Innovation, not tests, prove true value

Karey Harrigan
Columnist

Undeniably, the future of America lies in innovation.

It’s the unthought-of, original ideas that are sought after and celebrated, leaving those with a timeworn perspective quickly passed in the trend of forward thinking. Unfortunately, it seems schools and universities have a way, in their often uniform style of teaching, of hindering those with a creative intellect that learn and perform in an untraditional way.

Thinking differently than your instructor and the fixed curriculum often is deemed a mistake, and it is well understood there is simply no room for error. Perhaps that error possesses potential, and that unusual approach is where revolutionary ideas are created.

Throughout most of the years students spend in school, their intelligence is defined by how well they perform on an instructor’s test.

Yet how well does that really assess creativity? It doesn’t. It tests our memorization skills and understanding of the subject, leaving out the immeasurable concept of imagination. These limitations placed on students censor what they want to say, how they will interact and inevitably the way they perceive what they are learning.

The manner in which education is formatted almost always has a way of inhibiting some students. Capacity in mathematics and science is placed at the top of the hierarchy of learning.

Those may be some of the fundamentals of early learning, but the arts are left to an area often disregarded, hopeless and of little real importance. The consequence of this is that those who succeed solely in the arts are felt to be inadequate compared to their more academic counterparts.

For this stigmatized group, education should adjust to create a more “whole-brained” way of learning. New assessments should be created to correctly evaluate student learning for those who possess a holistic and intuitive mind. Techniques for instruction can be manipulated to include the artistic perception of some students by incorporating activities that include visuals, movement and an imaginative thought process.

Equal importance should be given to skills in the arts and creative thinking in curriculums. Students who have greater strengths in those areas are just as profound and valuable as those who excel in logistics. This can lead to a confidence and perseverance that would have been belittled otherwise.

Recognizing the potential and the need for these different ways of thinking promises students an education that nurtures their individual talents and strengths instead of standardizing their thoughts into an outdated and constraining curriculum.

In attempting to understand and accommodate each completely diverse and dynamic mind, we will support the innovative concepts needed to compete and advance in the world.