Do Schools kill Creativity?

The Coffee Shop
1

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
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2

I think that’s like saying “Does food make you fat?”. Depends on the school, depends on the kid, depends on the teachers, depends on the parents. I’m sure there are many schools that can benefit from improvements in this area, but I’m not sure it’s where we need to focus our attention the most at this point in time.

3

It surely happen. My daughter just tested to get into the “Star” program because she is bored with her regular school work. It’s hard to meet to the needs of all the kids, some of which are way behind her developmentally, so she needs to be challenged.

4

The antiquated educational system does in general. However there are some great exceptions - http://www.kipp.org/.

5

I’m presently going through Kenneth Clark’s PBS/BBC series, “Civilisation.” At the end of one segment, I think it’s titled “Grandeur and Obedience,” he concludes by discussing grandeur. Watching the entire segment, of course, gives greater context. But you could say that grandeur and institutions are closely related. I also think by definition creativity is often opposite of these.

Here’s the essence Clark’s concluding thought: “I don’t think the human spirit has ever been advanced by a thought that was first written or spoken in a large room.”

6

I don’t think so. I don’t think creativity can be taught and I don’t think it can be killed. Creativity goes on even if your not in school. No I call bullshit because very few great artists, business people or anyone else have gone to schools to increase creativity.

7

In this country we have placed big value on exceeding using the left brain. Unfortunately, we do not spend a lot of time developing right brain functions. Schools grade on things like math, language, etc. that are primarile left brain functions. So, yes, to some extent schools kill creativity. Maybe not so much in an active sense, but certainly by not developing it as much as could be.

Bernie

8

While you can’t create or kill creativity in and of itself, you can, IMO, teach kids how to take those odd little voices in your head and turn them into something more than that.

9

I agree with what you say but in my view creativity can’t be killed. If you are a creative person you will be no matter what anyone does. So if you say to a kid “Hey take some stuff and make it into something. Good Job.” Then that is awesome. If you don’t the kid is going to take some stuff and make something. No matter what you do or say.

10

Just curious if anyone has read the book “The myths of Innovation” by Scott Berkun. Breifly, the author tries to debunk these so called myths regarding creativity and innovation:

  1. “Epiphany”. He holds that those stories of innovation by epiphany are just that, stories. The tale of “Newton and Apple” simply neglects thousands of hours that Newton had spent thinking and observing the nature. (In some sense similar to the 10000 hours rule recently talked about)

  2. “We understand history of innovation”. He argues that we don’t and most instances are unique one way or another.

  3. “There is a method for innovation”. He thinks the only thing methodical with respect to innovation is hard work. There is no other formula

  4. “People love new ideas”. He argues that part of the ideas we recognize as highly innovative are due to the domino effect of this recognition. History has been fool of instances of highly elegant works of art (e.g. van Gogh), and technology (most everything developed at PARC) that were too good for their times, or simply the public were to reluctant to accept something so dramatically different than what they were used to.

  5. “The lone inventor”. Almost never happens. Even Newton stood on the shoulder of giants.

  6. “Good ideas are hard to find”. Everyone has a load of them. They are hard to implement, and sometimes it is hard to realize their goodness. Stealing someone else’s novel idea seldom happens, instead, people usually have to go through colossal effort to sell their creativity (e.g. How HP ridiculed Jobs and Woz)

  7. “The best ideas win”. They usually don’t actually, for similar reason of number 4

  8. “Innovation is always good”. It can be devastating (e.g. Nuclear weapons)