Do Schools Kill Creativity?

10/23/2009

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.
EO Wilson (1929-2021), biologist

In 1998 Ken Robinson led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His humorous and provocative presentation in which he asked whether schools kill creativity can be viewed at TED.com.

Here is a brief excerpt from this presentation:

". . . 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. 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're 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, we get educated out if it. . . ."

Lilian Katz on Intellectual Emergencies

Lilian Katz's new book, Intellectual Emergencies: Some Reflections on Mothering and Teaching, is now available on the Exchange web site. Describing why she wrote the book, Katz observed: "I have tried to share my own views of what education is about. To me it is about developing in the young certain dispositions. These dispositions should include being reflective, inquisitive, inventive, resourceful, full of wonder (wonder-full?), and perhaps puzzlement too."

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