Creative illiteracy? How schools are making students illiterate We often talk about illiteracy with respect to students. Teachers are evaluated constantly on their ability to make their students meet the mark. Meeting this mark is the measure of literacy. This paper identifies and discusses the relationship between teachers creativity and students literacy. It argues that creative illiteracy on the part of our teachers can lead to the big ILLITERACY that we fear for our students. It is based on observations and discussions with teachers and students in a number of schools over a period of 6 months.

1. Creative illiteracy! How schools
are making students ILLITERATE

2. CREATIVE illiteracy? How schools are making students
Illiterate
We often talk about illiteracy with respect to students. Teachers are
evaluated constantly on their ability to make their students meet the mark.
Meeting this mark is the measure of literacy. This paper identifies and
discusses the relationship between teachers’ creativity and
students’ literacy. It argues that creative illiteracy on the part of our
teachers can lead to the big ILLITERACY that we fear for our students. It
is based on observations and discussions with teachers and students in a
number of schools over a period of 6 months.

3. CREATIVE vs UNCREATIVE?

6. Teacher Education for Social and
Economic Development?

7. CREATIVE ILLITERACY. How schools
are making students illiterate.

8. CREATIVITY?
• The ability to create
• To make new
• To make something
• To imagine
• To bring to life
• To imagine and bring to life something
new and something of value

9. TO THINK AND DO THINGS
DIFFERENTLY

10. ILLITERACY/LOW LEVELS OF
LITERACY?
• Inadequate reading or writing skills in
English
• Inability to express important ideas in
English
• Inability to read and comprehend at Grade
level

11. CREATIVE ILLITERACY?

12. • Inability to understand the importance of
creating new things
• A commitment to maintaining the status
quo
• Inability to create new things of value
• Inability to experiment with ideas
• Inability to ask questions

13. A broader definition of literacy for
students
• Awareness
• Know how
• Understanding meaning
• Understanding context
• Explaining and expressing ideas
• Understanding relationships
• Living in and shaping the world with and
through language

14. Or our most commonly used
definition?
Inability to express ourselves in English

15. Our inability to think differently
as school teachers/school
administrators and policy
makers is making our students
illiterate

16. JAMAICAN SCHOOLS?
What should an education do?

22. Examples of CREATIVE ILLITERACY
• Curriculum
• School Buildings
• Classrooms
• School procedures
• School events/activities
• Books
• Teaching methods
• Relationship between teacher and learner
• Language use

23. TELL US HOW CREATIVE YOU
ARE?
RESPONSES FROM TEACHERS

24. Could Bloom be wrong?

25. Quote from KEN ROBINSON who
says school kills CREATIVITY
• …kids will take a chance. If they don't
know, they'll have a go...? They're not
frightened of being wrong. (being wrong is
not the same thing as being creative.
What we do know is, if you're not prepared
to be wrong, you'll never come up with
anything original --

26. • …if you're not prepared to be wrong. And
by the time they get to be adults, most
kids have lost that capacity. They have
become frightened of being wrong…

27. Is this what has happened to US?

28. How does CREATIVE
ILLITERACY make students
illiterate?

30. Limited notion of the world/reality/life
Limited stimulation
Rewards for following and not leading Learning vs living

31. How do we develop
CREATIVE ILLITERACY ?

32. Some ideas..
• We identify creativity with art
• We prefer professionalism
• We compare ourselves to other people/countries
• We borrow/imitate in most things
• We are always afraid of trying new things
• We don’t read interesting things
• We don’t dream/we don’t act our dreams
• We leave it to young people

33. a CLASS room?

34. • How many teachers’
conferences do we have
per year?
• How many presentations
talk about
creativity/creative schools
appear in any of these
conferences?
Creativity
• How many courses at
teachers’ colleges use the
word creativity?
• How many creative
schools exist?

35. Is this presentation even creative?

36. LA.LEWIS
(self-proclaimed conceptual artist)

38. Sobolious?
• when you are above all; bigger than your
surroundings
• I am so sobolious; soboliously speaking

39. What if L.A LEWIS was a teacher?
That, with what, I wash | 2012
Plastic bleach bottle and two laundry
scrub-brushes containing the artists
hair. Signed by the artist in ink
(Sharpie). ₤ 30,000; ₤ 35,000 (with
Sharpie)

40. Want more?
• Reading: A whole new mind Daniel Pink
• Viewing: Ken Robins-Schools kill
creativity.TED.com
• www.methodsanddevices.wordpress.com
• www.twitter.com/methodsndevices