Creativity 2

Creativity 2

This blog will further explore creativity.

The Ken Robinson Interview:

In a seminar that we watched featuring Ken Robinson, he talked about creativity and education. He stated that with all of our modern day expertise, we still don’t even know what the world will be like in five years, let alone fifty years, which is when our children will be retiring. The funny thing about that is how are we supposed to educate the children of today when we don’t even know what the future may hold? How are we supposed to prepare them?

Ken goes on to say that all children have talents it’s just that with our current education system and society we generally squander them, by putting things like literacy and numeracy ahead of the more creative subjects such as art, dance, music and drama, to name but a few.

He goes on to say that

“if you’re not prepared to be wrong you’ll never come up with anything original”.

With our current way of thinking, we are encouraged to always be right and to not make mistakes. So by the time children are adults they lose the ability to have a go and chance being wrong, it’s educated out of them. This is part of the creative process and it’s slowly squeezed out of children.

So what is Creativity? How do you define it?

To me it’s a presence of mind when you don’t act like you know everything, but let the time to be in control, and your thoughts to wander, it’s when you start everything from scratch, don’t always play by the rules are not afraid to experiment and make mistakes. When that sixth sense of yours is awaken, turning the other five into obedient servants. It’s when you stop trying to impress others but surprising yourself.

http://www.inspirationbit.com/who-are-the-most-creative-people/

The education hierarchy is based on two things

1. Your usefulness for work.

In school even when I was there, I was discouraged from doing anything that wasn’t going to either improve my chances of getting a job or was simply not directly linked towards a certain job title. You were always told well you’ll never get a job doing that! The second thing is

2. Academic ability

There are a large number of children out there that think that they aren’t as good as other children just because the education system values academic ability over creativity. Surely as a society we must change our ways.

I think that it’s clear to see what Ken Robinson is trying to say which is, our current education system is killing off our children’s creativity. The thing is without more creative people how will we as a race develop further? When will we reach Mars or the outer galaxy? Will it be down to just science and mathematics alone? Would it be wise to incorporate more creative studies into our education system and if we had of done before now would man have found say a cure for cancer?

It is of course difficult to answer these questions but surely a more diverse approach to education would benefit us all in the long term. It’s like the old saying goes if only

“If only I knew then what I know now”.