How does education encourage creativity?

Creativity exists in each of us. We are all creative, but the education an individual receives and
the methods he uses every day to stimulate his thinking make some people more creative than
others. The development of the creative potential is not realized by itself. Continuous and
organized actions of stimulation and activation are required. The education and methods used
play an important role in stimulating creativity and without their development, you will never
consider yourself a creative person.

Motivation is accepted as fundamental, for creativity, and the most important motivating factors
are the self-motivation and the interest to carry out the work (the object of creation). Creative
people are at the discretion of their own values and motivations and deal with problems, for
which they have a strong emotional affinity. This ability should be stimulated from the earliest
years of a child's life, because creativity can play an essential role in the learning process.

Creative thinking allows children to make connections between one area of learning and another,
thus expanding their understanding. As Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than
knowledge”.

The time when children are in preschool is the most important period for the creation of
creativity. Now the needs of knowledge, information, independence, self-expression are
crystallizing, now the perception of self is outlined. Creativity makes it possible to create real or
pure mental products, constituting a progress in the social plan. The main component of
creativity is the imagination, but the creation of real value also implies a motivation, the desire to
achieve something new, something special. And as creating something new is not easy, another
component is the will, the perseverance in making numerous attempts, checks and even fail.

The role of the school in shaping creative behavior is very important, because it remains the
main instrument that society uses to cultivate creativity.

The concern of forming independence in thinking and expression also implies a connection with
the family. Parents must be convinced that excessive tutelage hinders the development of the
intellect, the independent manifestation of the child’s thinking and fantasy, are essential factors
in the future acquisition of a genuine professional competence.

In this period, creativity makes creation possible as a psychic activity. The level possible to reach
now is only that of the potential creativity, manifested through drawings or games. Drawing,
painting, modeling, music, dance, different outdoor or home games have the gift of helping them
express their emotions, thoughts and feelings. The most important framework of manifestation,
but also of stimulating the creative potential, is the game, with all its types. Through play, the
child can be anyone he wants, he can invent role-playing games, he can create characters.
Creativity can also be considered an aptitude.

The existence of creativity is evidenced by the flexibility, novelty, originality, fluency,

sensitivity, ingenuity of the student.

Developing creativity through extracurricular activities is also an important factor in developing

a child’s creativity. The school must stimulate the expression of each child's creative potential,
encourage his / her initiatives, ingenuity and curiosity, foster relationships, provide opportunities
for the student to make decisions alone and stimulate self-confidence, in an atmosphere of free
communication.

The modernization and improvement of the instructional-educational process require the

combination of school activity with extracurricular activities. By conducting school activities and
extracurricular activities also allows the manifestation of group creativity, creative relationships.
In extracurricular activities, the student becomes a "creative thinker", who explores, reconstructs,
rediscovers, generalizes, assimilates, goes to searches, through personal, independent or group
work.

Moreover, parents play a decisive role in children’s education and they need to encourage their
creativity. They can evaluate the child's abilities in certain areas and determine the core of his
intelligence. Once this is done, they can encourage the strengths and develop the weakest ones. It
is advisable to take into account, certain determinants, which may favor the development of
creativity, namely: unstructured play, reading together, invent stories, introduce music into the
child’s life, encourage the child to invent different scenarios and also be flexible when the child
makes public the need for creativity, such as using colors, drawing and possibly expressing talent
in painting.

Adults / parents can encourage creativity by providing an environment that allows the child to
explore and play without exaggerated restrictions; to adapt to the ideas of the child, without
trying to structure his ideas, so that they fit with those of adults; by accepting the child's unusual
ideas, without judging the divergent way in which he solves a problem; using creative ways to
solve problems, especially problems that appear in everyday life; allowing the child enough time
to explore all the possibilities, to move from the usual ideas, to more original ideas and by
encouraging the process, not the purpose.

Moving forward, our present and the society in which we live in increasingly emphasize the
importance of being creative. Why? Because the future does not seem to be just a factory where
ideas are produced on a treadmill, uniformed and dozen. A new world is emerging, in which the
element of surprise and the missing ingredient of each equation is the unique contribution of
each of us, the element that Sir Ken Robinson, international education consultant, told in his
book, The Element.

Creativity implies an authentic expression of what children feel, think and are. The way in which
they propose resolutions or interpretations in the face of a challenge (of an artistic nature or in
the non-formal education activities) is an x-ray of their creative potential. I believe that this
creative "seed" is planted in every child's soul, but its development depends strongly on the
environment, family, models and lessons that the little ones receive, and which helps, voluntarily
or involuntarily, to shape their perception of the world. Sir Ken Robinson said in a TED Talk in
2006 (“Do schools kill creativity?”) that "Creativity is not acquired as we grow, but lost. We are
educated to lose it.”

The schools’ strategy is largely responsible for stimulating the creative potential of a child. In
this regard, it will aim: stimulation of curiosity and the need for knowledge in children;
triggering positive and affective motivation; ensuring a disinhibiting educational climate,
arranged on activity centers; active play and pedagogical methods; flexible didactic guides,
which allow the free expression of the child, encourage his autonomy, initiative and creativity;
capitalizing on the optional activities, which can be effective alternatives to the other ways of
stimulating the creativity of the child.
The creative potential is latent in each child, and it can be developed under the influence of a
stimulating socio-educational environment, responsible for stimulating the creativity of the child.
The family has the role to stimulate from its earliest ages, its initiative and its independence of
action. In kindergarten, the creativity of the child can be stimulated through pedagogical models
whose elaboration is based on the knowledge and respect of the age particularities of the
preschool child, but also on the level of development of his creative potential.

Creative learning does not necessarily aim to make every child a genius, but teachers must make
each child an active participant - independently or in a group - in "rediscovering" the truths about
things and phenomena, when they are told the directions of research or are given the defining
notes, to ask questions similar to those posed by the scientific researcher such as: "who", "what",
"where", "by what means", "for what purpose" , "how" and "when", because they maintain the
interest for knowledge and correspond to the child's curiosity.

The new curriculum in education involves several significant changes, including the shift from
learning focused on accumulating information to structuring skills and competencies, from
"telling" to "doing." Reform through the new curriculum means creativity, which also means
changing the way the teacher does his / her job, finding new ways for each activity. The solution
is an intense creative activity. In the new curriculum, the child becomes the center of the
educational action, and the teacher becomes a guide, an organizer, a leader in the action of
knowledge acquisition.

In developing the new program, the current trends in pedagogy (openness to approaching the
Project Method, integrated activities, interactive group methods etc.) were taken into account, as
well as a number of positive aspects: the current maturity level of children in kindergartens and
schools, and trends and evolutions in the field of information and modern technology.

Integrated learning is best reflected by thematic teaching (content integration), which supports
the concomitant development of some areas, rather than focusing on an isolated aspect, which is
not unusual for the child's development. Thematic teaching is done in such a way as to reflect the
connections between several disciplines and their life connections.
Through the years, psychologists have shown that, both in science, technique and art, creativity
does not occur instantly, but has a certain dynamic, goes through stages and moments, implies
certain mechanisms and conditions.

Also, the need for innovation is essential for the smooth running of the school, the smooth
running of life, of the times in which we live. Creativity involves creative people, and they are
not so easy to find. Only 2% of people are very creative and we hardly reach 15% for people
who are slightly above average.

According to E. P. Torrance, creativity is "the process of modeling ideas or hypotheses, testing

these ideas and communicating the results obtained". M.I. Stein defines creativity as: "the
process that leads to the creation of something new, accepted by a group of people as useful,
appropriate and satisfying." P. Constantinescu Stoleru defines creativity as "the process by which
the subject detects a dysfunction in a certain theoretical or practical field, models and tests ideas
or hypotheses, objects in new, appropriate, useful and recognized by others."

Creativity was and will remain a superior quality of man, being identified, in the case of
students, as an ability to achieve something and something else in relation to the existing reality,
to understand and to know materially and spiritually something unique, useful and valuable.
Creativity is a characteristic of the human personality, this being necessary to be discovered,
cultivated and modeled to become something unique. The school is one of the most important
environments in which the student can receive organized art knowledge, an environment in
which he can be educated through this language of feeling.

Talent is a superior quality form of highlighting complex skills, which makes it possible to create
new, original values. This native dowry is necessary to be cultivated with tact and skill, in the
sense of developing the creative potentials of the students.

An essential condition in assessing the plastic creativity of the students is "the development of
artistic-plastic thinking and the possibilities to materialize this thinking by acquiring diversified
working techniques (painting on glass, canvas, collages, modeling)". The little plastic artists are
in a permanent search, they are eager for new inventiveness. They give up the old, traditional
techniques, coming to understand the new trends and techniques that have emerged in modern
art.
The didactic practice has shown that it is not enough to make the students observe the beauty of
nature or of life, that it is not enough to present artistic things in front of them, but it is necessary
to follow the students' acquisition of some essential aspects of the plastic knowledge. This is the
general objective of the hours of visual arts and practical skills, comprising two main aspects,
namely: the development in students of artistic-plastic thinking, as well as the development of
artistic and aesthetic sensibility and taste.

In order to achieve these objectives, it is necessary to consider the introduction of action paths
that highlight the following aspects: familiarizing students with the plastic language, introducing
them into the problems of the creative act (color, harmony, composition, creating the plastic
space), as well as the contact with the beauty of the environment and with the artwork. In
addition to the knowledge of some plastic notions, it is necessary for students to be familiar with
the materials and tools used in the plastic activities.

By introducing various working techniques, students can enrich their knowledge bag and obtain
works with artistic-plastic qualities. Used in parallel, classical and modern methods can stimulate
and energize students' thinking, determining them to know, understand and successfully apply
various techniques, to solve the plastic problems they raise. To stimulate creativity, specialists
have developed various methods and techniques that allow valid students to achieve results close
to the creative ones. Their increasingly sustained application even in the hours of plastic
education has proven their usefulness.

Going back to the current education system, there can be observed, according to a study related
to school incentive, that most adolescents do not feel that school stimulates them enough. For
most, there are no WOW moments in the classroom. They also question the necessity of studying
certain disciplines considered to be of little relevance to their daily lives.

"Formal education is not perceived as a prerequisite for success in life, it is only a social norm
(people learn and obtain diplomas) that they must respect," says Lăcrămioara Loghin, the study
coordinator. "As a result, when it comes to education, most young people consider what they
have to do (themes, projects) and not what they actually have learned," adds Lăcrămioara
Loghin.
Teachers are described as an embodiment of the past, with little understanding of adolescents'
needs, interests and lifestyle. Those who succeed in attracting the attention of the millennials are
those who have an interactive way of teaching, who use practical examples to support theories,
and who encourage initiatives of any kind.

Young people feel the need for information provided by teachers, either orally or in writing, to
be accompanied by visual and video media, such as PowerPoint presentations, movies or
pictures. Moreover, they believe that the way information is presented and analyzed plays an
extremely important role in connecting with teachers.

More exactly, teens have the opinion that teachers should no longer focus on content (Google
already does that), but on facilitating the learning process.

In the students' opinion, teachers should also adapt their speech to today's expectations regarding
language and interactivity. In addition, they perceive as necessary the inclusion of online in
school projects and activities. Examples in this regard are projects that involve an online
collaboration between pupils / students or the creation and management of blogs, vlogs or social
media accounts.

In order to stimulate creativity, there is a need for an environment where children are allowed to
make mistakes because society often stigmatizes mistakes, believes Sir Ken Robinson. He also
says that the fear of failure, throughout one's life, leads to self-censorship so as not to be judged
by others, and this phenomenon leads to decreased creativity.

Unfortunately, one of the big problems of the Romanian education system is precisely the
inability to stimulate creativity in any way. The standardized exams, the need to quickly evaluate
a large number of students, the lack of training or interest of the teachers to encourage creative
thinking, the reduced importance given to art classes and artistic or creative activities, all
encompassed by a large-scale intellectual dilettantism practiced by the so-called specialists in
education took creativity very close to the last place in the list of educational objectives.

And this is felt acutely in the whole pedagogical act, from the teaching methods, to what the
children learn and how they are evaluated, even within those subjects where the stimulation of
creativity should be a basic requirement.
The way mathematics, physics and chemistry are taught seems to communicate only one thing:
when you study the exact sciences you don't play and you don't have to think differently/
Teaching theoretical notions and demonstration exercises on the board are among the only
accepted methods, while experiments and practical activities are quite rare. Which is pretty
serious, if we think about it, these are the areas where we most need people with vision.

Undoubtedly, all these "crimes" against the creative potential of the students have a collective
author. First of all, we are dealing with an outdated education system that discourages the
exchange of ideas and two-way communication between students and teachers, by respecting a
hierarchy that places the student on an inferior level - the teacher knows better, the teacher
always knows the correct answer, and the student's duty is to get as close as possible to it. In the
middle of the same system, evaluation methods belonging to the past decades appear, which
merely standardize what should be a harmony of different voices and to stand up the need for
free expression of students. However, there are, of course, teachers that know what they are
doing, they use interactive teaching methods and I think that they are the reason why some of us
did not give up on school.

In conclusion, the culprit is especially the outdated curriculum that makes all these crimes
possible by the demands of today's world - a world where the ability to innovate, create and
adapt as quickly as possible to change has become more important than hyper specialization in a
particular area.

“All children are born artists, the challenge

is to remain artists as we grow.” - Pablo Picasso
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