Cultural mismatch and creativity
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson2 (2006) has criticized the way children are
being educated today, pointing out that existing school cultures kill creativity
and should be transformed. While creativity has been declared as something
that should be valued, school systems have failed to nurture creativity
and acknowledge the diversity of multiple intelligences possessed by learners.
Education and learning play a significant role in shaping a creative environment/
culture in which the arts and culture can enable the stimulation of
people’s imagination and the promotion of creativity in schools, institutions
of higher learning and in lifelong learning. In the context of schooling, ‘school
culture’ encompasses all the assumptions, attitudes, expected behaviours and
values that impact the way a school operates (Fullan 2007). But the ‘intangible’
components of culture are ‘often more difficult to pinpoint’ (Nieto 2000: 139).
These include communication style, attitudes, values and family relationships
that affect the quality of student learning. Indeed these pose a greater challenge
to education reform than the mere restructuring of schools: ‘Reform is
not just putting into place the latest policy. It means changing the cultures of
the classrooms, the schools, the districts, the universities, and so on’ (Fullan
2007: 7). Student learning can be enhanced ‘when the culture of the school
reflects the culture of the home or community’ thereby making the classroom
environment more familiar to learners (Darling-Hammond et al. 2003: 106).
Conversely, the learning process is made more complex for learners when
school reflects different ways of thinking, knowing and valuing unfamiliar to
them. When the home or community context is substantially different from
what learners experience in school, school can be a ‘more foreign experience’,
even ‘mysterious or intimidating’. By incorporating aspects of learners’ home
and community life in the learning process, learners may feel less alienated by
the learning environment. Teachers who understand the cultural norms guiding
their students’ thinking and behaviour may be less likely to ‘misinterpret or
miss entirely what students understand’ (Darling-Hammond et al. 2003: 106).
In a heartwarming video clip,3 a class of young Japanese children is
shown being instructed by an art teacher to ‘draw anything that comes up to
your mind’. While all the other children draw pictures of flowers and other
recognizable objects, the teacher notices a boy using crayons to color his art
paper completely black. He continues to do this day after day during class,
after class and even at home. His refusal to say what he is drawing creates
great anxieties for the teacher, his parents and the school administration. The
team of medical experts who examines him is baffled but fails to diagnose his
‘disorder’, and the boy is sent to a medical facility for observation. There he
continues to focus on coloring more pieces of art paper – most are completely
black but some have white patches on them. One day the art teacher discovers
a puzzle amongst the boy’s belongings at school and suspects that the
boy maybe drawing a large picture that requires the piecing together of the