Authorship 2.0

I recommend listening to TED Talks – Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? I heartily agree with Robinson that, “we are educating people out of their creative capacities.” In fact, I have preached a similar gospel, having observed that most every 4-year-old I’ve encountered exhibits great imagination, and yet we seem to systematically bury this instinct through our education system, which clearly and relentlessly privileges “right” answers and “correct” form over creative ideas and complex thought, year after year, essentially bullying students into relinquishing this precious birthright. This is not meant to suggest that we should lead kids to believe that 2 + 2 can equal anything, or that punctuating sentences is unimportant to communicating clearly in writing, but rather that we should emphatically convey through both word and deed that other more open-ended types of questions and tasks are also worth pursuing.

In my experience, most children in the primary grades are encouraged to view themselves as authors and artists, but by the later grades, kids typically have internalized a belief that imagination and authorship are the province of only a “creative” few. This phenomenon has been exacerbated by the recent obsession with high-stakes standardized tests, which now drive so much of what happens in classrooms on a day-to-day basis. Such tests go far beyond merely measuring what students know to very narrowly defining what is considered worth knowing.

In her book, “The Having of Wonderful Ideas” and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning, Eleanor Duckworth argues that “Standardized tests can never, even at their best, tell us anything other than whether a given fact, notion, or ability is already within a child’s repertoire. As a result, teachers are encouraged to go for right answers, as soon and as often as possible, and whatever happens along the way is treated as incidental.” When the culture of schooling is overwhelmingly focused on demonstrating what one already knows rather than exploring what one doesn’t, children repeatedly receive the message that knowing is more important than learning. And, as Duckworth points out, “The virtues involved in not knowing are the ones that really count in the long run. What you do about what you don’t know is, in the final analysis, what determines what you will ultimately know.” This is not to say that knowledge is unimportant, but rather that banking inert knowledge should not take priority over building active knowledge; knowledge should be something we expect students to use and expand, not just to have.

We as educators must not acquiesce to the pressures bearing down upon us, as strong as they may be, to act against the best interests of our students. The stakes are too high – far higher than those imposed by any test. We must push back and reclaim the culture of education, and renew our commitment to cultivating creativity in students of all ages in all disciplines. The good news is that many kids are exercising their creativity all over cyberspace…outside of school. Imagine what they could do with our guidance and support…