POV: You’re in math class. Photo courtesy of senior reporter Adam Bolivar-Stone.
San Luis Obispo High School starts a new school year, and many students are excited for the production electives they’ve signed up for. But unfortunately, the core classes seem to lack a creative environment for students.
Lessons are typically tedious and rarely involve student participation. The activities that rely on student creativity are typically dominated by the same small demographic of students.
For example, if a group project is assigned there is typically only one student who truly puts in a full effort in. The rest either slack off or provide minimal assistance that has little to no significance on the project. A curriculum that constantly engages student creativity will better encourage students to take their work seriously and improve our innovative thinking.
“You walk into the classroom and have no control over what you do with the information you’re given. It makes class uninspiring,” said senior Rocco Zundel.
Many students including the rowdy Seth Wellman are fed up with repetition in their core classes.
“Yeah honestly, I’m surprised I’ve been able to take this much boredom for so long,” said Wellmen
Absence of creativity is not a complaint only seen at SLOHS. It’s a basic problem that is present in all of America. Each day, students walk into their core classes experiencing the same routine. A monotonous lecture with unthoughtful copy and paste assignments. This makes their classes forgettable and only useful to obtain good grades
The education systems in the US and many other countries are based on the nineteenth century Prussian model. Children are taught to obey, not to challenge or think creatively. The obey mindset makes children susceptible to completing any task that is handed by a teacher. These tasks are completed by memorization, a method that does not promote a student to care about that subject material. Student memorization often comes without understanding. They commit these formulas to memory long enough to pass the test, then move on to whatever they need to memorize next. These students are doomed to repeat the process a year later when the topic comes up again. Memorization is a method that should be abolished, because it hinders a student’s ability to learn thoroughly.
Creativity will help encourage students to do tasks with care, even if it’s a subject matter that they don’t enjoy.
Adjustment is hard, and Expressions knows that an immediate change in the school curriculum is impossible. However, if small systematic changes are made, student innovation, problem solving, and general satisfaction are guaranteed to increase. First, we need to address the appropriate needs of students in order to understand what creativity in the classroom might look like.
“I think the first step we should take is implementing more classroom discussions and hands-on activities that are related to the daily lecture,” said senior Donovan Franciskovich.
SLOHS is an exceptional school that tries it’s hardest to ensure a student population with high individuality. The welding class, culinary arts, and ceramics are some of the few unique programs of SLOHS that allow for abundant student expression. We as Expressions hope that this energy towards the production of creative classes can translate into our core classes. In doing so the school will create a more well rounded efficient environment for production and improve student satisfaction.
Sources: theguardian.com , edweek.org
