Monday, April 16, 2007

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

This is a great talk by Sir Ken Robinson on how we are educated out of creativity. He says we are taught to be afraid to make mistakes, which I think is very true and very frustrating.

"Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we've strip-mine the earth for a particular commodity."


6 comments:

gilemon said...

Great perspectives, and thanks for the laugh!

gilemon said...

I found this is on purpose
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/12

Tyler Streeter said...

What do you mean?

gilemon said...

I mean this young girl has creativity to spare and she was lucky the system gave her a chance to express it. Her "luck" may come from new information technologies – she said twice that she directly emailed some professors.
The educative system may be improved in this direction to encourage young minds to succeed. She is a brilliant example of how creativity is at its best when we are young, free of prejudices.

Tyler Streeter said...

Ya, that's a good point. She was very fortunate to get that kind of freedom. It would be great if more young people were given that kind of freedom to explore ideas, without the pressure of having to produce immediate results.

Will Dwinnell said...

This point was made in the Rich Dad, Poor Dad books, in reference to risk-taking behavior.

It does make sense, though, that communities require a spectrum of risk. Too little risk all the time means too little initiated change, and vulnerability to external change. Too much initated change implies instability and the possibility of catastrophic failure.