Are Schools Killing Creativity?

Writing in a Huffington Post blog, here is how 14-year-old Line Dalile assessed the state of education:

“Remember being a kid and wanting to play around? No one told you how to use your imagination or taught you how to be creative. You played with LEGOS. You pretended you were an astronaut and imagined traveling in space. Being naturally creative, you asked questions like ‘Why is the grass green?’ and ‘Are we alone?'...

Then came school, a child’s worst nightmare…You were bullied, made fun of, and you had this teacher that told you to stop dreaming and live in reality. So what did you learn at school? You learned to stop questioning the world, to go with the flow, and that there’s only one right answer to each question.

The ‘whys’ you have always wanted to ask are never on the test, and they are omitted from the curriculum.

Creativity isn’t a test to take, a skill to learn, or a program to develop. Creativity is seeing things in new ways, breaking barriers that stood in front of you for some time. Creativity is the art of hearing a song that has never been written or seeing a work of art on empty canvas. Its essence is in its freshness and the ability to make dreams come to life.

In his TED Talk, ‘Do Schools Kill Creativity?’ Sir Ken Robinson said that instead of growing into creativity in school, we grow out of it…During this process, students are taught that making a mistake is a sin...Today’s teaching techniques are taking the beauty out of learning. Diminishing creativity from our student’s mind is a serious problem with wide-reaching effects.”

Source: “How Schools Are Killing Creativity,” by Line Dalile, Huffingtonpost.com, June 10, 2012

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