Does creativity helps learning?

 “Everybody has an interest in education. All kids have tremendous talents but we sounder them”-Ken Robinson

Every single person is born with a creative mind, strength, interest, and talent that you can find and you can build a life on. But individuals are thrown into an inadequate educational system and are expected to adopt one of the trending careers law, medical, engineering or IT by their parents. They are compelled to grow in such an inadequate educational system to comply with the trending career requirements, ruining their own differential creativity and strengths.

“We do not grow into creativity. We grow out of it, or rather we get educated out of it”- Ken Robinson

Our educational system is predicated on the idea of academic ability, the reason is there was no system of public education before the 19th century and it all was to comply with the need of industrialism, so the hierarchy of educational content was designed with the subjects of need on top and kids remained benignly away from the subjects they liked. On the ground reality, it was thought you will not get the job by doing what you like, don't do music you are not going to be a musician, don’t do arts you are not going be an artist. But now profoundly mistaken, the whole world is engulfed in revolution.

Secondly, academic ability is dominated on our intelligence because the universities have designed the system of the entrance. All over the world, the system of public education is a protracted process of university entrance with a consequence that highly talented, capable and creative students think that as they were not good at school, wouldn't be valued or actually stigmatized. It is now crucial to rethink about our intelligence, we know 3 things about intelligence one it's diverse, we think about the world in all ways we experience things: visually, kinesthetically, by sounds and in abstract terms. Second, intelligence is dynamic. It’s highly interactive and third, intelligence is distinct. All this collectively gives rise to creativity and multitasking ability

Creativity is the process of having original ideas having values that come about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of same things. All kids are not the same and their performance in school doesn’t define their caliber. Many successful scientists, philosophers, and businessmen like Einstien, Thomas Edison and Bill gates etc. were high school dropouts.

“Creativity is contagious, pass it on” – Albert Einstein

Qasim Ali Shah from his start of teaching promotes and sticks to a fact that without creativity we can’t enhance the performance and learning ability of a student. He himself felt throughout his life that it was his teacher’s creative approach that led him for his self-discovery. He always tried to enhance and pull out the creativity from his students and guides them to exceed according to their passion. According to Qasim Ali Shah our only hope for future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology which must acknowledge the richness of human capacity. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children.  

There are multiple examples of top profile persons who are on top just because of their creative approach. A kid who struggled in middle school, in high school he spent most of the time hiding himself in a bathroom escaping from reading aloud in the classroom. He was diagnosed with dyslexia, or a language-based learning disability in 4th grade and ADD- attention defecate hyperactivity disorder in 5th grade and was dropped out of school but he believed that he was different from others. He re-enrolled himself in high school and his relatives said: “he will be a high school dropout or will end up as a loser”. But he beat those odds and transcended those low expectations. He entered the university, got a supporting teacher and was interested to keep English subject as his major. He walked into academic enrollment office and said “ I want to study some English literature here”, the officer opened his IEP- individualize educational plan and laughed saying that he will not approve that as major, you should consider something less intellectual. He was deflated like a balloon and went back to his teacher and told him that they are not going to approve English literature as major due to my poor school results. His teacher said “Your old school judgment can never define your future. Go back and prove that bastard wrong” and next day he enrolled himself in 4 literature classes. This kid was “Jonathan Mooney”: a dyslexia writer, entrepreneur, activist, and public speaker.

“Marks are important for exams, education is important for life”

Similarly, Jenilyn a hopeless school girl. Teachers told her parents she is sick having a learning disorder and she can’t concentrate. Her mother took her to a specialist doctor. Jenilyn was asked to sit on a chair alone in a room until doctor discusses all her problem with her mother privately. Going out of the room doctor turned on the radio and asked her mother to watch her from the window. The minute they left the room she was on her feet moving with the music. After watching a few minutes Doctor said her mother “She is not sick, she is a dancer. Take her to a dance school”. Today Jenilyn is a famous multi-millionaire choreographer and dancer having her own dance academy.

These kids believed that if they were deficient they were different. Yes, they are different in the truest sense of the word but the things that really disable individuals are the ways in which those differences are treated by others. Qasim Ali shah himself is trying to bring some reforms in educational systems because he believes that yes, creativity helps learning.

“Creativity now is as important in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status”- Ken Robinson

I think we can’t afford this. In the next 30 years, more people will be graduated from education than the beginning of history, with a combined knowledge of technology and transformation efficiency of it on work. Secondly, degrees are of no worth anything. A few decades back if you have a degree you have a job and if you didn’t have a job you didn’t want one. Now people with degrees are ahead to homes playing video games because now you need a Master’s degree for the job previously demanding Bachelor’s degree and similarly now a Ph.D. for another one. It is all the process of academic inflation, it all indicates that the whole educational structure is shifting beneath our feet. It is important to develop freedom of expression, emotional development, thinking capability, problem-solving skills, passion, better interactive communication and future opportunities in children to celebrate the gift of human imagination. Using it wisely and the only way we can do it is by seeking our creative capacities for the richness they are, and our children for the hope they are, by educating them so that they can face the future and make something out