We believe that every child is born talented, that every child is creative and that every child is an achiever. That our education processes often fail to identify the child’s talent, leave alone nurture it, is a failure of the system and not the child. This is perhaps due to the obsession of the educational system with linguistic and mathematical abilities and an assessment process that often seems to label children with rote memories as intelligent and others as not.
Most assessment processes become a motivational tool for a few and disempowering for the rest. It is well established that people in general and children in particular repeat the behavior that is rewarded. Unfortunately, this labeling result in a select few children being rewarded and the majority of the children feel ignored and often rejected. Also, once so labeled, it is the select few who then receive teachers’ love, affection and attention, see their names in the scrolls of honor and receive trophies and medals.
Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence suggests eight independent intelligences, we tend to test only two- linguistic and mathematical intelligence. In fact, a skill (not intelligence), that of rote learning overshadows all others in typical assessments and Olympiads.
Why Creativity Olympiad
We believe that the purpose of assessment is to motivate a child and not to discourage them is to identify strengths not weakness and suggest remedial action not denial. We believe that achievement motivation and creativity are key drivers of success and we believe that there is little correlation between the performance of a child in cogent disciplines and success in life.
This Olympiad is designed to assess a child’s creative abilities and his/her achievement motivation. We believe that this Olympiad will unearth hidden talents and encourage children who may have felt discouraged, to participate in the learning process more willingly and meaningfully with a renewed sense of self-belief and self-confidence. This assessment would naturally lead to the child’s inclination to improve upon the same and search for resources in that direction. Given an appropriate environment this will lead to enhanced creativity and achievement motivation.
The Outcome
The Olympiad will assess the creativity quotient of ahe child and his/her level of achievement motivation. By participating in this Olympiad, the child shall get sensitized to the importance of these factors and their role in shaping one’s future. This will also sensitize the teachers to foster these competencies in the child. Once so oriented, the child shall seek out resources to develop creative thinking and enhance achievement motivation. Edward De Beno and David Mc Clleland have conclusively proved that both creativity and achievement motivation can be significantly enhanced by appropriate interventions. The starting point clearly is an assessment. This is the primary objectives of this Olympiad – one, to sensitize the child and two, to appeal to his /her competitive spirit to make an achiever of the child.
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