“Creativity” – I googled this term and found these 7 possible ways through which we can make our children creative.
- Make Children Question Things. ...
- Provide Opportunities to Express Their Intelligence. ...
- Teach Them Multiple Ways to Solve Every Problem.
- Trigger Their Curiosity.
- Engage Them With Activity Boxes.
- Encourage Children to Read for Pleasure.
- Give Them Free Time & Space.
And it’s a challenge in front of the entire education community to adopt the above methods excellently and make our kids the new age – Picasso, Einstein or Shakespeare. We have enough thoughts. Let’s look at it retrospectively.
Fear kills creativity
The real reason why we don’t’ move creatively ahead always is fear. People are afraid that they don’t have the talent, or they’ll be rejected, judged, insulted, criticised or ignored. They have tumbling piles of fear.
- Abundance starts with appreciation and a feeling of being accepted by the community. Including appreciation and acceptance in our methodologies can tap the hidden potential in our children.
The Art of making mistakes
We keep instilling this very idea in the minds of our children that they have to be right, and by the time they become adults, they lose their capacity of committing mistakes. They become frightened of being wrong. We stigmatize mistakes. By this, we are educating people out of their capacities.
- Allow mistakes to happen in a classroom – Children are not frightened of being wrong. They are not frightened of making mistakes.
In the words of Picasso -All children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.
I believe passionately that we don’t grow into creativity; we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it. Creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.
Story: A small incident from a grade 2 drawing class gave me a clear picture of confidence taking the shape of creativity.
A girl was drawing something in a class, and the teacher asked – What are you drawing?
The girl said I am drawing a picture of god.
The teacher asked, but nobody knows what god looks like.
The girl answered - “They will in a minute.”
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes and grow.
Nibbrati Rathore is an educator at the Gyanshree School, Noida
She is a Life Members and volunteer on the National Training Team of Learning Forward India.
You can join Learning Forward, find out more at
www.SchoolEducation.com.