How does school kill creativity ?
Sir Ken Robinson claims that the school kills creativity. Most of us would instantly oppose such an opinion in the first place. Kids nowadays have tremendous and colossal talents which schools squander pretty savagely. Creativity is now as important in school education as in other fields and we should treat it seriously. Sir Robinson thinks that children are more creative because of their attitude toward a trial or an error. Adults are scared of making errors more often than kids. There is a good story about children's boundless imagination. One girl was asked about her drawing. She answered that she was drawing a picture of God. Her teacher replied that no one knows God. The girl said: ‘the world is about to see what he looks like’. This short story shows that children have boundless creativity. Young kids are not scared of being embarrassed because of their mistakes. This is called creativity. In my opinion we cannot teach kid to be creative because it is impossible. I suggest giving kids more time to solve the problem. If kids are not working under time pressure, then they are able to release more creativity during lessons. Creativity is all about creating something new. Every new idea, every new music composed etc counts as creative products. The range of scholarly interests in creativity includes multitude of definitions related to majors like cognitive science, technology or economics. We cannot simply measure someone's creativity quotient. Several attempts have been made to develop a creativity quotient of an individual, however these have been unsuccessful. Everyone has a different view, talent and there is no overall solution for valuing creativity. Schools can kill creativity from time to time because there are a few subjects during which when kids are able to show off their imagination. Normally teachers value knowledge during exam. It is really hard to value creativity in the same way. If we could only deliver more time and freedom to the lessons. For new effective ideas we need more time, more thinking, brainstorming. We don't want to work under pressure waiting for someone's opinion if we do our job well. A video link attached below shows how kids are effective and creative when they have a minute or ten to think about their problem. The most talented people are kids. It is important for parents to give them more freedom to solve their own problems. The school sometimes forgets about connection between intellect and feeling, because the school doesn't permit children to make mistakes. How would you ensure that your kid has enough time to be creative?
Ted talking about creativity: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity
Creativity requires time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkq343NS3nM and this is example of the crow dealing with similar problems: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04
Creativity is your potential. I think everybody needs to create or get help creating their own conditions, a state in which they can express their creativity and learn how to do it.
In my case, to be creative about anything I have to be interested about it. As long as can focus I can become more creative.
You have to take care of your creativity!
Honestly, everyone and everything is creative. Everyone and everything can become more creative if one wants to. The first step is to start thinking about it :-)
I think there are some ways to boost creativity.
I am very much in favour of the idea of giving children some tools to explore their imagination.
In my opinion those tools are mostly books. When we are reading we must imagine - especially when reading fantasy books, brand new world, the way the characters look like. It is some kind of training for our brain.
But not only fantasy books are solution. Every single book helps reader to imagine situation, problem, and try to solve by himself.
On the other hand I think that homeschooling is an even worse idea. In the United States mostly used to brainwash children and cut them off from other kids and consequently from other worldviews. Schools have a huge role in social education and we can learn a lot by interacting with each other. Kids when they're getting to know each other can find out a new passion and see how other people think. I feel that from interacting with others they can find out that everybody thinks differently, share ideas and learn how to properly interact which is important in life.
In my opinion a good solution would be to have smaller student count in every class so a teacher could focus on every pupil more individually and thanks to that more effectively. Adding some classes that would help develop critical and creative thinking skills would also make a difference. Of course that would be expensive so I think at least in public schools there is no chance to enter such a solution. Some really innovative changes should be made in the whole educational system so these school tests could really assess knowledge, thinking and solving problems. Another important thing would be to encourage kids to find their own interests and help them in developing them.
As an adult I also kind of understand teachers. I assume that it's hard when you get 90 kids (I guess that they get even more than 3 groups every year but it's an example) and you have to remember special needs and interest s of every child so it's much easier to treat them as a group. But then every person who is different has to be put out because it causes problems. In my personal experience as a small child I was a very, very fussy eater and my parents were fine with it but when I went to the kindergarten people tried to make me to eat in some really unpleasant ways even though my parents told them EVERY DAY not to make me eat anything I wouldn't like. I know that it doesn't consider being creative but the point is that they couldn't let me eat only what I wanted because then the other kids could also become more picky and it would cause them problems and I know that in other countries they have a very different approach. I feel that teachers here think that they can't have individual requirements for everybody. Maybe if their salaries were higher there would be more teachers with a real passion for teaching and they would help students to be more creative and expressive.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2797633/playing-video-games-boost-brain-researchers-say-action-games-increase-ability-quickly-learn-new-motor-skills.html
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0813/23082013-Playing-video-games-can-boost-brain-power-Love
I agree that is no school, that teach us creativity.
In my opinion problem is great show in this experiment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkq343NS3nM
Why monkey solved this, and people not?
Becouse we were not taught solving such a problems.
Great polish speech about learning languages, shows that actual learning methos are far from the real needs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78FpZVVEpk8&feature=youtu.be
Students should have been accustomed to making mistakes, because without mistakes there is no success. Everyone learns to make mistakes. people acquire experience when they make mistakes
Games can give us some inspiration to think more effectively. In the virtual world of games we have many solutions to do missions or tasks in games. It is good for develope our imagination.
However, I think that we must remember that children should do more task where answers are open, not only tests with "ABCD" answers. Tests with given answers "abcd" kill creative thinking.
In refrence to the experiment I want to say that people don't know how to do things, that they have never done in schools.
Let's see things as they are. Education is all about teaching people how to understand the world and how to interact with it. Creativity is all about expressing yourself and coming up with new ideas, never mind if they are good or bad. I admit that creativity is important and all, but you can't teach it. You can show how the world works and how to understand it, but you can't show how to come up with ideas that are good. Because, let's face it. Creativity is fun and all, but the only thing that matters are ideas which are good, and you are creative when you come up with something that is good, otherwise it's not creativity, it's just gibberish.
I think that parents should be more responsible and they should develop talents, skills, creativity of their children outside the school because usually you just get a basis in places like that. I am talking from my experience and as I remember I always did something extra after class.
In my opinion, improving ones creativity is really important in life, but everyone should do it in his own time.
I humbly disagree. I think it is quite common to think the opposite. Each public school in this country has motto "make everybody think the same way". Students' creativity cannot be saved or enhanced when the teacher himself/herself is mediocre, uncreative, unqualified, frustrated and unsuccesful person who does not care about students.
Majority of teachers who work in primary schools teachers resemble mentioned image. Computers science is taught by Polish teachers(because nobody after IT studies will work for sort of money public school offers), there is more week hours of Religion than the Science, flunkers are promoted to secondary school so teacher can avoid extra working hours etc.
Until good teachers will be offered more money, nothing will change.
Obviously it kills childrens’ creativity because it oblidges them to work and think in previously prepared scheme. You have to do this in this way not the other. When in school we are often given explanations on a plate instead of trying to come up with the solutions ourselves. Sometimes lessons are so boring that we even don’t bother to think and create at all. In my opinion school does not rewad those who are individuals and who work in a more creative way. That’s why school doesn’t prepare us to be real life, in which it’s not enought to learn something by heart. I agree with you that working under preassure can kiil creativity. If you want to create a new value you simply must think outside the box. During that process you can easliy make mistakes. How would I ensure that my won child has enught time to be creative? Hmm…I think the most importatn thing is to manage to spend as much time with the child as possible in order to stimulate curiosity and therefore creativity...
School is only for extending your knowledge, training your memory and learn to use instructions to solve problems.
And you have to think by scheme all time.
And here are some interesting links about creativity:
http://www.parenting.com/blogs/mom-congress/melissa-taylor/how-raise-creative-child
http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2012/05/24/creative-kids-not-kits/
I think it's wrong to say that school kills creativity. It would probably be more fair to say that school doesn't encourage you to be creative. So if you focus to much on school and ignore other activities or hobbies, you are killing your creativity by yourself. School just doesn't need you to be creative.