How Education Threatens Creativity

[SomeoneKnows]

The makezine blog posted this interesting discussion and video:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/11/how_education_threatens_creativity.html

[Jeremy Darling]

Funny how some of the "greatest minds of our times" failed public schooling (or was it that public schooling failed them).  Our current thoughts of "no child left behind", teach to the lowest common denominator, and a level playground per "grade" have proven the largest fault of our society.  While we see a rise in home schooling and private institutes who excel children strengths while retarding the curve on their weaknesses while keeping the arts in the foreground, we see a decline in success from public systems.  Higher crime ratios (notice I didn't say numbers, as that wouldn't be a fair line to play), lower carrier paths to job paths (working in what you love over working where you can find a paycheck), and less creativity from "successful public students".  Yet, we are pushing (at least our politicians are) for lower arts, a more "level playground", and ever higher "grade expectation".

One thing I think Ken Robinson was wrong on was that Education not only produces Educators (he calls them Professors) it also produces our current rank of politicians.  If you think about it, how many politicians are "uneducated", their minds polluted with what the system has taught them to be right.  If most were forced into the "real world" for a few years we would see their attitudes and focus change (that I'm convinced of).

Think of your education and then think of your day to day life.  How much of it actually matches what you learned in school?  Sure, basics (math, reading, some social skills) match up.  But, do you sit quietly at your desk taking notes while your superior tells you the truths of the company (I hope not)?  Most of us reach a point in our careers where we are learning every day, we are falling our our "adult" experiences to aid our decisions, and we are working together to find solutions instead of listening and blindly accepting answers.

Most of the teachers I've talked to agree that the public system is headed in the wrong direction.  Most are also convinced that they can do nothing about it.  Its a sad state when the those providing the education to our future find themselves believing that they can't make things better.

 - Jeremy

PS: Sorry to anyone out there who is offended by this, I hold our educators with a very high respect, and I believe we (as a society) are failing them.

[Jestin Stoffel]

I can understand why educators feel they can't change things. They
aren't paid much, and there are plenty of people to fill their place if
they create waves. They hands-on activities they would like in their
classrooms cost money, and the budgets are already stretched to the max
just making sure the electric bills are paid. No Child Left behind
bases it's funding on test performance, as if that was a reasonable
measure of quality of education. What school administrator is going to
spend a larger part of the budget on hands-on activities, when spending
it on boring stuff will yield better test results (aka more money)? In
a way, we are giving incentives for boring education, not better
education.

Can you blame educators for thinking they can't do anything about it?
They might actually be right. I think it will take more than a few
altruistic teachers to head things back in the right direction.

[Sharon]

I totally saw this in public school (I now homeschool my children) ... in 6th grade the main curriculum teacher came to me all upset ... "come in here come here" (right before Open House that night) ... "you have to see what Anthony did" ... I walked in to view an entire wall of "stick trees all painted in one color with a single different color of shadows" ... one picture on the wall was colored in a different color.  She was upset because my son would not paint the tree shadows in the same color as the art teacher instructed ... "he is not following directions" .  Personally his father and I thought it was a wonderful drawing.  We asked him why his drawing was different and he said simply "I painted my trees at a different time of day so the shadows were a different color". 

Hmmm makes you think, doesn't it?   They teach art AT THE CHILD, not teaching them to be creative with the technique.  We then walked through the school peeking in at the different grades... all the art projects on the walls looked the SAME ... same color, same subjects, same sized elements ... they almost could have been color copies.

What an absolute shame ... and we told the teacher this as well.  She hadn't seen it that way ... we told her we should be celebrating his "creativity" in that he even thought of changing the direction of the shadows and the color due to the "time of day" he was painting it in ...

Sharon

[Sharon]

P.S.  I thoroughly enjoyed the video...thank you for sharing it.