John Dewey most likely meant that children should learn to actively use their minds to explore, question, and solve real problems, not just memorize facts or repeat what teachers say. In his view, schools should help children become independent, flexible thinkers who can adapt to new situations.

Dewey’s Core Idea

Dewey believed that thinking is something children do while they are engaged in meaningful activities, not something separate from life in the classroom.

He urged teachers to create situations where students must investigate, reflect, and make decisions, because creativity grows when children face real tasks and must figure out how to handle them.

What “Think Creatively” Likely Meant

When Dewey urged that children be taught to think creatively, he was likely calling for:

  • Using imagination to explore different possibilities and not jumping too quickly to one “right” answer.
  • Solving open‑ended problems where there is more than one acceptable solution.
  • Connecting ideas across subjects (for example, using cooking to learn math, science, and history together).

In other words, he wanted children to learn how to think, not just what to think.

How Dewey Thought Schools Should Do This

Dewey’s educational philosophy is often summed up as “learning by doing.”

Typical features of this approach include:

  1. Hands‑on projects
    • Activities like gardening, carpentry, cooking, or building simple models, through which children discover ideas for themselves.
 * These projects force students to plan, test, adjust, and try again—key parts of creative thinking.
  1. Student-centered learning
    • Starting from children’s interests and questions instead of just following a rigid textbook sequence.
 * Letting students help decide what to explore gives them practice in making choices and thinking independently.
  1. Inquiry and reflection
    • Asking “Why do you think that?” or “What else could we try?” so that students analyze their experiences rather than just doing tasks mechanically.
 * Encouraging them to look back at what worked, what failed, and what could be improved nurtures both critical and creative thought.

Why This Matters

For Dewey, the goal of education was to prepare children for active, democratic life, where they would need to:

  • Solve unfamiliar problems rather than follow fixed routines.
  • Work with others, listen to different viewpoints, and adjust their thinking.
  • Keep learning throughout their lives as society changes.

So, when he urged that children be taught to think creatively, he was not talking about artistic talent alone, but about developing flexible, reflective, problem‑solving minds capable of dealing intelligently with the real world.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.