Ken Robinson ‘School Kills Creativity’
The lecture ‘School Kills Creativity’, presented by Ken Robinson, states a powerful claim, creativity is as important as literacy. Ken Robinson emphasizes on the unpredictability and extraordinary capacities children have for innovation. Yet the way our teachers and society itself educates our children, is in a way in which they are taught out of their creative capacities. The reason for creativity being as essential as math and English is due to the rapid speed of our changing society. We have no idea where we are headed, only education is meant to take us into this future we cannot grasp. By this, people are appealed and fascinated in America’s education system. As Robinson quotes from Picasso, “We are born artist, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” In other terms, humans are the only being on Earth who can hold such great potential of creativeness; it is then our duty to explore our capability in order to express it to the world. By people expressing their creativity it brings wonders, uplifting our society with useful ideas. Yet with so many children from an early age, being squandered ruthlessly by the non acceptance of out-of-place ideas, it only constricts our ability to think outside the box. An example is when authority figures tells students “Don’t do art, you won’t be an artist. Don’t do music, you won’t be a musician.” Even highly brilliant people, who practice fine arts instead of academics studies, are unvalued and stigmatized by others. An example Robinson presents is the story during the 30’s, a girl who had ADHD was pronounced sick due to the little attention span she had, but once a doctor took a closer look, she simply wasn’t sick, but a dancer. If it wasn’t for a professional claiming there was nothing wrong with the young girl, others would have chosen to put her on medication to calm her down. Robinson also points out an eye opening fact, back in the day when students received their degrees; this meant they automatically had jobs. Now day’s people who have received degrees go back home and play video games, in which case Robinson calls the system, Academic Inflammation. With little need for degrees, I believe people now have the option of following their true dreams in life.
Ken Robinson points out a very interesting and informational topic. I agree with Robinson claim that creativity is important as or ever more important than literacy. The fact that teachers and society are pushing students toward a direction of ‘closed mindedness’ is simply limiting our ability to create new useful ideas. With these new ideas, our society will be positively affected. From my experience of playing music in my schools band for half of my life, I firmly believe influencing children with fine arts would help eliminate drug problems, help children focus on school work, and keep gang violence away. Today schools seem undermine the importance of arts. Some schools have decided to cut off funds from their arts program_. I was blessed to attend a school who valued each activity the school had and embraced it to the fullest. Music has made a tremendous impact in my life and with that in mind; I believe Ken Robinson has the right idea, to focus and embrace on the arts section of school.
