The Need for the Development of Creative Abilities Among Negro Students

Abstract

Within recent years there has come into existence the need of more careful thinking in the field of so-called creative education. Wide publicity which has been given to the work in the arts such as may be objectively seen in pictures, poems, models, etc., have only tended to enhance a narrow conception of the term Creative Education. The progress in this direction, when carried to some logical conclusion, demands a radical change in our mode of thinking and in our entire educational procedure. It is hoped that a discussion of some of the principles underlying a progressive program of creative education and how it should affect Negro students will evoke some thought which will be favorable for the emergence and development of the creative capacities of Negro students. A creative act is any experience or activity which represents for the individual or creator a new meaning, a new analysis, a new synthesis, a new control, or a new product. There are two viewpoints from which to interpret the creative act-sociologically and psychologically. From the viewpoint of sociology, only those acts are creative which result in producing something which is original to the culture of the period. Such a narrow interpretation of the creative act means that it is limited only to those of superior intelligence, which would be naturally discouraging to those persons who have no reason to believe that they are the especially talented or gifted intellectual elite. From the psychological point of view all growth is contingent upon the creative act. The child who learns for the first time that the little thing with a colored mass on one end is a match which can be changed into fire, has performed a creative act, even though everybody else in the household already knew the fact. That this new and broader conception of the creative act should take hold to and become an integral part in the education of Negroes is obvious. Slavery has left implanted upon the Negro certain characteristics which it should be the job of Negro education to overcome. The masses of Negro youth in our schools still display certain weaknesses which are not by any means inherent but rather an aftermath of the period of slavery. Lack of initiative and the belief that he cannot succeed because he is a Negro and because this is a white man's country, an inferiority complex of intellect, a loose feeling of a racial solidarity and independence-not an independence with the meaning of self-sufficiency without regard for the other groupbut failure to possess a courage and knowledge and power to contribute to the growth of American civilization, are some of the weaknesses found in a large majority of our Negro students today. Coming out of the confusion of purpose in our Negro schools should be developed a program of creative education as an integral part of pro-