Are Schools Killing Creativity?

Sir Ken Robinson addresses the issue in his humorous, and thought provoking talk at TED.

In the talk, Ken makes 8 excellent points:

  1. Kids entering the school system today will be retiring 65 years from now. Even as adults, we don’t know what the world will look like in five years yet we are teaching our kids to prepare them for that world.
  2. Creativity is the process of creating original ideas of value. This happens through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of observing things.
  3. Creativity is as important as literacy.
  4. Don’t be afraid to be wrong. If you’re afraid to be wrong, you will not come up with anything original.
  5. All kids are born artists, the challenge is to remain one.
  6. Creativity is not something you grow into. It’s something we grow out of. Specifically we are EDUCATED out of it.
  7. Public schooling was built to meet industrial growth needs. As such, science and maths are at the top of the ladder, while arts are at the bottom.
  8. The current University system defines intelligence based on academic ability

    9. This entry was posted on August 03rd, 2008 and is filed under Career, Growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.

     
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One Response to “Are Schools Killing Creativity?”

  1. Trace Cohen
    8. October 2008 at 07:42

    I saw this TED a long time ago and it really changed the way I think about the educational system now. From an early age we are basically brainwashed to believe certain things that are will potentially stunt our “creative growth.” While intelligence is based on academic ability, that doesnt necessarily mean that they are the brightest, they can just retain knowledge in a different way. I think TED is one of the best conference out there!

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