Comments on: Are Creativity & Standards Opposed?

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:17:22 +0000

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This post was mentioned on Twitter by JasonFlom: RT @stevejmoore: Are Creativity & Standards Opposed? http://bit.ly/a0r2vT Reflection on #ASCD10 #Marzano #Zhao…

By: Considering Sines of Learning | Hi, I'm Steve Moore

Considering Sines of Learning | Hi, I'm Steve Moore — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:01:45 +0000

[...] I posted a reflection upon my experiences learning from Yong Zhao about creativity, individually cultivated knowledge, and [...]

By: Steve J. Moore

Steve J. Moore — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:49:07 +0000

Thank you for writing that Justin. I think you’ve just helped string together some of my disparate thoughts on the topic!

I took a peek at your paintings as well, excellent work! I bookmarked your Etsy page.

By: Steve J. Moore

Steve J. Moore — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:41:31 +0000

I love the teeter-totter analogy you use, it is something we go back-and-forth with. If we deviate too far from the center, we lose perspective. Thanks for yet another insight Olivia!

By: Justin

Justin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:40:06 +0000

Standards are an end goal. While creativity is a process. A student who is trained to approach life with creative solutions, will also meet standards. They may not approach the standards as you expected. Standards are a means to assess how effectively a problem was solved.

Without creativity, standards based education often produces button pushers who can only follow directions. Without standards, creativity based education may produce daydreamers who are pleased to never produce anything.

Creativity and standards cannot thrive apart.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:24:47 +0000

RE: Assembly lines and factories – I would argue the two aren’t the same: factories have the same inputs which are used to produce the same outputs.

By: Steve J. Moore

Steve J. Moore — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:10:03 +0000

That’s close to the mindset I came into Marzano’s session with, but his system for measuring learning did not seem to limit learning because it was modular. It’d be like having a graduated cylinder with attachments to go upward forever.

By: Olivia

Olivia — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:01:28 +0000

This axiom gives great weight to the pursuit of personal truth. You cheat yourself if just listen to soundbites, quickly agree with emotional appeals, or deny unsavory responses to your thoughts. A good teacher is one who understands–what should be–the careful process of adopting new information.

This is precisely the teeter totter that educators seem to have a hard time abandoning – it is easy to jump on the bandwagon, it is difficult to give careful and thoughtful consideration to educational ideas when everyone around you seems to be saying “get on with it” and for me, not only does this affliction plague educators it plagues Americans. We dislike moderation, we abhor the idea of something taking a long time and a lot of tweeking – there is nothing “sexy” about slow, carefully considered change, and because of that, we hardly ever take that route, even though using what is good from all of these researchers and philosophers and educators would be “best practice” it is not easy nor is quick processing time, so to speak. Just my take….thanks for the interesting commentary, as always, Steve.

By: Paul Bogush

Paul Bogush — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:29:23 +0000

Still thinking…we are entering a unit that will be referring to the time period in which factories began to standardize parts. The result? Every product coming off the assembly line is the same. Do we really want that in schools? Every student coming out being the same?

By: Paul Bogush

Paul Bogush — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:27:07 +0000

Steve,
You actually answered your question in the post. Check out your sentence written in bold. Creativity dies when we believe there are limits on what we should know. Standards in schools not only tell us what we can learn, but what we can’t.