Why innovate?

I totally agree with Sir Ken Robinson’s statement that “education will take us into a future we cannot grasp”. This one statement made me wonder how different will the world be from what I grew up in and what I know of it. I guess I got my answer when I read what Beare has said through a 5 year old child, Angelica (Beare 2001). It is a truly ‘multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-faith world’ that future students will be living in.

If that is the case then we will have to use innovative teaching methodologies that will concentrate on the creative capacity of a student. These should help students to imbibe and hone skills that will help them to face their future. These skill sets cannot be learnt using the conventional methodologies that curb student creativity. So, that brings us to the question of what are the innovative teaching methodologies that foster creativity.

I guess I got my answer through Miller who talks about ‘timeless learning’ and the ‘characteristics of timeless learning’. However, I am unsure of how effective ‘timeless learning’ will be; especially since the examples given by him were from abstract forms of learning that are not easily quantifiable.

So, that brings me back to how can a student creatively learn skills that will help him/her in the future. Maybe, there are certain fields where it is not possible to be creative with the basics. How can one explain to a child that 1+1=2 always since that is how it has been taught us? Why can it not be 1+1=3? Or, how does one explain to a child that it is always ‘they are’ and not ‘they is’ in the English language?
I guess there will always be certain rules that cannot be taught creatively. But for all the others not only the student but also the teacher can don on his/her thinking cap and become innovative once again.