photo by C.P. Storm
I’ve been thinking a lot about education lately. It all started when I watched this TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” Robinson asserts that creativity in education is as important as literacy, and the current school system does not treat it as such. In fact, he says, the current school system stifles creativity.
What these things have in common you see is that kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they‘ll have a go. Am I right? They’re not frightened of being wrong. Now I don’t mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. But what we do know is, if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. If you’re not prepared to be wrong.
And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this, by the way — we stigmatize mistakes. And we are now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso once said this. He said, that all children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately; that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or rather that we get educated out of it. So why is this?
Do Schools Kill Creativity?
When I heard this, I of course started thinking about my own schooling. I was fortunate enough to go to some pretty unconventional schools throughout my childhood. My elementary school, for example, encouraged “inventive spelling.” If you didn’t know how to spell a word for the story you were writing, you made it up — you wrote it the way you thought it should be. Now, I can’t prove any cause and effect here, but I now happen to be a top-notch speller. I’m sure that’s more due to my childhood consumption of every book I laid my hands on, but inventive spelling was great nonetheless. We actually had a class called “Rhythm” that, as far as I remember, entailed a lot of jumping and dancing around a big empty room. I also didn’t have grades until I was 10 years old, and the school I went to resided inside half the public library building.
So my schooling experience wasn’t exactly conventional, but it began to fit into certain molds as I grew older. After all, I had to get into college, didn’t I?
Robinson suggests that our schooling system would look to aliens like an entire process devoted to creating university professors. If you look at the path from high school to university and beyond, schooling and academia have become insulated, self-perpetuating ecosystems that are often irrelevant to the world outside. Luckily, there are many teachers who reach beyond that — but it is a hard system to crack.
Confessions of a Lifelong Student
Let me pause to say that I have always loved being a student. I actually was one of those people who really liked going to school. And in university, after completing a thesis my senior year, I considered going on to do a PhD in literature. But after a year and a half of giving myself space from academia, I realized that if I do go back to school, it needs to be for something relevant to the social discussions and issues I confront every day. I still adore literature, but I cannot spend six years diving ever further into the insulated academic world of literary analysis. Today I am writing my stories, exploring new territory, and diving into projects that I figure out as I go. Most importantly, I have realized how much I am learning by going at it myself.
I sat down today and thought about the most organic and fulfilling learning experiences I’ve ever had. The first four things that sprang to mind were:
- becoming fluent in Spanish
- taking a community activism training course
- learning to start my own business and build an online community
- writing my thesis
What do all these experiences have in common? I was thrown into the thick of it, and spurred to make my way.
I became fluent in Spanish by living, studying, eating and breathing in Spanish for a full year in Valencia, Spain. The community activism training course was based around actually planning and creating our own nonprofit organizations — press conference introduction and all. My business and blogging? Well, I was just trying to figure out a way to support my mobile and independent lifestyle. And the thesis, though unquestionably within academia, required me to create something huge on my own.
In all of these examples, I made tons of mistakes. None of them were irreparable, and most of them were formative in my learning experience. Being in the thick of things is one of the best ways to get rid of that fear of failure, which is how we thrive and nurture our development.
Does this mean that our education systems need to become more experiential in order to become more creative? How can classrooms embrace the fruits of failure, and redefine them as discovery? I think this should be an inspiring topic to discuss, because there is so much potential.
I encourage you all to watch Robinson’s TED talk below — aside from being brilliant, he’s also relentlessly hilarious. [If you are viewing this post in an RSS reader or e-mail, you may need to click the link to watch on YouTube].
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I’ve watched this video Zoe and I was similarly moved/affected. As a father, education is naturally important to me. And it was from that perspective that I first thought about the ideas Sir Ken Robinson.
But after pondering it a bit more, I began to consider my own experiences with education, and the more I did, the more I realized that our schools are not the only problem. It make sense, though…faulty schools wouldn’t exist in a society that didn’t have similarly faulty values. So yeah, we have things that we need to fix in our public and private schools, no doubt about it.
But if you don’t change the system in which those schools exist, good luck with that. How can we expect our schools to place a value on something we’re not going to support at home? Or in our businesses? Expression and discovery of creativity, art and the like require an entirely new way of thinking, and an acceptance of an entirely new outcome.
I like to think that’s where we’re headed, but I just don’t know…
Jeb Dickerson´s last blog post..On cynics and dreamers and a path of ‘what ifs’.
Schools put a giant pillow on my creativity’s face and then sat on it. Luckily, I was able to hold my breath for a decade or so. : > )
Writer Dad´s last blog post..Rolling Through the Rough Draft
I’m a public school teacher, and I wish we could implement changes to value and encourage more creativity. In our current system, with our current laws (#$@%! No Child Left Untested), it’s nearly impossible. Sigh. I’m really, really rethinking this career.
Daisy´s last blog post..Mom’s Famous Home Fried Potatoes
This is one of the reasons I’m pulling my daughter out of school and teaching her at home next year. She’s a very bright and creative girl and I just hate to see them trying to cram her in the box she wasn’t made to fit in.
Cindy? You want to come teach for me? I’m not so sure I’m prepared…
Kool Aid´s last blog post..Easter weekend, part 2
Hey Kool Aid…we did that very thing 2 years ago. We’d moved to a public system that was just terrible, teaching to the lowest common denominator, and only to the standardized tests. We couldn’t do it. Pulled them after a month and homeschooled for a year.
It’s tough stuff…a whole new dynamic when trying to teach your own. But in the end, totally worth it. You will do your daughter right, regardless of your background/training. The fact that you care enough to consider it guarantees that.
My wife was a teacher prior to having kids, so we had that advantage, but there are a million and one ways to turn daily experiences into wonderful learning experiences, and with the flexibility that homeschooling provides, you can take great field trips and plan amazing lessons that are completely effective precisely because they’re unconventional compared to standard public ed practices. After all, you don’t need to use the standard classroom experience as a model. Don’t even compare yourself to it.
You’ll do awesome.
Jeb Dickerson´s last blog post..On cynics and dreamers and a path of ‘what ifs’.
This is difficult stuff. I read your post and I watched the video, but I’m not sure if I agree that our schools are failing our students in terms of creativity. Well, yes, somewhat they are. Granted I’m new at this (teaching), but from what I’ve learned, the whole point of education is to prepare students for life. No matter what field students go into, whether it’s literature, science, math, drawing, singing, dancing, etc., they are going to need to think. Isn’t that one of the things we’re supposed to be teaching them? How to organize thoughts? How to stretch their minds to places they wouldn’t think to go themselves – or care to go themselves? I don’t care if my students aren’t all going to become university professors – no matter what they choose to do, they will need to be able to think and communicate with the world. I’m not saying that students enter the classroom unable to think, but I do believe that they leave the classroom with more tools in their toolbox for different ways of thinking and expressing themselves.
Now I have a student right now who is being tested for ADHD. This is a kid who cannot stand being in my classroom and I’m pretty sure he hates me right now. (Can’t win ‘em all, right?) But isn’t part of entering “the real world” learning how to do some things you don’t want to do? Last week I had my students write a paper on their hopes and dreams for this future. This student wrote that he wants to be a millionaire by the time he is 25, but his plan for how to achieve that was completely implausible and unrealistic. If he were allowed more creativity throughout his education, would he have a more enriching and valuable goal? Would he have a real-world plan to get what he wants?
I don’t know if this all makes sense or if it is even related to what I’m trying to say. Basically, your post raised a lot of questions for me, as did the video. Well done, Zoe, now I’ll be up all night thinking – yuck.
Zoe, As always, thank you so much for publishing this article/video. I worked in St. Louis, MO public school systems for a few years before moving to Thailand. Part of the reason I left were the limitations placed on learning experiences in the classroom. I felt so limited and pressured as a teacher to conform and not be creative in the classroom that it was just to frustrating to continue.
I love the anecdote about the little girl saying that “they will know in a minute” it is so true that children are born with pure idealism, hope and creativity and it only takes a few years of public schooling to wear it out of them. This is so sad. I truly believe he is on to something here with using the arts in daily education to teach them to learn creatively. That is why we focus on language and the arts at Freedom House; I think they are intricately tied hand in hand.
In this changing world it is the creative, resourceful people who will survive.
Great article, I will share it!
http://www.thaifreedomhouse.org
@ Jeb – I absolutely agree. A large portion of society still values industrial-age-type thinking and skills without even realizing it. Our educational priorities need to shift, and as you point out, I can’t imagine that happening until the cultural shift gains more momentum. I do believe it’s begun, but restructuring such heavily ingrained systems won’t be a speedy process…
@ Writer Dad – Aha, what skill! Well we all see that it’s tumbling out in full force now
@ Daisy – I’ve heard similar frustrations from teachers in the U.S. public school system. I actually almost became an ESL teacher in NYC, and that’s known to be a pretty flexible area for teaching, but a lot of teachers I heard from felt restricted.
@ Kool Aid & Jeb – That sounds so exciting. I love when home schooling becomes a vibrant, eye-opening experience, rather than simply following the school curriculum at home. Courage and best of luck to you!
@ Caren – It really is a tough discussion. I think the point of schools certainly is to prepare them for life and expand their ways of thinking. I believe Robinson is pointing out that the current ways of doing this are stuck in the past, and not embracing a rapidly changing world that desperately needs constant innovation — stemming from a willingness to try the unknown and make mistakes. The careers and lives students are preparing for are changing so quickly, and most students leave college with a BA that ends up being pretty irrelevant to whatever job they get.
I think my education was pretty amazing, and it was also not quite conventional. But the point of all this isn’t at all to say that the current school systems aren’t valuable — they undoubtedly are. But I do believe that transforming our mindset and our system of education could radically change the world we create by opening up possibilities and making it acceptable to do things not the normal or taught way. There are so many deeply flawed structures and relations around us, and so many problems that urgently need innovation, that I really believe we need to redefine our education values. I hope you got some sleep, by the way!
@ Lisa – I can imagine the St. Louis school system was a different world from the Freedom House system you’ve created here. I strongly agree with you, because I think the language, music, and art classes I took when I was young were crucial in shaping the ways I think. I just wonder how long it will take for these kind of values to become mainstream enough that systemic changes will come into play…
What I’d like to throw into the mix is that the current paradigm, say the last 500-700 years of western culture, has been dismissive of the imagination. Isn’t it the hallmark of childhood that most adults feel cut off from. The life work of the great Sufi scholar Henri Corbin presses us to reinstate the imaginative to it’s rightful place alongside reason, to find access to the “imaginal” realms which in a very tangible way, fulfill our humanity. Jung knew the world had a soul not because he thought so, but because he interacted with “her”…
As for the kids…we spend a great deal of time each day reading to and with, so that the patterns of the narratives might reside as a database of potential structures. And we have chosen to cut off access to some of the mass media…specifically no tv.
Richard Reeve´s last blog post..Getting Video Viral
Being a student in high school, I can proudly say that school is undoubtedly expanding my creative horizon and allowing the wheels in my head to keep turning. When I was on spring break, being lazy doing nothing productive, I often had writer’s block and couldn’t find inspiration in anything to help guide me to write something wonderful. My mind was in a blank state, and I often found myself staring at pages full of dull, lifeless words reflecting on my frame of mind at that time. However, when I am in school, my mind becomes absorbent like a damp sponge, if you will, and soaks up new ideas and concepts being thrown at it, rather than on spring break when my mind-sponge was dried up and sealed shut.
@ Richard – What a unique, wonderful contribution to the discussion. It’s true that imagination is something widely removed from adulthood — the type of thing people like to say, “Oh, the good old days when my imagination was alive and kickin.” More reading, less TV is an excellent recipe — I grew up that way myself, and wouldn’t change it for anything.
@ Nameless – The situation you’re describing shows that schools indeed help foster new ways of thinking and introduce inspiring material. There’s no question about that. But if that state of thinking and inspiration evaporates as soon as you are not in school (e.g., on spring break), there’s a problem, isn’t there?
The point of this post was not to say schools are bad and do not expand our ways of thinking. The point is that schools could be even better and more transformative if they nurtured our independent and innovative thinking, instead of our ability to absorb information like a sponge.
We’re talking foundational change here — starting from the beginning of the school system, with the little ones. Many schools do encourage creativity in various respects, but what our society needs now is people who can build and expand ideas that are not creative within a certain context, but that question the context altogether.
I can’t speak for any other country, but I believe that there are fundamental problems with conventional schooling and teaching models here in Australia.
Not only are we stifling children’s creativity in the classroom, we’re taking away any options outside of the classroom.
Free play with siblings, neighbours and friends is now replaced with scheduled activities, measured by exams and results and rankings.
Primary (elementary) aged children are doing hours of structured homework, reading to tick a box, not for joy. Parents are struggling to keep up with the Jones’ kid and make a better and bigger project.
Schools too often teach how to pass tests instead of how to think, how to grow, how to live and how to love.
I don’t think this is how it should be. I don’t have the answers but there are too many children being left behind.
Rachel´s last blog post..Meal Plan Monday: What we’re eating this week
While there could be improvements in the system, the kids who suffer most are the ones whose creative outlets are not enhanced, fostered, stimulated outside of school. Even kids realize they are expected to conform to the assignment, the test, the rubric. Imagine what we are missing from the child whose creativity is not fostered. Schools like to point out they are with our children more than we are…..so as we look to the future, the current methodology needs a creative, collective, overhaul. I applaud those who encourage more reading, less screen time. The more I think about it, the more I believe reading is so critical to all creativity. I’ve always believed reading/comprehension is so critical to overall success, especially as it applies to the rest of school. I would like to add how ciritical it is to creativity too. The grouping of ideas, the knowledge of vocabulary on a wide scale can then enhance the imagination to be used in whatever creative capacity is a persons forte, from dance to building with Lego.
So many of my experiences with formal education were about teachers pushing skills and facts into students’ brains, and the standard metric for the success of this approach was to see if the students could push them back out in the form of a test or maybe a very narrowly-defined essay. I could play that game well, but it had little to do with learning.
I was a very poor typist during and after typing class in high school. I learned to type because the keyboard was necessary for email and internet chat.
I was a brat in elementary school (and still am, according to some!) and refused to practice piano despite my parents paying for lessons. I started playing piano on my own several years later when I was trying to figure out what notes to tell my bandmates to play when we were learning Joy Division songs.
I retained very little from math classes in high school, though my grades were great. I took Calculus voluntarily in college and actually learned math when I realized I needed it to understand how to program music and sound on computers.
Sir Ken stated that creativity is as important as literacy. I’d go further, and say that creativity and curiosity can precipitate learning and literacy. When we are fully dedicated to and excited about making art or sharing our ideas, we find the tools and learn the skills we need.
The problem with so much formalized education: it ignores curiosity and creativity and the drive to share ideas that engenders a desire for learning, and treats learning as something to be forced upon an unwilling population.
Reading is just a skill. Wanting to be a poet is a life that requires a range of skills, including reading. If we inspire kids to want to be something in their life, rather than watchers of TV and munchers of candied cereals and purchasers of snazzy clothing, they will learn the skills and facts and histories and ways of thinking they require. And they will want to learn it.
PS: I’m not saying it’s easy to get kids excited about life. I have taught and know how hard it is, and am also aware of the legislative and systemic challenges in the US and elsewhere. I’m just setting it up as a goal.
PPS: I don’t intend to demean reading as ‘just a skill’ — maybe this formula is better: skill + wanting to do it = source of meaning and pleasure and joy.
Matt Blair´s last blog post..Peculiarity over Productivity
@ Rachel – Oh, I know the ‘activity syndrome’ you’re describing — I saw it a lot in the States as a way to build up the college application extracurricular section.
As far as play, I think you are right to say it deserves more importance. I have some amazing memories of games I played as a kid — one involved creating and managing an entire city with my friends, another was a front stoop smoothie enterprise. Play can teach, inspire, and expand our minds unbelievably.
@ Trina – I think stories — e.g. fiction — do expand our creative capacity. Not only for improving our ability to communicate, but for exploring how life, relationships, and interactions unfold. I would imagine it also helps us connect different ideas and make broad links.
@ Matt – I love your personal examples! I wholeheartedly agree with you that creativity and curiosity can precipitate learning and literacy. I think the shifts you envision in your comment require an attitude change on our part — if our attitudes radiate new priorities, the values we demonstrate to our children will reflect that shift.
Every parent I’ve ever talked to who has kids in public school has horror stories about bad teachers, unfair rules, and despicable conditions. Yet when I tell them that my wife and I are homeschooling our kids they always tell me how crazy and irresponsible I am.
.-= Bryce´s last blog ..Practical Pointers on Plot Pacing =-.
@ Bryce – That’s very interesting, and revealing. It surprises me how many people seem to think homeschooling is a joke, and they seem to have a very limited idea of how it can work.