Does School Kill Creativity

These are my notes from a TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity. I thought the ideas were great, and very well delivered. I agreed with most of the things he said; how schools force students to stay still and not make mistakes. He brought up a very good argument; children are not afraid of being wrong. It's not that big of a deal. But as children grow up, they start learning that being wrong is somehow stupid, and makes you seem uninterested or uneducated. When in fact, the child just makes a mistake, just did something wrong. I really liked that he brought that up because that's how most teachers operate their class. If you're wrong, don't speak! So children learn not to speak.

He also said the future is unpredictable, we don't know how our current technology will shape our future. And yet we are still using the outdated ways of teaching we used to in around the 19th century. Subjects like math and science are considered valued if you are good in those subjects it means you will find a job that will help you stay financially stable. Yay. But if you are good at art or music or dance, people will say the age-old argument: "How do you expect to make money off of ____." Anything creative gone in kids because they are taught, from a very young age, that math and science are the "smarter" subjects. This is because, as Ken Robinson said, when school systems in the 19th century started to kick off, they wanted to produce factory workers. People that will keep the economy running. And that may have been the right path for back then, but today we need more creative people to find creative solutions!

Imagine if Shakespeare was told to be quiet and sit still. (I think I drew a pretty good representation of that in my notes.) Imagine if people told him "You'll never make money off of stories! Who's gonna remember Romeo and Juliet? And talk normally!!!" We would never have all these amazing stories! In the same sense, somewhere sitting in a classroom, a future best-selling writer, or dancer, or artist, or basically anyone creative. And I bet you anything that those kids are considered "the troublemakers" in their class because they aren't interested in math or science. Instead, they'd rather be creative. Ugh! Maybe some will get the creativeness beaten out of them, but others will learn to ignore all those opposing voices and make the world a better place.