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Josh Walter

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Should creativity be encouraged or discouraged?

In many households and schools, children who "act up" are the ones who receive the harshest, most frequent punishment. Many of these children demonstrate innate abilities in one or more areas, such as music or math or painting. Unfortunately, very infrequently do parents or teachers take the time to delve into the psyches of their more rambunctious children to discover their talents. The education system is designed to produce functioning members of society and, primarily due to the benign influence a conformist society has on a child, there are undoubtedly fewer individualists than there are conformists. I implore you to debate the issue of whether or not it is right for parents, teachers, and other authority figures to discourage individuality, creativity, and curiosity instead of work towards discovering and nurturing hidden talents.

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Topics: children creativity education psychology society
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    Salim Solaiman 50+

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    Jun 23 2011: No matter what it is , punishing kids will not give anything rather killing their natural capability and growth.

    What's the definition of hyperactivity?
    Who measures whether a kid is hyperactive or not?
    How capable that person is to measure that ?
    What's the scale?
    What's the validity of that scale ?

    So many unsure answers are around about all the above, we can't go for definitive action.

    Have to understand them and make them understand about desired behavior, that could be the solution other than definitive diagnosis which might need doctors or psychologist intervention.

    Irrespective of creative ability punsihment shouldn't be applied for kids.
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      Josh Walter

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      Jun 24 2011: I have slightly changed the premise to leave the topic open to more interpretations, and your answer is still extremely valid. In my opinion, hyperactivity is a diagnosis given by people holding positions of authority to children who can not be controlled by people of average dedication and intelligence. As one of these "hyperactive" children, I have been deemed defective by many of my elementary and middle school teachers, but the entire time I've had a penchant for music, writing, philosophy, and math. I had to figure myself out without very much assistance, which was by no definition a simple task! That being said, I believe that if parents and/or teachers took a moment to solve these immensely creative enigmas that are "hyperactive children," the children would find success far more achievable!
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        Scott Armstrong 50+

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        Jun 24 2011: A big part of a teacher's role is managing a large class of students. This is completely logical when it comes to managing any sizeable groups of people.

        Unfortunately, if you are not 'easily managed' then you very quickly get labelled a 'trouble-maker'.

        This is bullshit, of course, but requires much more money being funneled into education (ultimately, to reduce class numbers to a one-to-one ratio - imagine how much more effective a teacher could be if they could be a mentor to only one student per year!).

        Until governments recognise the worth of kids as our future leaders and respond in a way that reflects this, a lot of intelligent people will be labelled otherwise by overworked (and vision-less) teachers.
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        Salim Solaiman 50+

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        Jun 24 2011: @Josh my worry is with HYPERACTIVITY as observed people who are not qualified to diagnose too quickly jump on that conclusion. These people are teachers, parents , neighbors etc . This era when kids are exposed to so many stimuli since birth like TV, mobile, Internet etc , my hypothesis is they are normally to be more reactive to the environment compared to their parent's or grandparent's generation.Keeping that in mind need to really look in to the definition of ADHD which has HYPERACTIVITY as prime symptoms.

        when we adults acting irrationally many times and examples of which coming to the kids through TV, Internet etc, expecting KID to behave like ADULT is really strange to me.

        Really sorry for experience you had.

      • Julie Ann 10+

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        Jun 24 2011: Josh, I am glad you were able to overcome the difficult situations in which you were placed. You are spot on with your assessment of the "diagnosis" by the people who are supposed to be facilitating the development of these children. Regrettably, there are many, many other children like you who suffer, and end up in bad situations. It is heartbreaking.

        Simple band-aid solutions that are so often put forward are useless. A major paradigm overturn is needed, with different thinking and a different way of training educators (this includes parents). The archaic ways of teaching children must go. There have been sufficient advances in neuroscience and enough talk about variances in children's behaviour for us to move beyond suffocating children who are not passive. I am sorry you had to endure all that pain but happy you were able to realize your brilliance. Bravo.
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          Josh Walter

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          Jun 24 2011: Thank you, that means a lot to me. And I agree with you - it's terrible to witness a child with a type D mind think that they're useless because the world is strictly A, B, and C. People with positions of power (i.e. parents, teachers, family, friends, etc.) need to start acknowledging this child's uniqueness and creative potential and encouraging him or her to continue to nurture this uniqueness and creativity.

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