Ken Robinson on creativity and education
Have a listen to Sir Ken Robinson, from the TED conference, on creativity and education. It’s a great talk filled with humour and deep insight about how the public education system does not serve creativity, children or our collective future. Some quotes:
All kids have tremendous talents, and we squander them.
Creativity is as important as literacy and we should teach it with the same status.
Kids will take a chance…if they don’t know, they’ll have a go. They’re not frightened of being wrong…If you’re not prepared to be wrong you’ll never come up with anything original…We stigmatize mistakes.
We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or more precisely we are educated out of it.
I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology…we have to rethink the fundamental principles upon which we are educating our children.
We may not see this future but [our children] will, and our job is help them make something of it.
Go listen to the lecture and let me know what you think…
Hi, thanks for this post.
If the world’s (pseudo) democratic governments realised that a sustainable future comes from human’s ability to be creative then schools would reflect that and art and creativity would be placed as priority. How blissful that would be. But for as long as governments in the OECD think the way to get ahead in the world is through increasing the market economy, then mainstream education will continue to manufacture humans as cogs in the machine thus also stifling individual’s responsibility to themselves.
Just as world change needs to start at the individual, a good example of education for a sustainable future is from individuals who take responsibility and home-school their children.
….I mean un-school their children.
Thanks for your comment Ruth. From personal experience, I know that education reform is too big a task to accomplish. The faster path is to do what you are suggesting and simply opt out. That’s easier in some places than in others, and we are lucky in British Columbia that we have the freedom to do that. But all for taking every advantage of that freedom to give my kids the best chance at working with their futures.
Those interested in creativity, education and educational change might also be interested in this new book, “Education is Everybody’s Business: A Wake-Up Call to Advocates of Educational Change” (Rowman & Littlefield Education). It’s by educator Berenice Bleedorn ( http://www.creativityforce.com ), who was the gifted consultant for the Minnesota State Department of Education, a professor of creativity in both the business and education schools at the University of St. Thomas, has taught creativity to inmates in the state prison, and writes and speaks about creativity throughout the world.
This book really makes the case for the deliberate teaching of thinking – creative and critical – in education. It also links the importance of education to a thriving democracy. A great idea in the book is that “democracy deserves the best thinking possible” – which offers a great place to begin one’s thinking about any number of political issues in the world today. Some other good quotes from the book include:
* Children and youth are all much smarter than we think. They are smarter than the standardized test scores tell us. They have a longer tomorrow than adults, and most of them think about it more than we realize. Students have a right to understand what is happening to the world that they are inheriting.
* The hope is that educational programs will become better designed to make the best possible use of the natural power of the human mind to grow and develop and to be significantly active in service to a cause beyond oneself.
* There are no limits to the intellectual resource of the human mind when it is provided with an atmosphere for personal growth.
* The idea that `Creativity=Capital’ is not a facetious one. The capacity of the human mind for creativity and innovation is unlimited. Harvesting the creativity in a business translates to money in the bank.
* Creative thinking can be taught if learners can practice the art of being serious and playful at the same time.
* The educational problem of a disparity between average achievement scores of white students and black students may have some of its origin in the nature of schooling that neglects programs that identify creative talent and fails to provide for its appropriate expression in problem solving and other creative thinking activities.
* Educators have not only an opportunity but an obligation to open the “doors of perception” for all students. The enduring purpose of education is to provide students with a perception of the outer reaches of their talents and possibilities and, ideally, to give them a reason to continue to learn and contribute to their society for all of their lives.
* The mandate is undeniable. The future of the environment can be guaranteed only with the determined effort of all the players in the world drama in every society, and there is no time to lose. It is a perfect project for the integration of schools and society, the community and the education profession. It is a time for personal action and resolve.
* Initiatives from concerned citizens and business interests have a vital place in developing educational outcomes that can be competitive with the rest of the developing world and can continue to contribute to a better life for all.
* Paradoxical thinking is a prerequisite for a society and world steeped in a diversity of cultures, religions and ideologies if we ever hope to achieve a more sane and peaceful world. If complex thinking were taught, practiced and modeled during the process of education everywhere, the people of the world would understand more and fight less.
Thanks for this Steve. I have to admit that I have a hard time seeing the flowering of creativity and “schooling” existing side by side. For example, the second last bullet, that sees coitizens and businesses creating educational outcomes for children is, to me, exactly how NOT to teach creativity. If a child cannot develop intrinsic motivation for her life’s work, real creativity will not flourish. Having others set goals and standards which are arbitary at best and self-serving at worst runs counter to most of the other ideas in this list, to my eye.
As a whole though these ideas are great, and in my experience as an unschooling family, we can implement them right away. Replace “educators” with parents and you pretty much have what we do.
Personally, I don’t think I’d have the energy to try to reform school systems enough to bring these thoughts to full fruition. I wish the best of luck to those that do choose to tilt at those windmills, but my kids are growing up too fast for that pace of change.
I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding Ken Robinson on creativity and education, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong 🙂