Creativity in Schools

I was recently speaking with a gentleman I work with about the mindset of schools today. It made me think about a lecture I had heard on TED. The speaker Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity. I thought he had such valid points that I have to share.

Now I believe education is important… very important. Is the same education meant for everyone? I don’t think so. Certain people have talents outside of math & science & English. While I believe education is very important so are the natural talents that are overlooked. Mr. Robinson says “..my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents. And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly. … My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” I have never heard truer words spoken. We should nurture the individual talents children possess.

He goes on to point out that there is a hierarchy in the school system with the most important subjects being the top priority because they are most useful and then art, music, dance, and drama sort of falling to the wayside. Now I understand that there are budget cuts. Just this morning I was reading that a local school didn’t have money for text books. They have been supplementing with online materials. The children actually didn’t get science books until April this year. School lets out in May, you can see the dilemma. Obviously, when budget cuts are so drastic those subjects deemed less important tend to disappear completely. If you don’t cut one thing you have to cut another. I feel like they’re all instrumental to our youth. Maybe I don’t have the answer; I have an idea, a theory that I won’t go into today… but I would love to discuss it if anyone is interested.

Mr. Robinson says something else that really struck a cord with me. It pertains to the most important subjects being useful. “So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you like, on the ground that you would never get a job doing that. … Don’t do music, you’re not going to be a musician; don’t do art, you won’t be an artist.” He goes on to say that public schools are designed to prepare you for universities. “And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can’t afford to go on that way.”

Oh my dear! I live this! Through the week I work for a construction company doing finance. I am very good at math and problem solving, but, oh my, it is not my passion. I love art. I live and breathe it. Every other weekend I work for a folk art gallery and I am so happy when I’m there. I am faced with paying my bills & having money or doing something I enjoy and struggling. So I do this for now until I can put together a plan to do what I enjoy FULL time. I feel like if I had spent more time in school realizing that I can do something creative instead of preparing to do what I do now I could be making a difference.

Maybe you can’t be an artist, maybe you can’t be a musician… but you can do something you love. You can be involved in preserving the things you’re passionate about.

I urge you to listen to this lecture or read the transcript. The way we educate is so important. Cultivating the creativity in our youth now is important. This is the time period in life where these gifts are lost or begin to flourish.

“I believe our only 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 strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won’t serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children. There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said ‘If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.’ And he’s right.

What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination. We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely, and that we avert some of the scenarios we’ve talked about. And the only way we’ll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are, and seeing our children for the hope that they are. And our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future. By the way- we may not see this future, but they will. And our job is to help them make something of it.” – Ken Robinson, Schools Kill Creativity