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Baraa Koshak

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How should we change the education system to have a more creative generation?

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity, what do you think of that? is it true? and if its true, how can we solve it?

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Topics: Education kills creativity a better world academic achievement adult learning creative creativity educaiton generation kills knolwedge
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    Emmanuel Garcia

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    Jan 1 2012: Make traditional schooling optional. Otherwise, you risk setting up a system of compulsory miseducation or forced proselytizing. Job requirements are so obvious, it doesn't take a brain surgeon or attorney to realize that if you want to perform brain surgery or be able to represent others in court, that you will HAVE to sit and warm up classroom chairs for years as well as take and pass many tests AND work under the supervision and direction of others as an EMPLOYEE before you're allowed to do so.

    Reward mistakes and "failure." Or at least tolerate them more.

    Focus less on time and deadlines.

    Be more flexible about the required sequencing of courses. Similarly, break "subjects" or courses down into to more but shorter units, so people aren't required to take more courses than absolutely necessary to learn and study specific skills or topics they care about.

    Be more flexible about letting people audit courses, and let students play in Chemistry and Physics labs (under safe supervision). I know I "disliked" labs during Engineering school simply because I wanted to experiment freely, not necessarily perform the boring measurements and tracking I was required to make, which I had already learned in the past. Most of the experiments I could have performed at home. I wanted to use the lab equipment I did not have or could not get at home.

    Warm regards from Los Angeles,

    Emmanuel

  • polly Shaffer

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    Dec 27 2011: Education needs to focus on helping people discover that which they are passionate about and love doing. The primary problem with our education system is lack of exposure to a whole universe of potential life choices. Instead we are left to stumble into them. We need an online discovery and mentoring environment where people and learn about different career areas, problems the world needs solved and can build life long collaboration and mentoring networks to achieve them.
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    Anatol Stern

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    Dec 25 2011: Answer is very simple: schooling should not be compulsory. What is more, no restrictions should ever be imposed on private schools and tutors, because free market will force them to adapt and develop the right way. Only if people are free to choose they can learn and understand what is really needed and helpful without any pressure to crush their way of thinking.

  • Matthew Carroll

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    Dec 24 2011: While I do think that education kills creativity as is, by design it does not. I see the point that is made in this video as valid, but I think it all matters on what you see as "creativity" and "education." At some point, all creaters were educated. From the most brilliant children to the most profound of well-aged people, each of them learned about whatever it is that they create with. Child prodigies on piano were once taught by someone how to organize what they wanted to play. A 40-year tenured PhD in nuclear mechanics was at some point educated in the subject.

    Now, with this topic one is forced to look at the structural education system that is set up at present. This system is designed to educate as much as possible and as quickly as possible. This could "kill" creativity or create it. For me, it has created creativity because in my research I look at discipline problems among both minorities and children of affluence. Both outside the "norms". What inspired the creation of that subject for me was the traditional structure of education. Also, Ralph Emerson was enspired to write his essays and all of his "teachings" by the traditional education system and seeing the things that occured among people and students.

    On the other hand, a great artist once told me, "You spend your whole childhood trying to draw more realistically, more detailed and more sophisticated each day, but when you become an adult artist you spend your whole day trying to draw like a kid again." So, with the formal education in art that worked against him and did "kill" his creativity. I believe it all comes down to the individual and what inspires them to grow.

    In the end it all depends on whether or not a child has been "inspired" to pursue their own creative dreams, or if that child has been shown that they need to blend in with the crowd. More teachers should give children atonomy to create their own way, and less boundaries to do things the way they "should" be done.

  • Michael Hupp

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    Dec 23 2011: I fully agree with Sir Ken Robinson on the issue. I don't however think that a school is best suited to teach creativity. Creativity is more a thing that grows if given the chance. Janet Echelman became an artist that work with fishing net, I'd say that it'd be very hard for a school to anticipate that fishing net would be what she is creative with. (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/janet_echelman.html Her Video). It may be that the best way to nurture creativity is by experiencing life and being allowed to express ones self anyway he or she sees fit.

  • Rhona Pavis 50+

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    Dec 23 2011: Take all those lines off the pages children are asked to write on. Ask children what interests them and teach them about that. Teach teachers to stop posing as authority figures and to stop intimidating children and forcing them to think as they think and do as they do. Stop all religious brainwashing of children. Provide blank paper, pencils, computers, paints, crayons, clay, musical instruments and other tools and toys and ask children to draw, sculpt, create, play, make the music that they enjoy. Respect the personness of children. Encourage truthful expression. Encourage children to be who they are instead of trying to form them into the molds of their parents, teachers or ancestors.
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