Yvette responding to Ken Robinson - Schools Kill Creativity

Ken Robinson – Schools Kill Creativity

In a very humorous and entertaining way, Robinson describes how schools are hampering creativity in our students.  He stated that we are educating children for the future, yet we are not sure where we will be in the next 5 years, let alone where they need to be in 60 years.  He believes that creativity is as important as literacy.  Robinson gave examples of where kids took a chance and were not afraid of being wrong.  It was mentioned that if you’re not prepared to be wrong you will not come up with anything original.  He says we are educating students out of their creative capacity.  The education hierarchy is math, language, humanities and lastly the arts.  It was done this way to meet the needs of industrialism.  Robinson stated that degrees are not worth anything any more.  It used to be that if you got a degree you got a job.  Not true anymore.  Where once a BA was good enough to find employment now a MA is need if not a PhD.  He gave an example of a child with an active condition.  He said if she were diagnosed these days it would have been ADHD, but back then it was not an available condition! Robinson believes in the richness of human capacity. He states that we need to stop educating from the waist up then to one side.  We need to educate the whole being.

I believe what he is saying is fairly true.  Most of our energies in education are put towards math and language.  However, most schools offer classes in the arts.  At our school, we have available for students to take art, music and drama.  When we differentiate our lessons, options are given for students to express their learning in an art form, be it drawing, acting out or singing.  I feel the whole idea of learning styles has made this available to students. As a school leader, you need to encourage this creativity by having classes available and learning styles to be utilized within the classroom  Research has been done on the effects of playing an instrument/reading music and improved academic performance.

I think the whole notion of the arts not being a career comes from old school thinking.  The arts were seen as a lagniappe.  The push is to get an education, and get a high paying job.  This was true for my daughter who was a fabulous dancer and a great artist.  Many of the older generation did not see either as a career choice for her.  They would say so what is she going to college for?