Friday 20 February 2009

Schools Kill Creativity

I am not meaning to be controversial, nor demeaning in any way!!!!

During our staff devotions at school this morning, my daughter's English teacher (Mr B) played a part of a presentation by Sir Ken Robinson. The talk was titled 'Schools Kill Creativity'. We listened to a few minutes of the talk from about 8:40 minutes in, about the hierarchy of education. Sir Ken is hilariously entertaining and I will be listening to the rest of the talk as soon as the kids turn the telly behind me off. Certainly this morning, we all laughed to the point of tears, so entertaining was his expression and so true were his words.

Sir Ken offers good reason for encouraging children to pursue subjects they love, rather than plodding through classes they hate in order to do a job they couldn't care less about. I want my children to be fulfilled by the careers they choose and to enjoy their time at work. I wish someone had encouraged me to follow this path. Who knows what I might have done had I been encouraged to pursue things I was passionate about. Heaven knows I'm not that passionate about typing LOL.

Gillian's story had me in tears. Hers is a story to make us think about who our children really are, rather than seeing them through the lens of education and what society tells them they should be.

If you want to listen to Sir Ken Robinson's talk, you will find it here. Make sure you have no liquid in your mouth and that you have tissues nearby.

5 comments:

Jodie said...

Just listened via your link. Excellent!!

Kez said...

I'll be listening to the talk as soon as I get a chance. I just wanted to say that's one of the overwhelming reasons we homeschool - so B can have more time to follow his interests. At this stage (6yo), that includes a circus class and drama!

Tracy said...

This concept is precisely the reason our school does not have a narrow enrolment policy. We do not weed out the children who struggle with academics as other schools do.

Having said that, I'm glad that all my kids teachers had the opportunity to see this.

Chris said...

I'm really thrilled you posted that link. It's precisely what I needed to hear. I've always wondered what happened to my drive to create. I had incredible imaginative capcity that suddenly seemed to dry up once I hit high school.

I made the conscious decision to be academic and I did. What I didn't realise until I heard this talk is it was probably programmed out of me by the education system. I needed a real job apparently, and a high academic pass at school would increase my employability.

Strangely enough I'm incredibly academic now, with no creative outlet. So they built the machine society wanted, but it didn't change what some genetic part of me was designed to be.

Anyway, I have been considering homeschooling our daughter and this just put the icing on the cake for me. Thanks for posting the link.

Tracy said...

I'm glad you found it helpful Chris.

This is one of the many things I love about the teachers in our school ~ they value all kinds of gifts and talents...not just the one side of the brain!