I hope that you enjoy this as much as I did.
Do schools kill creativity? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&list=TLYFNCSHD6H3e_V31xu5SATqpZnC9x03uC
Chris.
I am just not so convinced that this is the case. Or at the least not nearly as universal as one might think.
If only you could see how the children in my school district are graded. They could write an appaling essay with bad spelling, bad grammar and a lack of punctuation and pass if they wrote something creative enough.
Math is likewise. Doesn’t matter if the answer is wrong. They get half points for creative effort.
And the assignments are just brimming with effort to instill creativity.
Thanks Chris, this is a great talk! I love TED - 
Here’s an abbreviated transcript:
Children lose the capacity of not afraid of being wrong. Such capacity is necessary for creativity. We penalize mistakes and thereby we are educating people out of their capacity (toward creativity). Every education system in the world has the same hierarchy: Math and literacy at the top, humanities next, and arts at the bottom. There's a hierarchy within the arts themselves---arts and music have higher status than drama and dance. No school teaches dance to children the way we teach mathematics. Dance is equally as important as math.Our education system is predicated on the academic ability. Our education system was founded in 19th century to meet the needs of industrialism. The hierarchy is predicated in two ideas:
- The most useful subject for work is at the top. Kids are ushered out of things that they like but are not useful for getting a job.
- Academic ability comes to dominate our view of intelligence (because the university is designed in their image). Consequently many talented, brilliant people think that they’re not because the thing they’re good at at school wasn’t valued and always stigmatized.
We can’t afford to go on that way. In the next 30 years, according to the UNESCO, more people worldwide will be graduating through education than since the beginning of history. With the combination of the technology and its transformation effect on work, demography, and huge explosion of population, suddenly, degrees aren’t worth anything. Jobs that required a B.A. now requires an M.A, while those that required an M.A. now requires a Ph.D. It’s a process of academic inflation. This is an indication that the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet. We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.
We know three things about intelligence:
- It’s diverse.
- It’s dynamic. Intelligence is interactive. Brain is not divided into compartments. Creativity, which I defined as the process of having valuable original ideas, more often than not comes about through the interaction of multi-disciplinary way of seeing things.
- It’s distinct.
Talk about Gillian Lynne of how she came about to discover her talents in dancing. She was constantly fidgeting. Today she would’ve been categorized as ADHD, be put on medication and told to calm down.
Our hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we stripped mines the earth for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won’t service. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children. Primarily through preserving the human imagination and creative capacity for the richness they are and seeing our children for the hope that they are.
Our task is to educate the whole being so that they can face the future. We may not see this future, but they will. Our job is to help them make something of it.
His talk is entertaining and it’s almost “preaching to the choir”. He’s outlining a well known problem that everybody already knows. If you read the transcript: he’s only offering a vague solution to the problem he outlined. So vague that we cannot put the solution into action. Consequently, I think that while his talk is entertaining, it is less informative.
No, I don’t thing so Because School is for creating a study’s into children after that comes creativity. because of that creativity less but not killed.
I have abstained from the thread until further thought. The reason is because Sir Ken Robinson is bromidic and not very helpful at the end of the day.
Further, my thinking has been that perhaps a large percentage of what he mentions is natural progression of development. In other words, it’s not school, it’s the brain consolidating, acquiring schema, and becoming more efficient. Therefore, it can appear as if school is “causing” the decline of creativity when actually it’s just a natural progression.
I still think I’m partially correct. However, I was reading the New Republic earlier today and saw the following article:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114527/self-regulation-american-schools-are-failing-nonconformist-kids
The part that drew my attention was towards the end where it mentions the Torrence Creativity test. Apparently since the mid 80s, test takers are a full standard deviation lower on creative thinking.
That is significant, and enough for me to dig a little deeper.
Thought I’d pass this on to those interested in this sort of thing.
No not at all but work pressure may bring harm to creativity. Try to give free hand to your children in vacations. Try to observe his behavior and interests. Give him little task about mathematics puzzles, sports activities, drawing, books etc just to identify what attracts you child the most and share you findings with your kid’s teachers. It will help them to assess you kid and to give him better consultancy.
Love Ken Robinson! He has a great cartoon version of one of his speeches. A great read on this topic is Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto. Short but powerful read. He was voted teacher of the year and is a powerful educator. His book however, will make you want to run from regular schools…
I believe I started a thread on here about Gatto and his ideas. Check it out since you enjoyed his book.
I’ve had some time to dig into this subject some and to think more about it, and I can believe a causal relationship between school and creativity decline.
Robbyjo’s first line:
Children lose the capacity of not afraid of being wrong. Such capacity is necessary for creativity. We penalize mistakes and thereby we are educating people out of their capacity (toward creativity).
This is fairly plausible. However, the argument of “we penalize” and “we are educating people out of the their capacity” the way Robinson would have us believe is not strong at all.
Researchers that have studied creativity have found it lies opposite to conformity on a spectrum. The more someone wants to conform, the less creative they’ll be, on average. Growing intolerance for the unconventional will lead to a decline in creativity on the whole.
The greatest pressure to conform doesn’t come from the teacher. It comes from the peer group. The fear of being made fun of or shunned or losing status among one’s peers is a far more significant driver.
I still think Robinson is fairly bromidic and not very helpful at the end of the day, and I also think consolidation will lead to much of what he talks about when he mentions the study of the school children losing their ability to utilize a paper clip in creative ways.
If you don’t want consolidation in your child, then you’re likely asking for severe mental handicap.
The conformity model is far more useful.
I’ll give you a real life example. Would you consider Steve Jobs to be a creative guy? I think most people would concede that he was quite the fantast and was also one of the big creators of our day.
Jobs was, not surprisingly, a huge non-conformist. A great example of just how non-conformist he was is the fact he never had a license plate on his car (source for this fact is in the book Creativity Inc). I don’t know too many people that are willing to go that far.
I would say that it is matter of methods. Sometimes teachers have already prepared answers for an open questions on exams. If the kid didn’t use a key world that is in the pattern, even then tha aswer was good, he gets 0 points. In my opinion this is a reason of why school may kill creativity in kids.
Hello all
I think it depends on the type of school you send your children to.
I liked the talk. Thanks for sharing
Thanks for sharing the video it was great . But I have to agree with LovemyBabies , it mostly depends upon the type of school that you go to . Teachers also play an important role in bringing out creativity in their students .