20 minutes talk by Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?


Any PhD holder?? please comment a bit.

hahaha. nice talk izzit? wonderful.

This post has been edited by goldfries: Oct 10 2009, 04:33 PM

Creativity can not be killed. It can be suppressed, but not killed entirely.

Very good talk. Highlights the right place

i've updated post #1 for the video to load directly.

Pink Floyd said the same thing before he did but on a more serious note he does have a point.

Sorry couldn't resist



This post has been edited by frags: Oct 10 2009, 06:39 PM

yes!! they all thought education is more important than creativity!

it depends on what you learn and how you are taught.

people can actually be taught in school to discover and expand their talents in creativity. that's y we have these places called art schools.

education IS still important, bcoz it forms the building blocks of creativity. the more things u know, the more powerful ur output of creativity will be.

u cant simply design a chair without understanding the characteristics of sitting - anthropometry, psychology, structure, material properties and so on. to understand that, u need to a firm grasp on human behaviour and basic physics. and to know that, u need to be able to read and understand.

without education, u will be severely limited to "trial and error", a tedious and exhaustive method of using brute force to solve a simple problem.

I agree with u, for that reason malaysian comedian are not creative invent good joke n their movie lack of inovative element. All this due to result of lack of knowledge. I would say the more u have information (knowledge) , the more u can invent a good joke

u use comedy as an example of creativity? wow u dont make this easy, do ya? lol.




i can talk about creativity in design, as i study it, have done research on it, and teaching it. i dont believe there's has been any research done on creativity in comedy. somebody should do a PhD on that!

Doesn't this relate to the other thread? But just restating what some other forumer said : You can't kill creavitiy.

stunning the growth of creativity is as close as killing one.

a better question is who is more creative? a musician or an accountant?

well, a creative musician makes me happy; a creative accountant makes me worry .

Must creativity only been linked to art & drama? Aren't programmers and mechanical engineers creative as well?

I don't believe schools affect creativity. Creativity should come from your lifestyle and experiences, in or out of school.

The only thing that would kill creativity will be laziness.

The problem is not to do with education, but more to do with how education is carried out. Looking at the Pink Floyd, what I find a lot of ppl mistook it as a criticism against education, but what it is is really a criticism against what that is perceived as education, or rather how the act of educating is currently carried out.

Now, no doubt that discipline is important, but the question is, how do you achieve the proper balance between discipline and creativity? Bend too far in one direction, and you get robots, and too far in the other direction, and you get a unruly mob.

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Added on October 21, 2009, 7:23 pmcreativity matters in more places than just art you know.

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Added on October 21, 2009, 7:24 pmdepends really. have you tried asking a musician to pull an Enron?

This post has been edited by fyire: Oct 21 2009, 07:24 PM

i get what Ken is saying.
however, for me education is the foundation of creativity. you can't be creative without being educated.

like what? waving crayons on paper and walls all life? you gotta learn to use a crayon in order to perform marvels with it dunnit?

it's as simple as you gotta know, in order to create. you can't expect an untrained mind to work marvels at cooking or ice-skating without the skills to do it right..

so yeah, i'm echoing the thoughts of azarimy and fyire.

The reverse is also true.

The more creative one is, the more chances that one can come up with (or synthesise) new knowledge based on some other older knowledge.

So the one way street of "education --> knowledge --> creativity" is no longer the only viaduct to attain enlightenment.

You're still not getting the point. Creativity and Education are not 2 things that are opposites of each other.

like I said earlier:

its the same thing as in the video posted too. its not a criticism of schools itself, but rather on how education is carried out in schools.

This post has been edited by fyire: Oct 22 2009, 04:15 PM

Hi all

first time here.

I am still in school. My final year in STPM.

I would agree fyire that it's not education that is the problem but how it is carried out. Personally my experience is that it really depends on us. Creativity comes in a lot of forms. Some would prefer the stereotype view of a creative persons as someone that is artsy and talented in crafts, music, literature etc. But some (i think most of us) will feel that it is more than that.

Creativity involves a lot more. Creative in solving hard mathematics puzzles is one. Thinking out of the box for certain questions of Biology, Chemistry and Physics is one way to develop creativity. Not that many do that now. Most will oft for copying and referring rather than sitting down and slowly think about these things.

It truly depends on how education is carried out.
like one of my teachers that give hard brain-twisting questions that arise from simple concepts, all we need to do is to use and link those concepts creatively. That's training. That's nurturing.

But not all are lucky to have dedicated teachers.

Hrmm..actually creativity is one element..the other element is attitude

That y people always talk about EQ and IQ

However, still i agreed, school does supress the kid creativity, after i being there already last time

Creativity always come hand in hand with innovation.
Without creativity there is innovation, but if you don't innovate your creativity then it will go to waste.

Creativity is a very subjective issue to discuss especially it varies to different people.
Human are always scared of something different or any significant changes that bounds to materialise which is why creativity is encouraged but not promoted in many schools. The reason being is that it is very hard to measure creativity since the measure will decide the particular student's course of future.

Schools don't kill creativity, they just don't promote it.
Exams are based on quantitave measures since most preach and practice meritrocracy. Those hat get the higher aggregrate marks prevails. Unless there is a change in marking system then creativity will stay dormant inside the student until a random event triggers it.

our current education standards are killing creativity and natural talent of young students...

those scout teams, police cadet, junior jaycees society, choir club etc etc are just not enough, and have to admit those are kinda 'old school'...

but cannot blame the school alone, parents must be responsible for this matter... u go market buy stuff, can hear all the <u insert word> aunties talking craps like "ur son/daughter how many As" or "my son/daughter now study in which school" blah blah blah...

Looks at Bill Gates. Quit college and now very2

This post has been edited by Sifha238: Nov 3 2009, 11:27 PM

That's a good point!

extra curricular activities are geared to cater for character building. it was never meant to do anything towards ur creativity.

trust me, creativity without character to back it up will end up either working for people, or getting screwed over and over.

not the shool kill the cretivity but our system in Malaysia
Exam oriented
even in my uni study last minute with the source of answer and question past semester can get flying colour

I agree with your post. There is a lecturer is UM who has conducted various different research in the area of creativity with regards to the Malaysian perspective. He has publish many books on these areas and is very well experienced in the area of creative research, early childhood and gifted children studies. His name is Prof Dr. Ananda Kumar Palaniappan from the Education Faculty of Univeristy of Malaya.
You may browse his web- site for more info on his research work on creativity in Malaysia. http://drananda.weebly.com

what we do after we leave school is more important and what will you DO with what you've learned is most important.

creativity is difficult to grade.
we, MALAYsian want everything that is easy.
so we do exam oriented education.
easy to mark exams paper.

school don't kill creativity

teachers do

why teacher? our systems i think...pushing our kid to much. yet teacher tired to follow too many change in our education systems every year.

teachers are the front line workers of the system of education

they are the one who has face to face contact with the clients (students) and many of the teachers are the one who killed the creativity of those clients by their insistence that the clients must behave according to the expectation of the system

so many comments. =) thx2

the school organization kill the creativity...
whole week from 7am - 5pm fit with study lesson.. pretty sux.. no outdoor activity at all.. at least make somethin like visitin zoo or wat...
wah5

studying for whole week from 7am to 5pm does not kills creativity, but it will kill ur brain.

i think everyone is creative. but to sharpen their creativity, we need some knowledge (unfortunately,from school). education leads to logical thinking, and logical thinking is directly proportional to creative thinking.

Interesting thread. Sorry I came late.

To me, school is a place where we are conditioned to conform. To standardize behaviours, thoughts, speech and expectations so we could fit into society. It softens the blow of interacting and competing with others so its not altogether a bad thing.

To conform you have to give up something. I may want to be creative with my hair but they won't allow it. If I give a creative answer to a question they will think I'm trying to be smart. Not to say you cannot be creative in school. You can, but within the box you are put in. Otherwise negative conditioning comes in. Punishment.

I saw some responses that say its how they do it that's wrong. I agree but I also think its more than that. Anywhere in the world and in any system, education expects conformity first and foremost - play by the rules (even getting phd have rules), and that means you have to put freedom of creativity in a box.

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This post has been edited by marsalee: Nov 14 2010, 12:01 AM

As a homeschooler, I can vouch that an average homeschooler is much creative (and smarter) than the average non-homeschooler.

A few reasons why I think so:

When I quit school (age 11), I had the newfound freedom to study whatever I liked, beyond a few essential subejcts. I had no set schedules. I studied on Saturdays and Sundays, simply because I wanted to. There was no teacher around to say what I did was wrong (only the answer keys at the back of my work books!).

The last part is important - creativity will not be properly developed if you are afraid of being wrong. See this video (the speaker discusses the issue in the first ten minutes of the video) if you want to know what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjwUn-aA0VY

Of course, we can't really blame schools because when you have 40 children sitting in the class, it's hard to let them to do what they want (very important to creativity!) and to give them individual attention.

Creativity, though, cannot be taught - it can only be encouraged. Individuals must develop it - and the main way is for them to find something they enjoy doing and apply all their effort at it. It may be mathematics, arts or sports.

Just look at Google with their 20% "innovation" time and see how it paid off. By letting their employees do whatever they wanted, Google got 50% of their products from there.

TLDR version -

Key to creativity: freedom.

Yes, being different is not encouraged, especially when it interferes with the standards set by the rest. It encourages mediocrity than creativity.

It reminds me of the situation where people with Masters degrees are outperformed by people with ordinary diplomas, the latter ignorant of structured methodologies & simply "hantam" but got to the finish line first. Sobering, altho to be fair, in a structured environment the opposite can happen.

Some ppl are born more creative than others so u could see schooling in its current form as the lesser of two evils. Its a system designed for the masses, not creative geniuses. Its not designed to handle different learning curves. End up wasting creative talent. Geniuses that get into the system have 3 choices: conform to average standards, get whacked with punishments or go elsewhere for an education.

There are elite private schools for this but while it solves one problem, it creates new ones but that's for other discussions.



This post has been edited by Beastboy: May 9 2010, 09:08 AM

school are becoming more exam oriented, of course it only encourage student to study, study, and study only in their campus.