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I don't know that I ever wrote about inculcating creativity in students. (Emphasis on "inculcating.") But that is a big topic best left for another discussion.
What I referred to, when talking about the Taylorization of education that is now taking place, is the following process:
1. Unionized, experienced teachers are fired on masse. 2. Unskilled, untrained teachers are hired to replace them with the expectation that most will leave teaching within the first five years. 3. Teaching scripts and tests and created (at great cost) to direct and evaluate the "teaching" that remains. This replaces the skill of the teacher. 4. A teacher who does not stay on script, is summarily fired. 5. All subjects that can't be tested are eliminated. For example, the arts.
Supposedly this assures consistency in curriculum, measures what value teachers add, and provides the best education to students.
I am arguing that this destroys the ability of a teacher to teach (destroys the teacher's creativity as a teacher) and destroys the possibility of the student to see that knowledge is not just something poured into him, but something he creates in relationship to other human beings. Do I need to say anything about the value of teaching the arts?
In addition to getting rid of art classes, there are new guidelines to minimize as much as possible the teaching of fiction. One result of this is that students would have minimal exposure to primary sources, and that they would get most of their "knowledge" from textbooks. I hope I don't have to explain why this would be a bad thing.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- (a) I don't have any post which gives a source for this interview, and I don't know who Alan Finlayson ia.
(b) Joanna often uses the word "creativity" as something of great value which the schools ought to inculcate in the students. This doesn't make sense to me, and I have one question which might illuminate the discussion. What is the word in classical Greek, classical Latin, Church Latin, Middle English, and any other pre-modern language which can be translated as "creativity"? ("Creative" and "Creativity" are not necessarily related.)
This is only tentative and I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, but it does not seem to me that "creativity" is an entity like "algebra," "French Grammar," "musical notation," the alphabet, that can be passed on by a teacher (or teachers) to a student. In fact, I am skeptical that the word "creativity" can be defined in any useful way.
Carrol
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