Do schools kill creativity??

I am going to be writing a reflection on Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on whether or not schools kill creativity. He talks upon the importance of an education system that nurtures kids’ creativity as opposed to killing it. Sir Ken Robinson starts off his talk by stating 3 themes.

These themes were: One, The extraordinary evidence of human creativity, Two, how education has put us in a place where we have no idea of the future and what could happen, and Three, that Children have an extraordinary capacity for innovation.

The second theme was about how education can change so quickly and because of this it is hard to teach children today. This is because we don’t know what the world is going to be like in 5 years let alone by 2065 which is when he states children starting school today will finish. Ken has raised a good point here, as by 2065, 2060, or even 2055, the education system could be completely different and the teaching they would have had up to then would be useless.

In the third theme Ken brings up how Children have an extraordinary capacity for innovation, He then goes on to talk about how many different creative gifts and abilities children have and how school can ruin them. In schooling the top subjects are always Maths, English and Science. What schools don’t realise is that children are super creative and these abilities are extremely precious, and should be valued and developed to the full. Naturally these subjects are at the top because they believe they are most important for work, and they believe they what is needed to be intelligent.

This is wrong.

The world has been taught that people are only intelligent if they are smart in the 3 main subjects. What the world doesn’t realise is that children that are creative are also extremely intelligent; it is just a very individual, unique type of intelligence. If this intelligence is nurtured it can lead to amazing prospects within the world of work. For example Sir Ken tells a story about a woman that was hopeless in school, and had many problems in academic ability. A doctor put the radio on and told her Mum to watch her daughter; she then started to move and dance. The doctor told her mother to take her to a dancing school, which in the end she flourished in, she became world famous and to this day is now a multi-millionaire. If this woman’s creative talent hadn’t been nurtured and noticed, she could’ve been put on medication and told to tone down, concentrate and improve in school; which would’ve meant this incredible talent and intelligence would’ve been lost. This shows how important it is to value children’s creativity, that creative subjects can be just as useful as academic subjects and can lead into just the same line of work.

Before watching this video I believed that schools were a great source of knowledge and would naturally build upon children’s creativity. After watching this video my view has been changed and I now know how much schooling can ruin a child’s creativity if not looked after and appreciated in a different context.