More specifically, in this case, I don't think that "modern" education downplays creativity and imagination compared to "traditional" education of say a century ago. If anything, modern education seems to praise creativity and imagination that the evil old restrictive education model didn't care enough about.
There is a lot of mindkilling about education. To me it seems that for some people, "creativity" is simply an applause light that trumps everything. You can never go unpopular with creativity. Even if you don't teach anything, if you say that you gave students an opportunity to be creative, you are forgiven. On the other hand, even the best realistic results can be devaluated by saying: yeah, but there is not enough room for creativity during his lessons.
Or, using more LW terms, creativity became a lost purpose in education. In the beginning, creativity was seen as an instrumental goal which could help increase knowledge. In the end, creativity became a goal in itself, and knowledge lost its status.
Or, using more LW terms, creativity became a lost purpose in education.
Agreed. Robin Hanson has a good article on why creativity is overrated. "Critics complain that schools squelch creativity, but most people are inclined to be more creative on the job than would be truly productive."
A blog post by Alistair Roberts, as curated by Steve Sailer. (Steve's version is shorter and more targeted; the original blog post is the fourth in a series on triggering and suffers for its reliance on the particular issue.)
It seems like a very useful dichotomy, and strongly reminds me of Ask and Guess.