The Challenge of Teaching Creativity in School Music Education in Mainland China

Creativity is completely embraced in every part of our culture. For Bourdieu (1993), a cultural product has “meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded (p. 7). Csikszentmihalyi (1988) proposed a model of creativity and drew attention to the social context out of which creativity results from a complex interaction among a person, a field, and a culture in its innovation. Despite the consideration that creative individuals work in isolation, creativity results in large part from interaction and collaboration with other individuals. Creativity in human achievements has provided many contributions to human civilization. For example, ancient Greeks prided themselves on their creativity in the arts, literature, science and society. Other examples of creativity in human achievements include Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, van Gogh’s painting “The Starry Night,” Darwin’s work On the Origin of Species, and Einstein’s theory of relativity. These achievements are a general expression of humanity by particular people, and both heritage and creativity have laid the foundations for an innovative, vibrant and prosperous knowledge society.