21k12

Among the highest priorities for 21st century learning, I believe,  is the full-scale embrace of creativity and innovation as a capacity and skill to be taught and learned.  This should be carried out with the strong belief that this capacity can indeed be taught and learned, and it should be carried out explicitly, embedded emphatically in student course work PK-16;  taught in stand-alone courses in creativity, innovation, and design; and reinforced by measuring creativity learning and growth alongside that of other academic skills.

I don’t often build blog posts off of corporate press releases and what has now become inevitably the accompanying info-graphic, though certainly I could post an infographic a day if I wanted to– PR people seem to be emailing them to me all the time.

But, following Eric Sheninger’s lead, I’m going to break my rule and share some statistics and images from a recent Adobe study, which communicates the very high importance of creativity to professional careers today– and the somewhat worrisome perceptions that this critical skill can’t be taught.

The slide-show style report, and the infographic, are in the Scribds below [click “more”].

Surely there are times when educational leaders confront the skepticism or reluctance to support creativity education from board members, parents, or even teachers themselves, and when going into these battles, it might help to be armed with some of these compelling statistics.

Three stand out:

1.  Among full time professionals, (college-educated, salaried, full time employees),

This is essential, yes, but we are not doing a good enough job supporting this learning. 

2.  Where does Creativity come from?

This is a little bit heartbreaking– education majors, the very people upon whom we rely to develop creativity skills in our children and in tomorrow’s professionals, have less confidence that creativity can be learned than do engineering majors.

As educational leaders, let’s make sure we promote the message that indeed creativity can be taught and learned, inside our schools as well as outside our walls.

3.  Should we teach creativity?

Demand and support for teaching creativity is strong among working professionals, and we should be doing more to build in creativity into our lessons and perhaps teach it “like a class” on a par with math and science.

The Infographic

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The full report