Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
On the subject of schools, I just ran across a fascinating speech by Ken Robinson about creativity and schools. It brings up the question, well rather point, that schools are designed to kill creativity.
In his speech, Do schools kill creativity?, Robinson talks about how schools are designed to work the body of a student working their way up to their heads and then slightly to one side. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” said Robinson.
This speech hits pretty close to home. I am a poster child of something that did exactly the opposite of what happened to Gillian Lynne. Instead of being told I was a dancer (or anything else for that matter), I was told to calm down and often was “joked” to on how I should be on Ritalin.
Needless to say, I ended up in a “professional” job programming, even after a small run on the creative tracks for a few years at the tail end of high school and start of college phases. Due to my upbringings and “understanding” of the world, I figured art was hurting my programming — so I dropped it. I missed a lot back then. If I had seen this video when I was 19, things would have been different indeed.
I was a stereo type of person Robinson spoke of. I grew up with the idea you cannot earn a life making money with art, so I choose to go left brained. School did teach me, code me, to be left brain thinker. It focused more on knowledge, memorization, storage and less on imagination. As Robinson suggested, the whole purpose of our current education system is to produce university professors, living in their heads slightly to one side.
Are schools killing creativity? I think they are. I know they are, from experience. What can we do about it? I think it is time we start learning from our own kids.
