EDUCATION: Do schools kill creativity

If you don’t know him yet, let me introduce you to Sir Ken Robinson. One day I would like meet him face to face and drink a cup of tea on a beautiful veranda, overlooking green gardens and talking about the current state of education. And in an ideal world we will have transformed, revolutionized, or at least improved (aim big, but any step towards change is already a huge step) the state of our education system.

What am I exactly talking about? And why why why do we need to change something now? Please watch this wonderful TED Talk, by no other than Sir Ken Robinson. A fascinating (and hilarious) man.

The first point he makes is: Education is supposed to prepare kids for the future.

Second point: Kids starting school today, will retire in 65+ years – nobody knows what the future will even look like in 5. We are heading towards a road of unpredictability in a fast moving society that is changing by the minute.

Third point: Kids are very creative and innovative and hold within them this huge capacity for innovation. All kids have talents and schools only nourish a small amount of talents (mainly Science & Humanities) and we don’t let other talents flourish, which are equally important.

What does Creativity mean according to Robinson? Creativity is the possibility of creating and having original ideas that have some kind of value.

He further states creativity is as important as literacy. Kids, when growing up are not scared of being wrong and by finding a solution, create creative thought patterns. If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with an original idea. However, down the road to adulthood kids are incentivized for being right and punished for being wrong, therefore this fear of making a mistake is cultivated within us.

Every school system has the same hierarchy. Mathematics and Science on top, followed by Humanities and at the bottom Arts. He jokingly says, it seems that the purpose of education is to produce university professors. And obviously not everybody can be a professor.

Our education system has its origins in meeting the needs of industrialism. And that’s where this hierarchy comes from. And what is saddest and one of the biggest consequences: Many highly talented people don’t believe they are, because they don’t fit into a school system and their talents wither away. Not everybody can be a mathematician. But everybody has some kind of talent. In 30 years more people will finish education then ever before. And suddenly degrees are not worth anything anymore. When my parents were my age (end 20s – just in case you are wondering), if you had a degree, you had a job, now that’s not the case anymore. We are experiencing a MASS academic inflation, which indicates that the structure of education is shifting.

Sir Ken Robinson concludes, we need to change our thinking of intelligence and further says we know these three things about intelligence:

(1) It’s diverse (visual, in sound, abstract, movement).

(2) Dynamic and interactive. Creativity and intelligence comes about through interaction of different aspects of brain and different ways of seeing things.

(3) Distinct and comes in all forms and colors.

Our current education system has mind our minds for a particular commodity, mainly Science und Humanity. And now think back about the richness of human capacity. The way we educate our kids now, won’t service the future anymore. Seeing creative capacities for the richness they are and seeing our children for the hope that they are and educate their whole being. Otherwise we are pretty much f*cked (my words, totally not Sir Ken Robinsons words). There are many beautiful examples of very smart people that changed history by not going the conventional way, which I will introduce to you bit by byte.

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