Is our education system killing creativity

In 2006, educator and author Ken Robinson gave a TED Talk called, " Do Schools Kill Creativity? " At over 45 million views, it remains the most viewed talk in TED's history. Robinson's premise is simple: our current education system strips young people of their natural creativity and curiosity by shaping them into a one-dimensional academic mold . This mold may work for some of us, particularly, as he states, if we want to become university professors; but for many of us, our innate abilities and sprouting passions are at best ignored and at worst destroyed by modern In his TED Talk, Robinson concludes: I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity . Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won't serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children. Education by Force Robinson echoes the concerns of many educators who believe that our current forced schooling model erodes children's vibrant creativity and forces them to suppress their self-educative instincts . In his book, Free To Learn , Boston College psychology professor, Dr. Peter Gray, writes: In the name of education, we have increasingly deprived children of the time and freedom they need to educate themselves through their own means ... We have created a worl...

Education is a tool that helps enhance and develop a better individual perspective. This may be supported through formal or non-formal technique but the most important thing about it is the achievement of its goals. Schools are known as a place for education. Students or learners in general, come to school for them to study various disciplines or courses that will help them conquer challenges for them to become ready for the outside circumstances. These consist of subjects that support the development of both critical and creative thinking of each learner. We all know that every individual has his or her own learning style which is patterned according to multiple intelligences and Learners are being fed with course including languages, arts, arithmetic, sciences, values and entrepreneurship. The problem today is how our learners can be able to develop their real talents and capacities through educating them with this bunch of subjects. There are problems according to the video by TED Education which are raised to innovate the pattern of education we have ever since. The capability of our students is already instinct in a way that they only need to develop for them to grow and showcase real intelligence. Creativity and critical thinking are two most significant things that need to be enriched in an individual. I as a teacher allow my students to create an avenue within our classroom where they are welcome to provide their own opinions about the topic and suggest ways on how...

The structure of our second level classrooms mirrors the stifling rigidity of the curriculum at Junior and Leaving Cert. The teacher stands at the head of the classroom, prescribing information with authority to students who passively absorb it. Yet, these rigid curricula are prescribed to teachers just as they are to students. Our teachers are highly skilled, highly qualified professionals. However, our tightly defined and heavily standardised second level curricula offer little opportunity for teachers to exercise the extent of their creative ability. Students sit a universal exam and are anonymously assessed. Undoubtedly many students flourish within such a system, particularly those with the financial means to access grinds and additional tuition, but it is how this system serves students in the long term that is the issue. Our heavily standardised curricula make the assumption that information is rare and hard to find, an assumption increasingly out of step with real world experiences. While defined tests like the Junior and Leaving Cert are designed for a culture that assumed the future would remain broadly similar to the past, the modern world is characterised by change. These standardised exams are one-dimensional and simply cannot reflect the diversity of contemporary culture or prepare students for a society in a constant state of flux. Illusion of fairness When we consider this, the illusion of fairness begins to dissipate. Inevitably, these exams become the sol...

Good morning. How are you? It’s been great, hasn’t it? I’ve been blown away by the whole thing. In fact, I’m leaving. There have been three themes , haven’t there, running through the conference, which are relevant to what I want to talk about. One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity in all of the presentations that we’ve had and in all of the people here. Just the variety of it and the range of it. The second is, that it’s put us in a place where we have no idea what’s going to happen, in terms of the future, no idea how this may play out. I have an interest in education — actually, what I find is, everybody has an interest in education; don’t you? I find this very interesting. If you’re at a dinner party, and you say you work in education — actually, you’re not often at dinner parties, frankly, if you work in education, you’re not asked. And you’re never asked back, curiously. That’s strange to me. But if you are, and you say to somebody, you know, they say, “What do you do,” and you say you work in education, you can see the blood run from their face. They’re like, “Oh my god,” you know, “why me? My one night out all week.” But if you ask people about their education, they pin you to the wall. Because it’s one of those things that goes deep with people, am I right?, like religion, and money, and other things. I have a big interest in education, and I think we all do, we have a huge vested interest in it , partly because it’s education that’s meant to take ...

• Share to Facebook • Share to Twitter • Share to Linkedin The current model of education in the United States is stifling the creative soul of our children. While this is troubling for a variety of reasons, it also has significant economic consequences for the future of our country. America has long been unique because of its remarkable ingenuity, innovative capacity and entrepreneurial spirit. Yet over the last few decades, we have witnessed both a steady According to research conducted by Kyung Hee Kim, Professor of Education at the College of William and Mary, all aspects of student creativity at the K-12 level have been in significant decline for the last few decades. Based on scores from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, her Perhaps it’s no wonder our nation is facing a decline in new venture formation given that these are exactly the skills and traits needed to be innovative and entrepreneurial. A 1995 “When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your job is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.” This awareness is critical t...

Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Rolling Stone editors or publishers.Content is produced and managed by the Rolling Stone Culture Council, a fee-based, invitation-only membership community, operated by Culture Council, LLC, under license from Rolling Stone Licensing, LLC. Visit We must promote higher standards for In the 1960s and 1970s, American education was U.S. academics are being reduced to the lowest standards. We’ve stifled our students’ abilities to think independently and ask questions freely — risking the American Dream and our competitive edge. Learning must foster well-rounded individuals by cultivating the whole person: mind, body and spirit. We need to include physical activities and phonics — the key to reading. Education “directed to the full development of the human personality” is a The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time Creating a Brighter Future What can we do to fill the gap left by the education system? First, look for programs to partner with. The Summer Bridge program is a good example of how to engage with students and schools. Summer Bridge provides engaging learning activities over the summer to prepare students for maximum success when the next school year begins. Then, make connections with school systems. Meet with district department heads via Zoom, email and tours and discover their curriculum needs. Public schools have very secure emails. Having a relationship with a department head allows you...

As children, we’re born with wild and inventive imaginations. In fact, 98 percent of children are born creative geniuses according to a test devised by NASA scientists. But as we get older that figure dwindles, and by adulthood, the number of creative geniuses drops to an astonishingly low average. Which begs the question: does school kill creativity? George Land’s Creativity Test When the deputy director for NASA wanted to figure out how to separate creative types from the rest, he tapped George Land to create a test. The goal was to seclude those who could think outside the box and come up with atypical solutions to some of NASA’s toughest problems. So, in 1968, he created a test that accurately predicted creativity, but then found himself faced with the question of where creativity comes from. Is it learned, or does it come from experience? Land decided to apply his test to a range of age groups to see how creativity varied as we get older. He used a sample of 1,600 children and continued the study into his subjects’ adulthood. Incredibly, he found that by the time they reached maturity, only two percent of subjects passed the creativity test, Land learned there are two patterns for the way we generate ideas in our minds. The first is divergent thinking, or being able to generate new possibilities – where creativity comes from. The other was convergent thinking, where we judge something by testing, criticizing and evaluating it. As it turns out, Land says we’re taught t...

For much of our lives, we are predisposed to look for a single solution to a single problem (e.g., What is 2 + 2? What is the state capital of North Dakota? Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?). We have been “brainwashed” to think that for every problem, there is one, and only one, way to solve that problem. Much of our educational experiences have been focused on learning the right answers to pre-established questions. Seldom have we been offered the opportunity to consider that there might be a multitude of potential responses to any problem. The “one-problem, one-answer” syndrome has been thoroughly ingrained into almost every educational curriculum, irrespective of grade level or subject matter. Sir Ken Robinson put this all into perspective when he wrote, “…too often our educational systems don’t enable students to develop their natural creative powers. Instead, they promote uniformity and standardization. The result is that we’re draining people of their creative possibilities and… producing a workforce that’s conditioned to prioritize What are the ramifications? The implications can be staggering. Logic supports the notion that an excessive focus on a one-right-answer mentality forces us into a “don’t take any risks” mindset. This obsession with getting the right answer (a proven consequence of an over-emphasis on standardized testing) conditions us not to take chances… it teaches us not to be creative. That’s because when we make too many mistakes, we get a ...