Creativity and Initiative

Importance of Creativity and Initiative:

We are all aware of the importance of creativty and initiative in today's globalized world. For example: 

• Professor Michael Porter, an authority on management and economics, has commented that “Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity,” more so than basic intelligence. 
• Jobs in the rapidly changing global economy put an enormous premium on creative and innovative skills. Technology and scientific understanding are changing the world faster than ever before. Vint Cerf - the ‘father of the Internet’ - has said that 99 percent of applications for the Internet have yet to be invented.
• A leading thinker on creativity, Sir Kenneth Robinson, contends that “creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
• The 'deep well of creativity' which cannot be automated or outsourced, allows countries to maintain and develop a technological advantage, so they can produce important new products and services and capture a premium in world markets. 
• According to the UK Department of Trade and Industry: 
  - For businesses, innovation and creativity mean sustained or improved growth. 
  - For consumers they mean higher quality and better goods, more efficient services, and a higher standard of living. 
  - For the economy, innovation is “the key to higher productivity and greater prosperity for all… and will also be essential for meeting the environmental challenges of the future.”

Education systems throughout the world can do a lot more to help students develop creativity and initiative. For example: 

• According to Sir Kenneth Robinson, “We do not grow into creativity, we grow out of it – or rather, we are educated out of it.” In many schools today, “we are educating people out of their creative capacities.”
•  In India, for example, the classrooms need to be more tuned to fostering creativity. Former President, Dr. Abdul Kalam, has said that the Indian “education system in the primary and middle school level has to be changed to inject creativity among the children.”
• Many education systems can do more to provide learning environments that foster a willingness to make mistakes and be creative. For example, in China, there is growing concern that “too many students have become the sort of stressed-out, test-acing drone who fails to acquire the skills — creativity, flexibility, initiative, leadership — said to be necessary in the global marketplace.”
• A survey of US employers found that 54 percent of new workforce entrants with a high school diploma were “deficient” in creativity and innovation skills.

Realizing Creativity and Initiative as Educational Outcomes:

Creativity and initaitive can be realized as educational outcomes when they are built into the learning environment organized around how children learn and develop. This makes teaching easier and more effective, as the following examples illustrate: 

1. Relationship is the foundation for development - A supportive teacher-student relationship in which the teacher listens to the child's views, perspectives and ideas can encourage new ideas, creativity and initiative. A supportive environment where the student does not feel free to make mistakes is also important. To be creative, students need the support to sometimes to be wrong and make mistakes. This does not mean that makign mistakes is the same as being creative, but if one is not prepared to be wrong, then they are unlikely to come up with anything original. 
2. The child learns in an integrated way - A teacher who understands that children learn in integrated ways also understands that the child's personal and social development are inseparable from his academic development. The child can develop a base of security which can give him the confidence to explore ideas and concepts, and to take initiative and be creative. 
3. Children are natural learners - A child can develop creativity and initiative when the learning environment reflects the fact that children are natural learners and make sense of the world. In this environment, the child is motivated to study and explore areas of learning.  
4. Each child learns in his her own way - Teaching that takes into account how the student learns and develops makes the student more responsive and engaged in school, and this leads to better educational outcomes, including creativity and initiative. 

The benefits of an education that works - of a learning environment based on how children learn and develop - for creativity and initiative are self-evident.