The Stalwart: Is Creativity Overrated?

I often proclaim myself as an innovative and creative individual but is this a good thing? I always felt claustrophobic in school and although there were a few teachers that really understood the importance of going beyond just the facts this was very rare occurence. I feel the system rewards those that can memorize numerous facts and regurgitate them back on a test. I say give everyone a laptop or book and ask them to use those facts to solve a common problem. I

nformation is not hard to find these days. My 13 year old cousin can go to answers.com or Wikipedia and tell me what a chemolithotroph is but would they be able to understand it or be able to use this knowledge in some way beyond marking the correct answer on a test?

With that said it seems there is another twist to the story in that creativity is turning into this pop culture like motif. Everyone wants to be a creative thinker and come up with the next big thing. Can we be successful as a society if everyone just wants to sit and think and not be bothered with busy work in an effort to allow our brain's "to breath"? It's an interesting notion and this article takes a look at whether creativity is indeed overrated.

I especially found this snip a bit interesting as it's something I relate to pretty well and one of the reasons I refocused my attention and career goals after pursuing a career in dentistry and investment towards graduate school for 4 years.

"To succeed in academia, my graduate students and I had to learn to be less creative than we were initially inclined to be. Critics complain that schools squelch creativity, but most people are inclined to be more creative on the job than would be truly productive. So schooling is mostly about selecting the smarter and more diligent, and learning to show up day after day to somewhat boring jobs with ambiguous instructions."

I found the article at least a bit enticing so maybe you will too!

Is Creativity Overrated?
via The Stalwart

posted by Jason Dorko at 12:54 PM 0 comments links to this post