Singapore tops OECD nations in creative thinking poll \ stacker news ~charts_and

Singapore tops OECD nations in creative thinking poll

1556 sats \ 44 comments \ @cryotosensei 3 Jul charts_and_numbers

https://m.stacker.news/38138

When it comes to Singapore, you probably think of us as academically-driven and brilliant in Mathematics. If I’m not mistaken, California uses our Math textbooks for elementary school students. The caveat is that we haven’t produced any Nobel Prize winners (yet).

But you will not be likely to associate creative with the pragmatic Singaporean mind. In fact, the fact that we topped the ranking surprised many Singaporeans, including educators.

It has generated much discussion in our nation. I recently went for a talk conducted by the ex-Deputy Director General of Education, and she specifically highlighted inventive thinking as the number one trait that employers in Singapore feel is lacking among our youth. In addition, the question of how one brings inventive thinking to his work was asked for our teacher recruitment drive. Don’t ask me how I know!

Okay, the million sat question: Do you think that creativity can be taught in the formal education system?

view all related items

187 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 4 Jul

How do they measure creative thinking?

I don’t think much creative thinking is occurring in Canada.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei OP 4 Jul

The criteria consists of a) coming up with unconventional ideas n b) evaluating and improving on the quality of ideas.

Here’s one of the questions:

https://m.stacker.news/38180

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 4 Jul

Ah, we are really good at BSing you mean. That's just our PM. He probably ranks us way up there on creative ideas all on his own.

202 sats \ 17 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Jul

Canada being 2nd makes me very skeptical of whatever that metric is.

58 sats \ 13 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 3 Jul

Burn for @grayruby

59 sats \ 11 replies \ @grayruby 4 Jul

Actually I agree with him. I haven’t seen any creative thinking in Canada.

37 sats \ 10 replies \ @Undisciplined 4 Jul

https://m.stacker.news/38146

59 sats \ 9 replies \ @grayruby 4 Jul

What did the Philippines ever do to deserve this war crime the US under 17 basketball team just perpetrated on them?

https://m.stacker.news/38149

67 sats \ 8 replies \ @Undisciplined 4 Jul

Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.

42 sats \ 7 replies \ @grayruby 4 Jul

US vs Canada in the QF. I am not expecting a Canadian win but hopefully we lose by less than 30.

40 sats \ 6 replies \ @Undisciplined 4 Jul

You must have some good young players, so it might be close.

view replies

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Jul

and all the other flappy-headed, beady-eyed Canadians

38 sats \ 2 replies \ @riberet19 3 Jul

Maybe you are underestimating the minds of your country.

33 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 3 Jul

https://m.stacker.news/38141

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @riberet19 3 Jul

😂😂

149 sats \ 3 replies \ @SilkyNinja 4 Jul

How is creativity tested?

To answer your question, maybe. Serious creative thinking requires a huge space to fail and try and keep failing and keep trying.

To learn a craft in the formal education system is possible. I went to a public high school and miraculously had a theatre teacher who was a working actress and knew how to teach acting the right way.

My first suggestion for a formal exercise to encourage creative thinking is to present a simple problem, such as “How would you cut a cake without a knife?” This inspires divergent thinking (piano wire, a mirror, a skateboard, karate chop, etc.). I wouldn’t ask students to practice convergent thinking (settle on a final answer) until they’ve finished at least a page.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei OP 4 Jul

That’s incredible. There’s a saying that goes, “Those who can’t, teach”, but I think that is flawed because you got to master your craft AND know how to distill it to a level that is relatable to teenagers without much world experience and who probably find schooling boring. Kudos to your theatre teacher.

I love your exercise. It’s like giving students a blank slate and challenging them to make of it what they will. I think primary school kids will ironically do better at this task than their older secondary counterparts, maybe because they aren’t rendered hardened by the stresses of the education system. I can just imagine my teenagers shrugging their shoulders, saying IDK n then switching off for the entire lesson haha.

At what age do children lose their innate curiosity to the system? Hmmm

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SilkyNinja 4 Jul

Oh boy. Your response and the word teenagers inspired me to think of another creative writing exercise. This one might be a little challenging? But it can be altered quite a bit.

So we have pangrams - sentences which contain every letter of the alphabet. "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is probably the most well known. Here we have a pangram, which is just a fun thing to know exists when studying language, and we either rewrite or respond to it in a way that acknowledges the sentence, but emphasizes the elements of language that lead to sonic prosody: onomatopoeia, alliteration and rhythmic effects. I also like to use figurative language, which is rather related but different, and I'll get into in a second.

I personally lean a lot on alliteration and rhythmic effect in these examples, but you can obviously play around a lot to adjust or alter this sort of exercise. The point is to give a known form and ask the student to respond with what they know. That same teacher I mentioned was also my freshman English teacher and she gave us an assignment to rewrite the famous balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet using new language from a different mode of speech or character archetypes. She gave the example "surfer and valley girl." I remember I did the exercise using chatspeak! Which she didn't get at first and gave me a C for the exercise, and then crossed it out and gave me an A (lol).

Anyway, here are a few examples of this exercise, "Responding to pangrams with prosody":

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow. I acquiesce to your guess, riddler of men made of gem.

The jay, pig, fox, zebra and my wolves quack! Bird and beast, fur on four legs: they call like ducks.

Waxy and quivering, jocks fumble the pizza. Those jocks got stuck like cheese in the wind.

To respond to your question, "At what age do children lose their innate curiosity to the system?" I personally recall getting so stressed out about how my grades would affect my future starting in middle school, when it was revealed our grades in middle school would affect our high school placement, and that the high school placement and those subsequent grades were the major determining factors in what colleges we could go to.

However, in middle school too I had a passionate English teacher who introduced us to figurative language and gave us a lot of figurative language exercises and personally encouraged me to get interested in rhyme (I remember getting myself a rhyming dictionary for Christmas lol). Figurative language and even rhyming exercises may also be appropriate conduits to teaching creative thinking in a language setting.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SilkyNinja 4 Jul

I had another thought about this topic,

If we do the exercise I suggest above, when we ask students to settle on a “final answer,” what are the guidelines for it? I think any guidelines we could impose other than “What’s your favorite?” can stifle creativity because the student starts to look for the “best” solution based on the educator’s guidelines, rather than exercising personal will to choose for themselves.

Why it’s important to exercise personal will as opposed to follow external guidelines might be a high level meditation on art. I’ve only recently had this thought so I’m not yet so terribly familiar with that I can make an argument. But I think it’s pretty seriously related.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 4 Jul

I'm skeptical about testing for creativity. Especially when one of the entrants is "Chinese Taipei"

How do you judge creativity anyway?

The US not being on that list seems strange also. The US has such a spectrum of people. Look at the creativity in political movements like LGB... , traditional arts like music and theater (have to make it in New York to be "someone").

What is something creative coming out of Singapore? I know Balaji lives there. Is it simply low taxes attracting talented people?

97 sats \ 2 replies \ @Satosora 3 Jul

Oh man, creative thinking is not an aspect that kids understand in Taiwan. Like writing a summary on a simple story, they always froze because there werent absolute rules they could follow. They struggled to even start.

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei OP 4 Jul

Now, I’m surprised because if it were up to me, I would ensure that my students regurgitate some sentence starters like After reading this book, I feel… haha. Seems like they haven’t been drilled adequately by their teachers!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 4 Jul

My students werent the best. For my school, it was more important to pass them than to make sure they understood and learned english. Anyway, I helped them out by organizing their summaries the best I could. I told then one page equals one sentence. Then they kind of understood how to make a summary.

97 sats \ 4 replies \ @riberet19 3 Jul

When I looked at the table I expected to see Japan at least in the top 10, but the fact that I didn't find them even in the full table has given me food for thought...

32 sats \ 3 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 4 Jul

Initially, I thought that Japan is not part of the OECD, but apparently, it’s a member. I guess Japan didn’t choose to have its youth sit for the creative thinking test for whatever reasons that we cannot fathom.

49 sats \ 1 reply \ @wingalt 6 Jul

All the creative thinkers have been drafted by the BOJ to brainstorm on the next monetary intervention to delay the yen free fall, sorry no time for kids games

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 7 Jul

lol

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @riberet19 4 Jul

Maybe they assumed that they were not going to get a good position in the ranking, according to what I understand too, the Japanese population is quite squared in their thoughts, they are not taught to be creative in schools, is this true?

80 sats \ 1 reply \ @SatsMate 4 Jul

From my opinion, creativity can be inspired, but it cannot be taught. Its just a matter of life that some people can't think outside the box and be creative.

I know this because I have never been creative historically, until I started traveling, going to art shows and testing my assumptions. While I don't think I learned to be creative - there were things that made me more creative through inspiration.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 7 Jul

I agree that life is the best teacher when it comes to creativity!

76 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 4 Jul

The best creative thinking in physics I've seen is by people who have a very solid foundation of the theory. You need to put in the hard work to be able to play with the equations so that when creativity hits, you can actually act on it.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 4 Jul

I think it applies to writing too. You must have a firm grasp of the fundamentals of writing before you can break the rules and flaunt your quirky style.

59 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 4 Jul

Korea is ranked 2?

I like how they say Korea but then refer to Taiwan as Chinese Taipei

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 7 Jul

Gotta tell the world who the mothership is!

59 sats \ 1 reply \ @DiedOnTitan 4 Jul

Do you think that creativity can be taught in the formal education system?

No. Creativity comes from allowing children to play. Not with screens. But with each other and preferably outdoors. Give them time to be kids and explore their world and social structures. This incessant competitive focus on grades and banal academic achievement is destructive of creativity. Singapore produces good engineers, but useless inventors.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 4 Jul

Ouch.

But I agree with you.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Akg10s33 4 Jul

I think that if creativity can be included in formal education today with so many effective tools when teaching... it is just a matter of thinking and incorporating innovative methods that attract the attention of young people and from a very young age put the seed and the idea that study should not be boring but on the contrary be something that drives your thinking towards invention 👍

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @16d86e9daa 4 Jul

of course While creativity is often seen as a natural talent or a personality trait, there are educational approaches and strategies that can encourage and develop creative thinking in students.