ABSTRACT
Western schools tend toward standards-based instruction, and standardized assessments provide quantitative data to judge students, teachers, and classrooms as successful or wanting. In some school cultures, creativity is downright discouraged, with creative instructors forced to teach in ways that not only go against their preference, but are contrary to what they know is best for children. Conformity means that the teacher can get more done, get through more material with less stress, and do not challenge the status quo. This chapter discusses how highly creative students often do not fit traditional school culture. Teachers desire creativity, but often cannot define it, and their preference for well-behaved students means the creative child may feel suppressed by this conformity. Teachers often see creative children as disruptive, nonconforming, and generating an unpredictable classroom environment that is difficult to control. The creatively gifted child may go unidentified, may have difficulty relating to others, and may either hide their creative questioning to conform or rebel against the anti-creative school environment. Teachers can support underachieving creative students by being trained in creativity. Once classroom environments recognize, challenge, and engage creative students, these students perform better. Students can also learn that there is a time for creative thinking and nonconformity, and a time for convergent thinking and conventionality.
