Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/66

by pk • 18 years ago

2 2 18 years ago

mooders• 18 years ago

To a large degree I believe they do. But I think this is mainly because they are at the bottom of a very large heap.

At the top, is industry. They need a way to filter the 'hands dirty' workers from the management, and the management from the Executive. So the 'old boys clubs' traditionally get the Executive, the Universities churn out the management and the high school system produces the blue collar workers.

So in order to meet this demand, the focus of schooling has to be those skills which are most likely to be of use to industry - English, Maths, Science. Followed by history, geography and foreign languages. Last, seen as necessary for a 'rounded' individual are the arts - music, art, drama and dance in that order (as Sir Ken points out).

Is this good, or right? Don't know. Is it likely to change? Probably not. After all, are you going to be the parent to turn your child's back on the traditional model of schooling to provide an alternative education, knowing this will probably make them a 'better' (define that how you will) person but possibly less employable as a result?

I know there is a lot of babble these days about the breakdown of the workplace but even the most avant-garde employer would prefer their employees to be literate, numerate and deeply knowledgeable in a given topic.

Sir Ken's central point, though, about educating the whole person is spot on. I do believe greater emphasis ought to be given to the softer subjects, such as the arts. However, there are only so many hours in the day and unless the very large majority of parents start reclaiming ownership of their children's education then little is likely to be demanded to change. By this I mean that the parents are so busy themselves (working, may be single-parent) that they have little time and energy to teach their 2 year old how to count and recite the alphabet and so forth. So the job is delegated to the primary education system who have to make room to bring the children to a standard of literacy and numeracy where they can start the 'real' learning.

pk• 18 years ago

I like your summary of the talk. One subtly to his position that made the talk stand out for me was that he wasn't completely opposed to the top-down model for determining the weight of subjects in schools based on industry demands. Rather, his argument was that schools weren't keeping up with the needs of the industry they educate their students for. He seemed to be making the case that as an increasing number of the methodical aspects of industry become automated as technology progresses, problems which require more creativity such as determining "what" to make rather than "how" to make it become much more important.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

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