Emphasizing The Negative

Am I squelching my students’ creativity? My recent reading on creativity has caused me to raise this question. The authors I am reading point out that teachers primarily teach students what is wrong with their thinking, not what is right with it. In tests and papers students’ attention is drawn to grammatical errors, spelling errors, mistakes in logic. The positive aspects of students’ work may be ignored. The result is that students are conditioned to concentrate on not making mistakes rather than on taking risks. Students become cautious. This dampens creativity and originality. I must admit that when I am correcting students’ work I highlight more errors than accomplishments. I do question, though, how significantly I am hindering their creativity. After hearing students’ explanations for their errors, I think I actually may be encouraging creative thinking.