I watched the talk with eager anticipation. After the first five minutes I understood why this 19 minute talk, subtitled in 58 languages, was such a hit. The topic hits close to all our hearts - the creativity of our children.
After watching the talk twice in a row, I took a few minutes to recall my own education. I also thought about todays educational system from my own children, niece and nephews. Sir Ken Robinson was spot on. The topic of his talk 'How schools kill creativity' was such a glaring realization for me and for most of the viewers I would dare assume.
Watching my own six year old son, I agree that children are born creative. In fact, all children are born with creativity. I am amazed at how our six year old son creates comic books from scratch. He draws them from his imagination and strings them together with his own story line. To paraphrase Sir Ken, children are educated out of their creativity. As we grow up, the education system puts more weight on the academic subjects like Math, Languages and Science. There is nothing wrong with this except that we start having less emphasis on other creative subjects like the humanities, arts, dance and so on.
Growing up we were told that we should not focus on music, arts, dance and other creative endeavors. We often hear the phrase 'starving artists' thrown to children who dream of a career in the arts. If we pay attention closely to todays world, we are in need of creative people. The movie and animation industries search for creative talents to help bring out more entertaining films. Even manufacturing companies depend on creative people to design their products and corresponding advertisements. Apple would not be apple if their products had been designed by boring engineers. BMW will not be BMW without the artistry of the team that designs the car.
The second area for improvement in todays school system is the grading system. It is designed to pass or fail a child based on a standard metric. There is value in having a standard method of testing. We need a baseline to compare something with; be it a score, grade, test. However, the testing system should be designed as a diagnostic tool to identify how we can help the child learn better. The testing system should not be the end product of the education. It should be a tool in identifying ways of helping the child.
Sir Ken quipped in one of his videos about an American educator having a chat with a Finish Educator. The American educators was talking about the drop out rate of students in America. The Finish educator was surprised. He said that there was no dropout rate in Finland. The Finish educator went on and said that when students are having difficulty in their studies they are provided help and guidance.
It is also an interesting observation that the world has innovated most of the things around us. We have evolved better versions of activities and products that we use everyday. Why is it that our education system has not evolved at all? Why is it that the backbone of our progress has not improved into a more effective system?
We often hear talks about alternative education. Small progressive schools figuring out ways to better educate their students through alternative methods. The irony of this all is that the whole thing is backwards. The alternative methods of education must be the mainstream way of education.
Education purely for educations sake is fruitless and meaningless. Education must be driven to create learning. Education must produce learning to be of value. We cannot afford to continue squandering the creative capacity of our children.