Propagating and Preserving Creativity Beyond Kindergarten
Education, like many other things in our society, has always been influenced and driven by the current state of our economy. Every shift in the ways we built our education systems relied on some form of revolution or boom — standardized universal education only came into the picture after the industrial revolution, and the tech boom led to the emergence of the STEM-centric education, as it was what was important in the era of new scientific and technological innovations.
However, the focus we place on standardization and STEM education may end up killing creativity entirely. As most governments concentrate and invest in STEM education and its counterpart industries, alternative paths are almost dismissed and looked down upon as being not as prosperous. Countless times have creative majors been regarded as less than its STEM counterparts. This is so as people fail to recognize that design thinking and creativity are essential ingredients for innovation — the very thing that made STEM thrive in the first place. Creativity is needed to allow individuals to think outside of the box, to propose new ideas that can later be transformed into innovative solutions. While STEM explicitly focuses on scientific knowledge, the integration of arts in STEM (STEAM) focuses more on the holistic approach towards STEM. This can be done by incorporating strains of design thinking in the approach of exploring and utilizing scientific knowledge.
