Ken Robinson Asks Why Creativity Isn’t A Focus In Our Education System

Sir Ken Robinson was a renowned author, speaker, and international advisor on education. He was considered among top thinkers in the world on creativity and innovation. Robinson devoted a significant portion of his professional life to assisting institutions of higher learning, businesses, and governments in realising that creativity is not a fanciful luxury.

Creativity

In his Ted talks, Sir Ken Robinson addressed three themes which are given below.

Extraordinary Evidence Of Human Creativity

The first is extraordinary evidence of human creativity that we have all experienced just the range and variety of it.

Unpredictability

The second is that it has put us in a position where we are unsure of what will happen in the future. Robinson had an interest in education, but he discovered that everyone does.

You don't, do you? Is it correct to say that education is one of those things that has a profound impact on people? Similar to money, religion, and other things.

We have a very strong stake in it, in part because education is supposed to prepare us for a future that we are unable to imagine. Nobody can predict how the world will look in five years. And yet, we're supposed to be preparing kids for it through education. Therefore, he found the unpredictability to be extraordinary.

Capacity For Innovation

And the third part of this is that we’ve all agreed, nonetheless, on the really extraordinary capacities for innovation that children have.

All children have tremendous talent, according to Robinson. We pretty ruthlessly waste them as well. So he discussed education and creativity. According to his argument, creativity is now just as significant in education as literacy, and we should treat it accordingly.

Children are not afraid of making mistakes. They'll try it out even if they don't know how. It doesn't imply that being incorrect and being creative are synonymous. What we do know is that "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original"—and that by the time they're adults, most kids have lost that capacity—is true. They are now afraid of making mistakes. Moreover, this is how we operate our businesses. Mistakes are stigmatised. And we are currently running national education systems where making mistakes is the worst thing you can do. As a result, we are asking children to develop out of their creative capacities.

Picasso once remarked, "All children are born artists, and the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up”. Robinson has a strong belief that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. To put it in another way, we get educated out if it. So why is that the case?

Educational System Around Us

Every educational system worldwide has the same hierarchy of subjects. Languages and mathematics come first, followed by the humanities, and finally, the arts come last. Additionally, there is a hierarchy within the arts in almost every system. Drama and dance are typically given less importance in schools than art and music. No other educational system on the planet teaches dance to kids every day the way we do with Maths. Why not? This is significant, in Ken Robinson's opinion. He believes dance is equally important to Maths. If allowed, children dance all the time, as do all of us.

What Is Public Education For?

"What is it for, public education?" If you look at the results and ask yourself questions like, "Who really succeeds by this, Who does everything that they should, Who gets all the brownie points, Who are the winners?" Robinson believes that you'd have to come to the conclusion that the primary goal of public education around the world is to create university professors. Isn't that right? They succeed and rise to the top.

We all adore college professors, but that doesn't mean they represent the pinnacle of human achievement. Simply put, they are different forms of life.

Also Read: Rote Learning Vs Smart Learning

Education System Prediction

Academic ability is now the cornerstone of our educational system. And there's a justification. Actually, there were no public educational systems in existence before the 19th century, so the entire system was invented. They were all created to fulfil the demands of industrialism.

Two Ideas Of Hierarchy

So the hierarchy is founded on two concepts.

Subject Preference

First, the subjects that are most applicable to the workplace are listed first. As a result, when you were a child, you were probably gently discouraged from activities you enjoyed at school on the grounds that you could never find employment doing them.

Don't practice music; you won't become a musician; don't practice art; you won't become an artist.

Academic Ability

The second is academic ability, which has taken over our perception of intelligence due to universities designing the system in their own image. If you think about it, the entire public education system in the world is a drawn-out university admissions process. Because the skill they excelled at in school wasn't valued or was even stigmatised, many highly gifted, brilliant, and creative people believe they are not. And we can not afford to go on that way said Ken Robinson.

According to UNESCO, more people will earn degrees through education in the next 30 years than at any other time in human history.

Do Degrees Have Value?

All of a sudden, degrees have no value. That is true, right? Earlier, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you weren't employed, it was because you didn't want to be. But nowadays, students with degrees frequently return home to continue playing video games because one job now requires an MA while the previous one only required a BA, and the other now requires a PhD. It's an academic inflation process. Additionally, it shows that the foundation of the entire educational system is shifting. Our understanding of intelligence needs to be revised entirely.

Intelligence

About intelligence, we are aware of three things.

Intelligence Is Diverse

One is that it is diverse. In all the ways we encounter the world, we think about it. We think audibly, visually, and kinesthetically. We think in terms of movement and abstraction.

Intelligence Is Dynamic

Second, intelligence is dynamic. The interactions of the human brain reveal that intelligence is incredibly interactive. There are no compartments in the brain. In fact, it is more often than not the interaction of various disciplinary perspectives leads to creativity, which he defined as the process of having original ideas that have value.

By the way, the corpus callosum, a shaft of nerves that connects the two halves of the brain, is present on purpose. In women, it is thicker. This is likely the reason why women are more adept at multitasking.

Intelligence Is Unique

The third characteristic of intelligence is that it is unique. Robinson was working on a book called "Epiphany" that was based on interviews with people about how they came to discover their talents. He was fascinated by how people got to be there.

What It Boils Down To

What it boils down to, is this: Al Gore spoke about ecology and the climate crisis. Ken Robinson's opinion on the subject, is to embrace a fresh understanding of human ecology and begin to rebuild our understanding of the depth of human potential. Our educational system has mined our minds for a particular commodity in the same way that we strip-mine the earth. It won't help us in the future either.

We need to reconsider the fundamental principles on the basis of which we are educating our children. Imagination is a gift to humans. Now that we have this gift, we must be careful to use it wisely and avoid some of the situations we have discussed. The only way we can do it is to see our children as the source of hope they are and to

appreciate our creative abilities for the richness they are. Our job is to educate them holistically so they can prepare for the future. By the way, they will see this future even if we don't.

Our role is to support them in using it productively.

What You Can Do As A Student

The world salutes those who have creative minds. Ignite creativity and spark imagination in your learning minds. For this, engage in the activity that provides you with the freedom to express yourself and create new things. First, you need to discover your passion, the area in which you are really interested. If that is not aligned with the school's education. Follow that passion in parallel with education, as you won't have another option other than this. To stay creative and intelligent, students can indulge in some of their favourite art and craft activities. This helps you to:

• bring out hidden talents

• encourage overall growth

• Nurture and improve innovative and creative skills

• Boost one's self-esteem

• hone your decision-making abilities

• build up your fine motor skills

• Develop an appreciation of visual aesthetics

• Boost your memory