Sir Ken Robinson’s talk about education and how today’s school kills creativity is the most popular (or at least the most listened) TED talk ever.
I haven’t listened to Ken Robinson before, but he is good! He mixes serious thoughts about education worldwide with funny quotes and anecdotes. He talks about kids and their creative minds and self-confidence and how we destroy all that in school and in life. We stigmatise mistakes (which I think is the main reason why many children, at least in Sweden, HATE maths) and we need to completely rethink the fundamental principles on how we educate our children.
If you are not prepared to be wrong you will not come up with anything original. … We now run national eduction systems where mistakes are the worst things you can make and the result is that we are eduacating people out of their creative capacity. … We do not grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or rather we get educated out of it.
Ken Robinson is spot on. I believe that, from the very first day in school, we need to encourage mistakes. Making mistakes is good. It is an evidence of creative thinking. Unfortunately, school systems are too much focused on learning without be creative. Learning without making mistakes. Learning by reading and listen to others. Reading and listen is ONE way of getting knowledge and it is very very important, but so is creativity. In most jobs it is very important to be creative. Why do we not encourage children to be creative? Why are we not value creative subjects in school?
There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach the mathematics. Why? Why not?
So, listen to Ken Robinson. He talks about education and creativity in a very interesting way. And he is funny!
Actually you are not often at dinner parties if you work in education, you are not asked.
They (professors) look upon their bodies as a form of transport for their heads. It is a way of getting their heads to meetings.
If a man speaks his mind in a forest and no woman hears him. Is he still wrong?