Wednesday, November 25 2009 - Stereotypes in Creativity

Chinese students (or perhaps Asian students in general) have a reputation for not being very creative.

Chinese education does not encourage students to think outside the box. If they have to write something like an essay, they will be given a strict model with which to structure their work.

This week, my task for my students is to write a short story, like a movie plot. I want them to work together in pairs and write a 100-word essay of something they came up with themselves.

Many have done really well. Others are too lazy or too uncreative. They sit there for twenty minutes staring at an empty sheet of paper or they give me something that I recognize for a movie that I’ve seen before, like Forrest Gump or Titanic or 2012.

It’s easy to chalk all that up to not being creative, but were we Westerners much better during our school days? I was a lazy student and most classes did not interest me terribly much. I wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to write something like this, either. That reputation of not having any creativity seems a bit of a stereotype to me. It also seems like a bit of an excuse for teachers to use when they themselves can’t get anything meaningful out of the people they’re supposed to teach.