During some recent school visits, my friend and writing partner, Linda Stanek, had teachers comment repeatedly on a lack of creativity in young students. They claim that kids are not imaginative and cannot create original stories.
We can speculate on why this would be—teachers being forced to “teach to tests,” kids’ participation in non-stop structured activities, the amount of time spent consuming digital media, etc.—but mostly I’m interested in whether it is, indeed, true or not.
I’m curious what teachers and parents (and OTs) here think about this. Is this something you notice, too?
Categories: Needle and ThREAD
Define creative. I think kids might be a bit less crafty (beyond the preschool years), but they are amazing with stories and interactive entertainment ideas. A big problem we have is over-scheduled kids now. They don’t have time to whip out the glue gun, but man, they have extremely creative ideas for killing twenty minutes while standing on line or while driving in the car.
This was in school, and a mention was made of not being able to conjure imaginative stories. I don’t think craft-creativity was the issue.
It’s great if they’re killing time creatively and not merely texting or playing digital games!