Do Schools Kill Our Children’s Creativity?
July 25th, 2008 by Burt Goldman Read more about childrenI stumbled upon this video recently, where Sir Ken Robinson speaks about creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. He points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize the talents of many brilliant people.
“We are educating people out of their creativity” – he says.
Now I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and this question has been bugging me…
If our children are being born with higher degrees of consciousness than we are — could our present way of living and education be holding them back from their true potential?
Keep the discussion alive and tell me what’s your opinion on this. Please leave your comments below the video.
I almost cryed when I watched this vid.
Thank you so much for the heads up, the timing was PERFECT. No more words today.
beautifully done… and every sentiment true. would love to hear more from this speaker; as I believe he has a lot to teach us.
Awesome and Funny Video…Control the information, you control the masses. It seems as if the education system
is designed to remove our creativities.
Excellent. This is what I suffered through in school. I’m an academic and see very clearly the reason our world is in the mess it’s in is due to the Ivory Tower academic thinking wherein totalitarian means of coersion are drilled into peoples heads (the “Silent Curriculum”)- “I’m the professor, you do it as I tell you.” We see this in liberal and socialist politics, which originates from the universities. Dogma is more important than creativity and individualism (which today must be stamped out). The universities are running us to a “1984″ society of controlled, uncreative people. Where is our freedom to be creative? Freedom of self-expression? Such are threats to the “control society” which can’t bear to be questioned.
-Anatomist
I agree 100% with you. Also things get worst when you are spanish or black, the school system take you like you are incapable of have big ideas.
This is an amazing video, I wish I knew that years ago.
i love this video was great,great news thanks you
It’s true. There is an intentional “Dumbing Down” of the American children and the children of the world. Creativity is being stifled by the concentration of regurgitating information and judgement on performance based on this ability. We are trained early to become consumers supporting the corperations. Silent slavery.
Outstanding and I couldn’t agree more with perspective!
No one can kill our Children’s creativity until and unless their talent/creativity is not put in right direction. Its Parents & Teachers Job.
The standard methodologies used by most of the schools can recognize potential of a student only in few areas. Schools are doing their job. Each and every child has extra ordinary potential which should be recognized.
So, Teachers & Parents share 50% each to recognize child’s potential – I believe parents should take most part of it. The age between 5 to 10 is most critical as each child let their mind enter into the things happening around them. So we must create healthy environment surrounding them.
Making children think/visualize always about good things gives best out of them which will help in creating a beautiful world surround them. We should make Children to feel/think they are the creators of their destiny.
Regards,
Eswar
When can this gentlemam be talking again? He is giving us all a message worth hearing in a way that is original. I have always thought that schools were not my cup of tea as they SQUASH the intelligence of children of all ages. In point of fact, I hated math and if I had to learn it, why not start with the actual math of all maths from the very beginning and not in our college years. Children learn faster at a younger age than adults do, so why? Because we have teachers who have been MINED, to quote Ted, and now are mining our childrens minds. I loved the arts and crafts portion of elementary school and went on to do my own thing in crochet and other crafts. My mind works so much clearer when I do crafts and I can find solutions to many things while solving problems with crafts. I also loved the dances we did then. I am 71 years old and find I still love dancing of all forms and want to learn all of them. I think in pictures not in figures. Does that make sense? It does to me and I am gratified to see that Ted and The American Monk also recognize these inherent individual capabilities. Hurrah!!! One more step for humankind. I really don’t think that all rulers or scholars of the past, in all areas, were so limited as we are today. Education is ONLY a so-called civilized management tool for the leaders of education as well as the politicos of our time. They want to manage all of us and what better way than to MINE our minds as we grow up.
I ,fully agree with Sir Ken Robinson,s remarks and trues about our educational systems .the students have to do a lot of work most of the time and lots of stress to optain A degree and is worthless .there is a need for change ,new orientation and personal development courses……could help.
How much is due to dumbed down education and how much is due destruction of brain cells by neurotoxins (monosodium glutamate and aspartame are the two major ones) so rampant in our food chain and a third one in our drinking water (sodium fluoride) or how much is due to educating them out of their is icreativity is impossible to determine. Unfortunately, until John Q Public gets wise and stops buying foods containing these
brain cell killers and tell the suppliers why they stopped buying them, nothing will be done to remove them by FDA, CDC or anyone else. I think there should be a better method of population control.
However our teachers must have been dumbed down by the system before they started teaching, because the teachers are not able to handle as many children per class as they did when I was going to school and they kids don’t seem to be learning as much.
I have spent thirty years of action research into sources of creativity. MOM’SOS is my answer to this paradigm. Inter-generational learning centers that allow access to instruments, teams, and technology, and teach global awareness and win win solutions by the teammembers themselves, whatever their age or status level.
Thanks, it was all true.
I truly believe if we do not live more consciously, and allow our children to use their creativity and to be out of the box thinkers then what will happen to their future. We have to let them use their creativity to their fullest potential and yes to let the infrastucture of the education system be stripped away and make way for a education program that promotes and encourages their creativity.
The system is too big for me to crack or rebel against. I, as a teacher, ensure that while the need to get results remains a top priority for my students, they learn to think beyond the obvious. Therefore, I think we need a teaching force that can keep the big guns happy while applying unique methods of learning that do not obstruct creativity and the will to take calculated risks.
thank you, enjoyed listening Ken what an inspiration (-:
True indeed! And I am surely one of the affected children (during my childhood). This planet truely need more individuals like Ken, to revolutionarily re-educate not only our educators but practically all inhabitants of this earth.
Life as we know it is always changing and we are coming to a point very soon that will be difficult to navigate away from. We have been moving ever closer to a 1984 type police state where thought and creativity are considered crimes. It is time for the population to wake up from their dream world of “every thing is just fine” or fall asleep into the arms of the state. One requires effort and the other none. Nothing worth noting has ever come from non-effort. It is time to wake up and take action or sleep walk. It is time to make an effort for personal freedom or sleep walk into a non-thinking, controlled society.
Education of children is the ultimate responsibility of the parent not the state. Yet we see more and more that home schooling is becoming the black sheep of the education system and in some states now is illegal. The public state controlled education hardly allows any parent intervention. Whose children are they, yours or the states’? The students of home schooling and private schools almost always exceed the marks of those in the public state controlled systems the world over. Better teachers maybe, better methods of teaching deffinitally. There is a reason our system has become the way it is and it is tied to control and the dumbing down of society. It is hard to control the creative and free mind, it is easy to control those minds that all think the same. There is an advantage for those in power to have a mental control over society. The more we fail to think creatively the more we become accepting of that which is placed in front of us at truth. Truth is even a misconceived notion. Honesty is always more compelling than truth alone and requires full disclosure. When you think someone is lying to you, you ask them to tell the truth. When the truth seems to have proverbial holes in it you ask people to “be honest and tell the truth”. “Come on, be honest, you know it’s true”, case in point.
It is not just the education system it is the whole system that we have created based on truths that is the problem. We can only fix our system if we get rid of the notion of truths being all that is. Replace it with the fully integrated and fully disclosed notion of honesty. I believe that when we have honesty we will have creativity and freedom, one can not truly exist without the other. Freedom = Honesty = Creativity.
Beyond this discussion of education though it does tie together with what I am about to mention. We must realize that the centralization of everything from city centers to shipping systems to education to power structures in government has been and will continue to be our biggest problem. As we continue to hand more and more power to fewer and fewer we give those people the power to regulate and control our lives on a state/provincial, national and the now emerging global level. Our only reprieve from this is to begin to demand more control over our local systems, and to be involved in the local system be it in government or commerce or whatever. The decentralized model of everything puts the power back into the hands of the people and promotes freedom. It is time to stand up to the government when it attempts to override its constitutional constraints which it has done so many times. It is time to take a stand for Freedom and it can only be done using the ultimate weapon of Honesty.
Best wishes, Freedom, Honesty and Creativity to all!
Allan
Thank you for the funny wonderful video! I am a first grade teacher and I truly believe that creativity makes life worth living. I do teach what I am supposed to, but often I close the door and we dance, sing, and do wonderful art! It gives the whole class the opportunity to appreciate each individual’s uniqueness. It also carries over to accepting different ways of looking at everything even a common math problem. I feel truly successful as a teacher when the students can express different ways of coming up to the answer in math and feel safe in risking and telling about it, because they had an experience in art that taught them it was all right to do things in a unique way.
I agree with the sentiments. After more than twenty years of University, I know that my creativity is seen as a threat by nearly every instructor encountered. Iniative and thinking outside the box receives lipservice but most want their own struggle justified by maintaining the ‘System’. Their way or the highway! I am not that swell headed to think that my own perceptions are my sole revelation. I only wonder what progress we would have reached if so much was not swept aside to maintain errant realities.
It is a great video that touches your heart to make efforts to understand our children.Very well presented.
Very enlightening!! Creativity is the backbone of human progression. I completely agree with Sir Ken Robinson’s words. It was inspirational and comedic.
Thank you!
Thought so true.
……
Подписался на RSS …
……
.С Наступающей Пасхой …
……
Бизнесмен из Вас отличный…
Прив…
Хм..…
СПС.…
Я тут…
http://rel” rel=”nofollow”>Хм…..…
Ссылки как то непонятно отображаются…
How are you?! Please e-mail me your contacts. I have a question james@infansport.ru” rel=”nofollow”>……
Best regards….
veeynch@xmnrpfj.ru” rel=”nofollow”>1…
no more…
Добрый день! jose@tehnon.ru” rel=”nofollow”>……
с ув….
Добрый вечер! mason@sportbul.ru” rel=”nofollow”>……
С уважением,…
Medicamentspot.com International Legal RX Medications. Special Internet Prices (up to 40% off average US price). NO PRIOR PRESCRIPTION REQUIRED!…
Combivir@buy.online” rel=”nofollow”>.…