Children free to be creative have so much to teach us

The article suggests the enthusiasm for creativity in modern education is nothing more than a wrong-headed fad, devoid of meaning and purpose. How profoundly do I disagree with its author, a Mr Tom Bennett, of the Jo Richardson Community School in Essex? Let me count the ways. And let me not run out of fingers. But let him fulminate for himself: "The current problems concerning creativity go much deeper than simple over enthusiasm. Our obsession with it … and our insistence that it can be taught is not only damaging but also has no foundation.

"The creativity project has become a juggernaut empty of meaning and content and its ubiquitous adoption had become harmful for children's education"

There is much more in the same vein: that nobody can actually define creativity; that the charge schools squeeze creativity out of children's minds "like a bureaucratic juicer" is flimsy. In a final flourish, he tells us he doesn't want children thinking outside the box, before they think inside it. Before "they value the box. Boxes are useful".

You get the drift. Mr Bennett doesn't want children getting ideas above their classroom station: confine a child firmly inside that box, and there's less chance of being wrong- footed by the novel or the unpredictable.

On one point Mr Bennett and I agree: children are naturally creative. So, he concludes, we don't need to give them that ability; we just need to provide them with education. To suggest, as Mr Bennett does, that it's creativity that is being force-fed is to grasp the wrong end of the stick with a casual facility last seen in assorted UK relay teams.

Equally wrong-headed is to confuse the expressive arts, invaluable as they are, with the commitment to embed creativity throughout learning and teaching in every aspect of the curriculum, allowing innovation to flourish in all subjects from maths to modern studies.

I freely concede I'm not up to speed on the curriculum as delivered in Essex. Judging by this article, you suspect the reverse also obtains.

The Scottish Curriculum for Excellence may had a painful birth, but its mission statement of giving children the freedom to develop as individuals, as team players, as innovators and as citizens able to contribute to their community and respond to the demands of the modern market place seems to me to offer the right goals for 21st century schooling. Children whose imaginations are set free, whose curiosity remains unlimited, whose soaring flights of fancy are unrestricted, have much to teach us. The classic example of that proposition was born in Scotland, in a small primary school in Fort William. It is there that the now international network of the Room 13 movement was born.

Children in Caol Primary were able to access a designated spare room when they completed class work. In it was an artist in residence, with whom they made work. But they did much more. They set up their own board of management, all pupils under 12. They sold photographs, staged exhibitions, latterly won a national art prize, made a TV documentary and secured a major grant for expansion.

That template has been used worldwide from Los Angeles to London and Mumbai to Nepal. The common denominator is young people acquiring and using business skills on the back of creative endeavours which excite them. I defy anyone to watch the original film of their journey without a good greet, not least the section on a Room 13 in South Africa where kids in immaculate school blouses stayed on long after lessons to make art despite an hour-long walk home. Their journey was fuelled by neat adrenalin.

Primary education has perhaps always "got it" in terms of harnessing the fertile imaginations of the under-12s because their teachers, by definition, have to be multi-taskers . But the principle is good throughout lifelong learning. The demands of timetabling and exams make it a harder sell in secondary school and beyond, but here too the stays are being loosened in Scotland, and creative enterprises and extra-mural educational adventures being given proper recognition.

I acknowledge the fears in some quarters that this less formal approach to teaching could interfere with the deep learning and understanding of individual subjects they consider a necessary foundation stone. But this seems to me more the fear of the new rather than a justified concern.

All the evidence suggests that a pupil whose interest is fully engaged will learn, absorb and retain the information they need more easily, while teachers, allowed freer rein, are more likely to remain enthused and energised.

Technological advances have greatly aided this revolution. It's one of the reasons that having iPads available to the screen-based generation is particularly important where family budgets can't stretch to them. To watch a child create their own film, cartoon, or graphic novel is a source of wonder to those of us more usually wrestling with technology more savvy than ourselves.

I'm privileged to chair the strategic group of a Creative Learning Plan to which not just lead agencies Creative Scotland and Education Scotland have signed up but also the General Teaching Council, its directors of education, Skills Development Scotland, the College Development Network and the Scottish Qualifications Authority.

The partnerships don't stop there. All our national arts organisations and many small arts companies have forged fertile relationships with school classes in what all the participants routinely describe as mutually fulfilling collaborations. The creativity portal set up by Creative Scotland with Education Scotland has myriad examples on offer helping teachers to infuse class work with fresh excitement

All these professionals in their different fields who have helped revolutionise what education looks like believe utilising creativity is not a zany obsession but a natural component in delivering a successful nation mentally fleet of foot.If you listen to some of Scotland's most forward looking employers you'll hear them say the last thing they need to recruit is a team of clones or employees disinclined to question received wisdom in a world where anticipating tomorrow is arguably more important than understanding today; or yearning for yesterday.

Scottish education is not perfect. There are many wrinkles to be ironed out, not least with the new exam structures. But its ambitions are the right ones. The only way isn't Essex.

Iain Macwhirter is away