if they can? I sure would as a person in the pew.

As for other creative opportunities, these are coming into being with respect to the arts but only in the last decade, and only in very large churches from what I can tell. The large church I came from in Nebraska had groups for visual artists, drama, music, writing etc. But they were all fledgling, born around '98 IIRC.

The church should encourage the arts. The church should patronize the arts. And the church should preach about the arts Biblically (http://www.squidoo.com/artandt.... The encouragement and patronage are rebirthing as I mentioned previously, but I've yet to hear a reasonable sermon talking about art and the Bible.
So much of it depends on where you attend. I'll add since I'm musically minded I rarely attend a church twice that doesn't have something going for it musically. Call me shallow if you want, but music is one huge way I connect to God. Because of my church selection I don't run into as much terrible music. So, I'm biased.

This is getting into much larger conversation, but I do think one of the reasons church worship music doesn't seem all that creative or imaginative is because of the vast quantities of music we're subjected to on a daily basis.

If you really think about it, the fact that you can get four people up on a stage together all playing in the same key is quite a feat. Is it cutting edge and awe inspiring every week? No. Rarely, actually. I think maybe that's why there's only been one Bach throughout history.

Is your worship leader afraid the congregation won't follow him outside of his creative box?
You're not shallow, you're honest and realistic. I love music and think its important, but because I'm a visual artist I generally think it's given too much emphasis in the church, mainly because it's the only art that gets attention in most churches (most churches being smaller mom and pop outfits). Though to be honest on my end, I'm not sure about painting during a sermon either. I'd rather see a building designed and decorated in a well-considered manner on the front end.

I don't know what our music guy is afraid of, but it's likely NOT the congregants. And afraid might not be the right word. Recently I've learned that certain leadership in our church hedges against doing anything out of the norm. Sad, but true in so many cases. Apparently the only thing that kept him around was the youth pastor begging him to stay every so often.

Said youth pastor just moved to a different state.

People who've been in our church for a long time chock the whole scenario up to the leaderships inability to make necessary changes after the church tripled in size in a matter of one or two years. That might not far off . . .
"I'm not sure about painting during a sermon either. I'd rather see a building designed and decorated in a well-considered manner on the front end."

I still remember the first time I saw painting used as worship. Personally, I found it extremely distracting, albeit very interesting. Do you think it's just a matter of retraining our expectations of worship in order to incorporate more visual art?

"I'd rather see a building designed and decorated in a well-considered manner on the front end."

Amen!

Something that just struck me: I wonder if because our educational systems don't do an amazing job of focusing on creativity they don't let us learn how to fail gracefully. I know for me the biggest fear in performance has always been of screwing up, but if our churches created safe communities for creative endeavors it might allow artists to succeed in amazing ways.
"Do you think it's just a matter of retraining our expectations of worship in order to incorporate more visual art?"

I'm of the mind that we need to redefine "worship." Connotatively worship happens Sunday mornings at church, and even more specifically it relates to the music. Hence we have "worship pastors" and so forth.

Worship -- I did a word study on this subject a year or two ago -- is not Biblically tied to music. Music is a wonderful art and has an uncanny and enigmatic ability to move us as humans, but we're dissing God, so to speak, by limiting our idea of worship to Sunday morning [music].

Now, I know a lot of leadership KNOWS in their head that worship is more than just Sundays and church music, but I don't see them living that out in so many cases. I've seen leadership preach on how worship is this and that and the other besides Sunday and music, and the next week continue referring to Sunday morning services and/or music in such a way that perpetuates the connotative and incorrect notion that worship is tied to church.

It's not that I think they've recanted on their last sermon, but I don't think they (leadership) are doing their part to debunk said notion. They've called it (Sunday morning music) and them (Worship pastors) that for so long they can't break out of it.

And maybe they don't feel the need to. Maybe I'm nitpicking. Maybe it's just semantics.

But I don't think so. I think the meanings we apply to words in our writing, conversation and culture stick. We need to start calling worship pastors music leaders or liturgy planners, unless they actually start performing a role (at large) that looks broader than Sunday mornings.

On messing up, as a non-musical congregant let me reassure you that it's not a big deal. After some friends visited Urbana about 10 years ago they came back with this interesting bit: The music in the first week was polished and, in their opinion, cold or unapproachable. Transitions were seamless. There was no dead air, there were no errant chords. The second week -- a track dedicated to int'l student ministry or something like that -- the music was much more "real" and resonated with my friends. It was warm and intimate, approachable, despite dead air and off-beats. This int'l student track has since been rolled into the first week.

In the mega-church I formerly attended, complete with $250,000 stage lighting and a perfectionist leading music, one of the sermonizers once asked from the pulpit:

"Do we come for the show, or do we come to grow?"
Our God is, perhaps above all else, the creator. We are made in His image and should be creating, and encouraging each other to create, all the time.

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