Asking if creativity is teachable is like asking if personality is a learned trait or if people are born with it. Creativity is the way one’s mind works. Some people suggest it is more of a personality trait. When a baby is born, are they born a creative person or are they Taught creative processes through imitating others? A person’s personality is a combination of all that person’s experiences and influencers. If you take two people, twins for instance, and they have the same experiences and influenced by exactly all the same things, their personalities will be similar but not exactly the same.

Why? Because no two brains are exactly alike. Every person reacts differently to an experience and their minds process things differently. Two people may both see the same purple clematis flower as a child and one of those people may grow up to love the color purple while the other grows up to love clematis flowers. So, if personality is not fully learned, then creativity is not fully teachable.

Teaching Creativity

Creativity is not fully teachable, but the tools to think creatively are. You can teach people the basic tools to help them understand the Creative Process. Therefore, everyone can learn how to create ideas and things by modeling the behaviors of teachers and peers. Through experience, they can become more familiar with the process and eventually it may become natural to them.

However, learning this process does not guarantee a creative result. Teaching the creative process will only familiarize students with the behaviors and strategies that can help impact their own problem-solving skills. For some people, familiarity with the creative process may nurture their creative potential and unlock a hidden creative personality inside of them.

Creativity in children

Creativity is something all children naturally have inside of them. It is a way their mind processes information and invents solutions. Children are so creative because they are not afraid of wrong answers. Even if they do not know the right answer, they create an answer that they feel could be true. As children begin to grow up, they lose that fearlessness and begin to train their brains to think inside the box.

Instead of teaching children to fear being wrong, we should teach them to try even if they might be wrong. Children should use their minds to create new and innovative solutions. Education has four main purposes: personal, cultural, social, and economic. It is a way to teach children how the world works. But, if children learn to not be creative, then when they enter the outside world they will be just that-uncreative. The world needs creativity just as much as it needs the language arts.

Why creativity is important

Creative people are always on the edge of the boundaries waiting to step over the line. Creativity is something people are born with. For some, it comes naturally. For others, their creative nature needs nurturing and practice. Without creativity, people like Steve Jobs, Travis Kalanick, Dr. Mehdi Yazdanpanah, and so many others wouldn't have made the contributions they did that are constantly reshaping our world.
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