iCTLT: Day 1 - Creativity & Entreprenuership? A New Paradigm for Education?

“Harnessing the power of technology tools to enhance pedagogy, enable action, empower learners and to engage learning” seems like a mouthful. In fact, we all know that the digital revolution has spared no one from the formidable effects of pervasive change. Change in almost every area. However, we must remain grounded and true to the way we perceive the core of education. Like how Dr. Yong Zhao aptly puts it, “Technology cannot replace paper, just like how it can’t replace your toilet roll!”. As educators or educationists, we are all guided by fundamental beliefs on the guiding principles of learning, regardless of the means to elicit the process. As long as the learner achieves deep and meaningful learning, we have fulfilled our mission.

I’m going to talk about Dr. Yong Zhao who not only has a wicked sense of humour but also has a creative and ingenious perspective of what education means to the digital natives. Dr. Yong Zhao from University of Oregon, likens the formal school system to a ‘sausage-making machine’ where homogeneous “sausages” or the learners are being “churned” out of the school system. The highly formalised structure was the order of the day back in the industrial revolution period where there was only a single outcome prescribed for school leavers – to enter into the workforce as employees. Back then, millions of jobs were created by a few powerful figures and hence, the nature and volume of jobs were pretty much predictable. Children were hence, whipped into shape to conform to a standard mould of delivering an exacted outcome with a known expectation in their life – basic survival.

In today’s context especially under the dominion of technology, conformity is nearing its demise. The much celebrated order of the day is creativity and entrepreneurship and for schools to be able to realign themselves to the new social trend is to first, stop killing and stifling creativity in our children. With the abundance of information comes the power of having choices. Whether a choice is good or bad, it is still a choice sought after by a group of consumers. A very good example provided was on the element of attraction exuded by a celebrity who in actual fact, has yet to do anything great or have any special talent. And yet, legions of fans celebrate the ‘nothingness’ of this person! The idea is, the fact that ‘nothingness’ i.e. no special talents, no exceptionally high intelligence could be even be worth celebrating simply tells us that choices are created by the creatives for the purpose of satisfying consumers' behaviours today. 

Contrasting the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom (the western powers) with East Asia countries such as Singapore, Japan and Hongkong, Dr. Yong Zhao pointedly 'rebuked' the western states for doing a 'bad job' in killing creativity and hence, their 'sausage-making machines' had inadvertently produced other kinds of 'hybridized meat products' other than the standardised 'sausages' prescribed by a certain receipe. The outcome is clear. These western powers are still economic powerhouses, driven by an incessant spirit of entrepreneurism of its people, despite the long history of poor performance in standardised test scoring. 

In Dr. Yong Zhao's lastest release, "World Class Learners", he had echoed the World Economic Forum's (2007, 2011) view to emphasise on the importance of entreprenuership as the key driver to grow and sustain the economic landscape in the coming century before the current system of employeeship stagnates. On this note, school systems should allow creativity space to blossom and sincerely embrace the concept of multiple intelligences of human. "To create and to engineer is human" (Zhao, 2012) and this is so true.