"How Schools Kill Creativity" S/R Catherine Holmes

Summary:

In Sir Ken Robinson’s, “How Schools Kill Creativity”, Robinson reveals that the lack of creativity being encouraged in education is harming the future of society and individuals, because it creates an unbalanced world where people are proficient in “industrial” subjects, when the future may not rely on industrialism at all. He begins by introducing the concept that humans are capable of amazing and creative things, which is why the future is so unpredictable. To make the future more predictable, society has incorporated the process of education. Because of this, there is a paradox between school systems and the future, “It is education which is meant to take us into this future that we can’t grasp” ("Sir"). Because society cannot grasp what the future should look like, the current school systems are preparing children for an industrial future because that is what has led previous generations to thrive. However, it is unwise to be so heavily educated only in subjects pertaining to industrialization,because the future may hold something completely different in store. Furthermore, this narrow approach to  education squanders the innate creativity and originality in children. Take a little girl Robinson knows named Gillian, for example. She was always moving in class and could not sit still. Her teachers thought she had a learning disorder, so her parents took her to see a specialist. This specialist discovered her ability to dance, and her parents put her in dance school. Gillian Lynne grew up to be extremely successful, is a multi-millionaire, and produced “Phantom of the Opera” and “Cats”. 

Robertson hints that if Gillian had stayed in standard schooling for her entire life, the brilliant creativity inside of her would have been suppressed until it was barely visible, and the world would be without two internationally famous works of art. Not only is this damaging to individuals, but also to society because if education prepares for the future, and the future does not run on industrialization, then the nation will fall backwards because it was unbalanced and unprepared. Society will be in need of people whose gifts do not exist anymore due to the effects of schooling in their past. Thus, Robertson believes that the only way to give society a firm foundation for the future is to increase the value of creativity in schools, so that the gift of originality in children will grow and not be diminished.

Response:

Sir Ken Robinson’s captivating presentation, “How Schools Kill Creativity,” flawlessly portrays why education systems need to change if society hopes to prosper in the future. His gentle and humorous speaking manner capture the audience’s attention immediately, as Robinson replaces any tension in the room to that of a friendly conversation. The use of jokes and personal stories draws his listeners in, allowing them to make individual connections to their own experiences and relate to what he is trying to get across. His points were concise and spot on, as the school systems today are failing to grasp the importance of creativity and originality, but continue to stifle them. In fact, children adopt education’s feeble view of creativity and lose it as they age. Author Daniel Pink outlines this situation perfectly in his novel A Whole New Mind. Pink describes an experiment in which a man walks into a kindergarten classroom. Pointing out the artwork on the walls, the man asks the students, “How many artists are there in the room?”, and every child thrust their hand into the air. In second grade, about 75% raise their hands, although less eagerly. In third grade, only a few children hold up their hands. By 6th grade, there are no more artists left. It is remarkable that within six years, a child could go from being a confident artists of simple drawings to understanding artistry as “deviant behavior”, as Pink puts it. This situations begs the question, “When and how was artistry labeled as ‘deviant behavior’?” The answer, revealed by Sir Ken Robinson, is current education. There is a hierarchy of classes in the school system. A hierarchy which pins “core” classes, such as math and English, at the top, and the arts at the bottom. It is through labels like this that children quickly learn what is valued in education, and it is not creativity. If education is preparing us for the future, it needs to be modified to fit the future, and not the past. According to Daniel Pink and Sir Ken Robinson, we are heading into an uncertain future. which is why we need to instill and develop originality and creativity in youth today; because they will determine that future. As Daniel Pink puts it, “The future belongs to a certain kind of person with a very different kind of mind- creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers” (Pink). If we do not develop creative capacities in children for the richness they are through education, then the school system will fail its purpose.

Works Cited

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