Members Louise Foster

Nov 8 2009: To assert that creativity relies on literacy is to say that children under the age of 5 or so are not creative. Have you never seen a 4 year old play or construct a fort? No one has to teach children that pillows blankets = play house but they will all get there if given the opportunity to play with the furniture. Creativity comes before literacy in children, just as it did in early humans. There was no written language when people decided to control the way plants grow in order to feed themselves. Literacy is simply a tool to allow us to communicate and glean information quickly. But literacy without creativity is useless, at least in terms of the forwarding of knowledge. Original ideas are quite highly valued by this cruel society you portray -- agriculture, industry, internet. These things which make the world what it is, for better or worse, would never have moved forward if it weren't for a creative leap. So why is it OK that we are educating against creativity?