For years, schools have been teaching and training students to memorize facts and to recall them for a written exam. This works for a certain few students who have strength in memorization and recollection. There are far too many occupations that require application skills more so than memorization and recollection skills. Most of the students who study in the sciences will do hands on research to see if their hypothesis is correct. In mathematics, knowing equations is helpful, but knowing how and when to apply them is paramount. Learning and understanding this country’s history is great information to have, but it loses its value if that knowledge can’t be used to help make future decisions.

I believe that removing the focus from memorization of facts to application of skills would benefit school outcomes. I would like to challenge staff and administration to embrace the challenging polarity between creative and critical thinking. As we have learned in Polarity management, instead of thinking that we could only focus on either creative thinking, or critical thinking, we should be trying to do both. We need to consider the importance of both critical and creative thinking in education because it will then allow our students to find their strengths without being told that one is more important than the other.