Schools MUST Teach Students to Think Creatively

Larry Goodman Ph.D.
Head of School

Let’s be clear - “creative thinking” is not the same thing as “creativity” any more than critical thinking is the same thing as “criticism.” Nor am I advocating that schools need to teach students to be creative any more than I would suggest schools should teach students to be critical. But I AM saying that schools need to teach students to think creatively, just as they teach students to think critically.

“Critical thinking” is convergent - calling for one to think toward what is already known; “creative thinking” is divergent - calling for one to think away from what is known. But while “critical thinking” is a foundational part of virtually every curriculum in the United States, “creative thinking” amounts to little more than a rhetorical flourish on most schools’ websites. This is a big mistake - and one that schools should work hard to change.

Already in the 1950s Professor Ellis Torrance was writing on the concept of creative thinking while at the University of Georgia. Torrance labeled four categories in which the scale and scope of one’s creative thinking could be measured: fluency (how many ideas one can generate), flexibility (how readily one can transform one idea into another), originality (self-explanatory), and elaboration (how extensively one can build-out an idea). All of these thought patterns move away from what is already known.

Also developed in the 1950s was a hierarchical model that educators have used ever since to determine how sophisticated one’s understanding of a concept is. At the bottom of this hierarchy are mental tasks like memorization. A student can memorize the capitals of every State in the Union without knowing too much about any of those cities (or States) - which is why this cognitive skill (memorization) is “low man on the totem pole.” By contrast, evaluation is at the top of the hierarchy; if a student has to evaluate how effective city A is as a capital of State B, then that student necessarily knows a great deal more about the capital and the State. Initially, the hierarchy was comprised entirely of critical thinking (convergent) skills. But by 1992, educational theorists recognized the crucial role of creative thinking (divergent) skills and replaced “Evaluate” at the top of the hierarchy with “Create.”

Here’s why this is so important.

Our schools focus almost exclusively on critical thinking - on thinking toward what is known. Students’ understanding of any content area (as reflected in grades) is judged almost exclusively by their ability to memorize, analyze, synthesize...to think convergently. This creates - and then reinforces - a mindset that ambiguity is bad and that one needs to think only toward what is already known.

Now consider this. We’re told that in 2018, 50% of what a first year college student learns in a technical major is outdated by her junior year! No sooner do we get comfortable with one set of “facts” in any given situation, than we discover that those facts have changed. We now live in a world punctuated by change and ambiguity - precisely the aspects of cognition that our schools teach our students to fear and avoid!

If schools are going to prepare students for success in our rapidly changing world, they have to teach students how to navigate ambiguity - not avoid it. They need to teach students how to think divergently - how to think creatively.

To do this, schools have to value creative thinking - they actually have to teach the distinct skills involved in creative thinking and provide feedback (grades) for students in these areas as they learn to master these skills. I’ve written about this in some detail and you can find that article here.

What we hope to show in future blog posts on this site is how we teach creative thinking - and how we assess creative thinking - at Andrews Osborne Academy.