Reading Response #6

Brittany Ross

At the 2006 TED conference, Sir Ken Robinson gave a speech titled “How Schools Kill Creativity”. In a lecture that is both funny and captivating, he proceeds to explain his theory that schools squash our creativity as we move through the education system. One of his central claims seems to be that “if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original”. He explains that children are not naturally afraid of being wrong, yet we “stigmatize mistakes” and teach children a fear of being incorrect. Robinson explains that we do this by putting such an emphasis on the subjects like math and language, and then sticking the arts are at the bottom of the priority list, and states that this happens in nearly every education system on Earth. The whole education system was created to meet the needs of industrialism, where the most important subjects for getting a job are on top of a hierarchy, and the other, creative subjects are pushed to the bottom because we have the idea that jobs don’t come out of those subjects of study. This, is not the case anymore; Robinson states that world is in the middle of a revolution, and implies that jobs in these subjects are not impossible, which is the opposite of what is engraved into our minds from an early age. Robinson goes on the claim that “we are educating people out of their creative capacities.” He says, “Nobody has a clue what the world will look in five years time, and yet, we are meant to be educating them for it.” In closing his speech, he says that we need to reform our ideas about education, and build up the “richness of human capacity. This, Robinson says, is our only hope for the future.

Although I agree with most of Robinson’s points, my experience in school seems to have been a little different. Maybe the high school I went to was unique in the fact that it celebrated the arts. We had a plethora of art classes that varied from photography, to theater, to drawing, to dance, and included several others. Students who chose to take these classes were not looked down on or thought less of by the students who took advantage of the traditional “intellectual” studies and who participated in programs such as IB, let alone the teachers. Perhaps my high school is seeking to do what Ken Robinson spoke about in 2006, but it seemed to be as I described throughout the years I was there; there was no need to shift the focus. I realize that in most schools, it is as Robinson described, but I don’t think that I was exposed to it as some kids are. In high school, it honestly felt like I could succeed in area I wanted, no matter if that subject be math, or photography. I felt comfortable in my decision to take multiple art classes, and drop math. I pursued what I wanted, and that should be the case in every school around the globe.