Nurturing creativity in students can drive progress and transform society
Every great thing begins with an idea. Many things that we see around us today, and which have made our lives comfortable, were only ideas in the past. Some people might have ridiculed those ideas, but once these ideas were shaped into great discoveries and inventions, they were cherished for being great and phenomenal. These ideas descended as the bounties of the Creator in the minds of the beholders, and they enlightened and adorned the surroundings. The world we witness nowadays is much different from the one our ancestors witnessed thousands of years ago. This difference is because of those great ideas, which resulted in great discoveries and inventions. We must bear in mind that the creation of novel ideas is important for the progress and prosperity of our world.
We have to train our students for a future that will be more challenging and more competitive. Simply training our students to pass exams with good grades is not going to be enough. We must consider what our students will be selling in future markets. Their degrees alone won’t be sufficient for them to succeed in these markets, which will increasingly be dominated by technology.
Perhaps cramming information without genuine creativity will not help the students who are facing numerous challenges in this world, such as artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence can replicate tasks a thousand times better than human beings. If we can excel anywhere, it would be in our creativity and creative thinking.
We must train our young minds to create novel ideas. Their learning should lead them to creativity. This will benefit us in the long run. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam once said, “When learning is purposeful, creativity blossoms. When creativity blossoms, thinking emanates. When thinking emanates, knowledge is fully lit. When knowledge is lit, the economy flourishes.”
Our think tanks have repeatedly come up with many strategies to draw out the best in young minds. One such great initiative is the School Innovation Marathon (SIM), which will undoubtedly benefit the students, their mentors, society, and the nation as a whole. The aim of this marathon is to inspire young minds to think creatively and innovatively to find solutions to our everyday issues.
We don’t need extraordinary brains to create and innovate new ideas. They can be as simple as those that everyone thinks and feels every day. One success story would be helpful and inspiring in this regard. Shaida Bano from district Baramulla witnessed a fatal accident. She learned that the main reason for the accident was that a minor was driving the car. She had an idea, which she shared with her teacher. She wondered whether we could develop a mechanism in vehicles that would prevent minors from easily driving them. The teachers discussed this idea with engineers and technicians, who are now working on it. In the near future, we might see vehicles that will be unavailable for minors to drive. This idea seems simple, and any common mind is capable of having such an idea. Shaida Bano received a lot of praise for this idea, and the recognition inspired her to develop more novel ideas. This girl from a poor background was able to travel to Japan for an educational tour due to her creative impulse. Even there, her creativity was acclaimed, and she was offered the opportunity to pursue higher education in one of Japan’s universities after completing her school.
This success story teaches us that even our simplest ideas can have a huge impact if we present them properly.
Teachers, particularly, need to extract novel ideas from their students and carry them forward in a proper manner to yield beneficial results. We need to recognize and uncover the gems hidden inside the tender minds of our young ones and shape them properly to make our future more comfortable and prosperous. Every new idea that can be helpful to three or more people must be processed in such a manner that it will benefit society. Students who come up with their own ideas about different things need to be encouraged and inspired, not discouraged. We must never ridicule the ideas presented by students, even if they seem useless or ridiculous to us. Ridiculing our young and tender minds for their strange and cryptic ideas often leads to the suppression of ideas, which is not beneficial for our future. We need to respect every new idea and inspire every tender mind to think creatively.
The writer is a teacher in the Education Department
By Hilal Bukhari
bu*****************@***il.com