TED: Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Following my tutorial with Jamie, he suggested I look at a few references, one was Ken Robinson. His TED talk entitled, Do Schools Kill Creativity was the first thing to come up when I googled his name.

https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity#t-1149582

The talk, now 11 years old, is one of the most interesting in the TED series that I have seen. 

Main themes of the talk:

• Extraordinary level of human creativity 
• The future and the unknown
• Children's capacity for innovation

Relevant Points:

• Education is one of those things that goes deep with people like religion or money
• Creativity is as important as literacy- we should treat it with the same status
• STORY: School girl: 'I'm drawing a picture of God', Teacher: 'No-one knows what God looks like', School girl: 'They will do soon'
• Kids aren't scared of getting things wrong; if you're not prepared to go wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.
• The system is educating people out of their creativity
• Every education system has the same hierarchy.

Maths, Languages

Humanities

Arts

• There was no real public education system before the 1900s, very industry based, so the most useful subjects for work were at the top
• Many people who are highly intelligent are made to believe they're not because their subject isn't academic enough/stigmatised
• We need to radically change our perception of intelligence

Reflection

I am a huge advocate for promoting creativity in the learning environment, and feel really strongly about subjects within the arts being condemned as 'unintelligent'. Perhaps this could be a starting point for something to develop as a FMP???