Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson
August 14, 2019 John Wagoner 100 Comments
Good morning. How are you? (Audience) Good. It's been great, hasn't it? I've been blown away by the whole thing. In fact, I'm leaving. (Laughter) There have been three themes
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. (Laughter) If you work in education,
you're not asked. (Laughter) 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. Why me?" (Laughter) "My one night out all week." (Laughter) But if you ask 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. So 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 us into this future that we can't grasp. If you think of it, children starting school this year
will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise that's been
on parade for the past four days, what the world will look like
in five years' time. And yet, we're meant
to be educating them for it. So the unpredictability,
I think, is extraordinary. And the third part of this
is that we've all agreed, nonetheless, on the really extraordinary
capacities that children have — their capacities for innovation. I mean, Sirena last night
was a marvel, wasn't she? Just seeing what she could do. And she's exceptional, but I think
she's not, so to speak, exceptional in the whole of childhood. What you have there is a person
of extraordinary dedication who found a talent. And my contention is,
all kids have tremendous talents, and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly. So I want to talk about education, and I want to talk about creativity. My contention is that creativity now
is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it
with the same status. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) That was it, by the way.
Thank you very much. (Laughter) So, 15 minutes left. (Laughter) "Well, I was born … " (Laughter) I heard a great story recently —
I love telling it — of a little girl
who was in a drawing lesson. She was six, and she was
at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this girl
hardly ever paid attention, and in this drawing lesson, she did. The teacher was fascinated. She went over to her,
and she said, "What are you drawing?" And the girl said,
"I'm drawing a picture of God." And the teacher said, "But nobody
knows what God looks like." And the girl said,
"They will in a minute." (Laughter) When my son was four in England — actually, he was four
everywhere, to be honest. (Laughter) If we're being strict about it,
wherever he went, he was four that year. He was in the Nativity play.
Do you remember the story? (Laughter) No, it was big, it was a big story. Mel Gibson did the sequel,
you may have seen it. (Laughter) "Nativity II." But James got the part of Joseph,
which we were thrilled about. We considered this to be
one of the lead parts. We had the place crammed
full of agents in T-shirts: "James Robinson IS Joseph!" (Laughter) He didn't have to speak, but you know
the bit where the three kings come in? They come in bearing gifts,
gold, frankincense and myrrh. This really happened. We were sitting there, and I think
they just went out of sequence, because we talked to the little boy
afterward and said, "You OK with that?" They said,
"Yeah, why? Was that wrong?" They just switched. The three boys came in, four-year-olds
with tea towels on their heads. They put these boxes down, and the first
boy said, "I bring you gold." And the second boy said,
"I bring you myrrh." And the third boy said, "Frank sent this." (Laughter) What these things have in common
is that kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not
frightened of being wrong. I don't mean to say that being wrong
is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is,
if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up
with anything original — if you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults,
most kids have lost that capacity. They have become
frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this. We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running
national education systems where mistakes are the worst
thing you can make. And the result is that
we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso once said this, he said
that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain
an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately,
that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it. So why is this? I lived in Stratford-on-Avon
until about five years ago. In fact, we moved from Stratford
to Los Angeles. So you can imagine
what a seamless transition this was. (Laughter) Actually, we lived in a place
called Snitterfield, just outside Stratford, which is where
Shakespeare's father was born. Are you struck by a new thought? I was. You don't think of Shakespeare
having a father, do you? Do you? Because you don't think
of Shakespeare being a child, do you? Shakespeare being seven? I never thought of it. I mean, he was seven at some point. He was in somebody's
English class, wasn't he? (Laughter) How annoying would that be? (Laughter) "Must try harder." (Laughter) Being sent to bed by his dad,
to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now!" To William Shakespeare. "And put the pencil down!" (Laughter) "And stop speaking like that." (Laughter) "It's confusing everybody." (Laughter) Anyway, we moved
from Stratford to Los Angeles, and I just want to say a word
about the transition. Actually, my son didn't want to come. I've got two kids;
he's 21 now, my daughter's 16. He didn't want to come to Los Angeles. He loved it, but he had
a girlfriend in England. This was the love of his life, Sarah. He'd known her for a month. (Laughter) Mind you, they'd had
their fourth anniversary, because it's a long time when you're 16. He was really upset on the plane. He said, "I'll never find
another girl like Sarah." And we were rather pleased
about that, frankly — (Laughter) because she was the main reason
we were leaving the country. (Laughter) But something strikes you
when you move to America and travel around the world: every education system on earth
has the same hierarchy of subjects. Every one. Doesn't matter where you go. You'd think it would be
otherwise, but it isn't. At the top are mathematics and languages,
then the humanities. At the bottom are the arts.
Everywhere on earth. And in pretty much every system, too,
there's a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally given
a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isn't an education
system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think math is very important,
but so is dance. Children dance all the time
if they're allowed to, we all do. We all have bodies, don't we?
Did I miss a meeting? (Laughter) Truthfully, what happens is,
as children grow up, we start to educate them progressively
from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads. And slightly to one side. If you were to visit education as an alien and say "What's it for, public education?" I think you'd have to conclude,
if you look at the output, who really succeeds by this, who does everything they should, who gets all the brownie points,
who are the winners — I think you'd have to conclude
the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors. Isn't it? They're the people who come out the top. And I used to be one, so there. (Laughter) And I like university professors, but, you know, we shouldn't hold them up as the high-water mark
of all human achievement. They're just a form of life. Another form of life. But they're rather curious. And I say this out of affection for them: there's something curious
about professors. In my experience — not all of them,
but typically — they live in their heads. They live up there
and slightly to one side. They're disembodied, you know,
in a kind of literal way. They look upon their body as a form
of transport for their heads. (Laughter) Don't they? It's a way of getting
their head to meetings. (Laughter) If you want real evidence
of out-of-body experiences, by the way, get yourself along to a residential
conference of senior academics and pop into the discotheque
on the final night. (Laughter) And there, you will see it. Grown men and women
writhing uncontrollably, off the beat. (Laughter) Waiting until it ends, so they can
go home and write a paper about it. (Laughter) Our education system is predicated
on the idea of academic ability. And there's a reason. Around the world, there were
no public systems of education, really, before the 19th century. They all came into being
to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. Number one, that the most useful
subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away
from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds you would never
get a job doing that. Is that right? "Don't do music, you're not
going to be a musician; don't do art, you won't be an artist." Benign advice — now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world
is engulfed in a revolution. And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate
our view of intelligence, because the universities design
the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education
around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is
that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people
think they're not, because the thing
they were good at at school wasn't valued,
or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can't afford
to go on that way. In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, more people worldwide will be
graduating through education than since the beginning of history. More people. And it's the combination
of all the things we've talked about: technology and its
transformational effect on work, and demography and the huge
explosion in population. Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? When I was a student,
if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job,
it's because you didn't want one. And I didn't want one, frankly. (Laughter) But now kids with degrees
are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA
where the previous job required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other. It's a process of academic inflation. And it indicates the whole structure
of education is shifting beneath our feet. We need to radically rethink
our view of intelligence. We know three things about intelligence. One, it's diverse. We think about the world in all the ways
that we experience it. We think visually, we think in sound,
we think kinesthetically. We think in abstract terms,
we think in movement. Secondly, intelligence is dynamic. If you look at the interactions
of a human brain, as we heard yesterday
from a number of presentations, intelligence is wonderfully interactive. The brain isn't divided into compartments. In fact, creativity — which I define as the process of having
original ideas that have value — more often than not comes about through the interaction of different
disciplinary ways of seeing things. By the way, there's a shaft of nerves
that joins the two halves of the brain, called the corpus callosum. It's thicker in women. Following off from Helen yesterday, this is probably why women
are better at multitasking. Because you are, aren't you? There's a raft of research,
but I know it from my personal life. If my wife is cooking a meal
at home, which is not often … thankfully. (Laughter) No, she's good at some things. But if she's cooking,
she's dealing with people on the phone, she's talking to the kids,
she's painting the ceiling — (Laughter) she's doing open-heart surgery over here. If I'm cooking, the door
is shut, the kids are out, the phone's on the hook, if she comes in, I get annoyed. I say, "Terry, please,
I'm trying to fry an egg in here." (Laughter) "Give me a break." (Laughter) Actually, do you know
that old philosophical thing, "If a tree falls in a forest,
and nobody hears it, did it happen?" Remember that old chestnut? I saw a great T-shirt
recently, which said, "If a man speaks his mind in a forest,
and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?" (Laughter) And the third thing about intelligence is, it's distinct. I'm doing a new book at the moment
called "Epiphany," which is based on a series
of interviews with people about how they discovered their talent. I'm fascinated by
how people got to be there. It's really prompted by a conversation
I had with a wonderful woman who maybe most people
have never heard of, Gillian Lynne. Have you heard of her? Some have. She's a choreographer,
and everybody knows her work. She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera." She's wonderful. I used to be on the board
of The Royal Ballet, as you can see. (Laughter) Gillian and I had lunch one day.
I said, "How did you get to be a dancer?" It was interesting. When she was at school,
she was really hopeless. And the school, in the '30s,
wrote to her parents and said, "We think Gillian
has a learning disorder." She couldn't concentrate;
she was fidgeting. I think now they'd say she had ADHD. Wouldn't you? But this was the 1930s, and ADHD
hadn't been invented at this point. It wasn't an available condition. (Laughter) People weren't aware they could have that. (Laughter) Anyway, she went to see this specialist. So, this oak-paneled room,
and she was there with her mother, and she was led and sat
on this chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes, while this man talked to her mother about all the problems
Gillian was having at school, because she was disturbing people,
her homework was always late, and so on. Little kid of eight. In the end, the doctor went
and sat next to Gillian and said, "I've listened to all these
things your mother's told me. I need to speak to her privately. Wait here. We'll be back.
We won't be very long," and they went and left her. But as they went out of the room, he turned on the radio
that was sitting on his desk. And when they got out of the room, he said to her mother,
"Just stand and watch her." And the minute they left the room, she was on her feet, moving to the music. And they watched for a few minutes,
and he turned to her mother and said, "Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick. She's a dancer. Take her to a dance school." I said, "What happened?" She said, "She did. I can't tell you
how wonderful it was. We walked in this room,
and it was full of people like me — people who couldn't sit still, people who had to move to think." Who had to move to think. They did ballet, they did tap, jazz;
they did modern; they did contemporary. She was eventually auditioned
for the Royal Ballet School. She became a soloist; she had
a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet. She eventually graduated
from the Royal Ballet School, founded the Gillian Lynne Dance Company, met Andrew Lloyd Webber. She's been responsible for some of the most successful
musical theater productions in history, she's given pleasure to millions, and she's a multimillionaire. Somebody else might have put her
on medication and told her to calm down. (Applause) What I think it comes to is this: Al Gore spoke the other night about ecology and the revolution
that was triggered by Rachel Carson. 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. There was a wonderful quote
by Jonas Salk, who said, "If all the insects
were to disappear from the Earth, within 50 years,
all life on Earth would end. If all human beings
disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years,
all forms of life would flourish." And he's right. What TED celebrates is the gift
of the human imagination. We have to be careful now
that we use this gift wisely, and that we avert some of the scenarios
that we've talked about. And the only way we'll do it
is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are and seeing our children
for the hope that they are. And our task is to educate
their whole being, so they can face this future. By the way — we may not see this future, but they will. And our job is to help them
make something of it. Thank you very much. (Applause)
and creativity curiosity education educational Innovation Ken Robinson school schooling system Talks TED TED2006 TEDTalks the you
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N D says:
Yo, YouTube, big brother, one = and only= humble request, can you please, please, please, put this video in the recommended list for all, absolutely all people who are say between 20 and 65 years old. if only 0.1% of them watched it and if it resonated with only 0.1% of these people, then one day, hopefully not too far from now, things might start to get a bit better of us ll, m just saying yo.
Ishika M says:
Yes, schools kill creativity. Indian education is not adding any value to children nowadays. Schools like Flintoclass https://www.allabtyou.com/startup-stories-india-flintoclass/ who professionally designed the education keeping in view the needs of the children who will grow into adults in this automated world. The amazing thing is this school also has its own product Flintobox https://www.allabtyou.com/education-startup-stories-flintobox/ which is a subscription activity box which includes games and much more. They keep the children engaged not busy.
Lieke says:
Maximus Gigantos says:
British sense of humor is the best
SteveKujo says:
This video should not even be 20 minutes. It should've been 2 seconds with just a simple Yes
Duane Mcgoff says:
Best ted talk I have ever heard
Falcoon da goon says:
Felt like standing up to applaud after watching this
Produtividade Máxima says:
School is still killing creativity…
THE GUY says:
The simplest film on how schools kill creativity https://youtu.be/til8q7fHgRU
Jay Muller says:
Kids are brainwashed in schools by liberal and socialist teacher starting in grade school.
Aram Diarbian says:
I forgot 75% of what I learned in high school. The other 25% that I remember is useless.
A decade later and nothing has changed
kissingbullets says:
school makes me want to kill myself. I want to feel freedom for once
M1NDF1V3D says:
that guy's a g (kingsman for sure haha)
kendra scott says:
14:57 Jeff Bezos (on the right side, third row, laughing hard)
December 2017. Almost 11 years since this talk, and it's true.
Matthew Mc says:
Yes, and the soul.
aerozg says:
Clap clap. 12 years have gone by, we're still in the same boat.
Beverley Harrison says:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIDLcaQVMqw&fbclid=IwAR0pAJBRX9ATAJ2xtY6rgAngckfQ-JC5RVnL1ChIS-Pb7QX792jIXj6sSY8
SJM says:
Wow. Having a teenager in pre-professional dance training I can relate to everything that is said.
RIP Gillian Lynn.
Bruno Lucas IM says:
Totalmente de acuerdo. Quieren borregos
Joe Conway says:
Conwayjoe
Supa Derrick says:
15:00 the guy looks like jeff bezos
Jinmyoung Lee says:
Such a brilliant and correct speech. Totally agree to him as an average korean citizen living in 2019. Splendid of the fact this was addressed more than a decade ago. Hope to become a introducer of his idea to korea. However it is a little ironical that i would probably need a ph.d to make myself persuasive.
ElectricPerson says:
Ryoma Haruno says:
Out of everything we've worked to improve the thing that pretty much determines the future is the one thing we don't improve.
Philosophy BA says:
Public schools yes.
Seaque says:
The fact that any masterpiece is timeless. The speech is from ten years ago but still there is no clue that it's been a decade. (Forget video quality)
Most enjoyable, and true. Thank you.
Nobody expected the spanish inquisition says:
This dude will be labeled as a hero!
Tee Abbs says:
:Nobody knows how the God looks like
: They'd in a minute.
Rodney Marshall says:
Superb speech.
ThatsAweirdway says:
Graduated college 4 years now with an accounting degree and now I'm washing dishes for $17 an hour… thanks school.
susan charlton says:
Schools are there to condition the people to be compliant. It takes 12 years for the mind control of some. Watch the Thrive Movie https://youtu.be/lEV5AFFcZ-s
Nigel Anicette says:
Wow! I never thought of it that way. School is killing creativity. It's true, they don't really inspire you to be someone like an artist because of a low salary and they want you to get a "real"job just because of that. The schools really need to inspire the students to be creative.
S Freeman says:
12 years later and his speech is even MORE powerful and relevant! Yet here we are beating the same dead horse, and expecting a different outcome…the very definition of a fool.
Young's says:
I'm watching this once a day.
And it has been over a year.
Hailey Poblete says:
School killed my will to live
슬픔의브금빌런 says:
BrilliantBravura says:
anyone watching in 2019?
Zorlok says:
Why is this video square? It used to be rectangular.
YangdaY says:
12 years later, I still get goosebumps!!!!!! #inspirational
B F says:
How would I go about citing a TED talk in a school paper? Any ideas? Also, I think home schooling is the way of the future.
Alvaro Romero says:
Thank you for your conference Sr Ken Robinson. I´m watching this video in 2019.
Irwin Fletcher says:
Truly brilliant! And if you have the means, don't trust the government (public schools) to educate your children so you can drive a luxury car and live in a million dollar home, as you have your priorities backwards.
Nitrous7000 says:
This speech is amazing but he looks like Kenneth Branaugh
Lana Banana says:
Now I get it why I don't like nothing at school, and I wait all day to go home and paint or write
Non Pervenuto says:
this is the stuff legit dumb people watch so they can convince themselves they aren't dumb, just misunderstood or cheated by "the system" lmfao
Sara H says:
School in general is stupid. This year in algebra I learned the quadratic formula. When am I going to use that? On the algebra regents of course! But that's it. I read poems in English this year. When did I use those? On the final exam. That's all we do. We learn some useless stuff and then take a test that doesn't even test if we understood what we learned! No the state tricks you, they word it in a confusing way just to see how smart you are. I have absolutely no talent in school I'm not good at any subjects. So where am I going in life? To college because that's what's expected and that's how you make a living (if your lucky). What I need to learn for the future I haven't learned and won't in school. I learned useless stuff I've already forgotten a month out school. Out of school when am I going to speak Spanish, use any math formulas, get quizzed on who Martin Luther is (Not MLK), write a sonnet, or have to know ANYTHING with a cell. School is just a waste of time. SOMETHING, ANYTHING NEEDS TO CHANGE.
Sorry for my 3:45 am Ted Talk
Hache says:
Laughs are so annoying
jijojo e says:
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up your men to collect wood. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
singer 27 says:
#FuckSchool #DontStayInSchool
GOD Particle says:
Welcome to the 240p world
Daniel Celis says:
Good talk alfred
Ace Of Spades says:
Yes, in fact I have once thought about dying so I won't go back to school. Not wanting to read or write about something but being forced to do it anyway, everyone does the same thing, learning things you don't need later in life (I have never once in my 2 years out of school used algebra.) In fact they never taught us once how to pay bills or court contracts, never learnt how to take out a loan. But hang on a second, I'm gonna try to find the animation that has one of the best descriptions of school, when I find it, it will be in my replies.
루룰루 says:
sbs가 왜 이 강연을 차단하는겨 ㅡㅡ
Wayne Rimmer says:
Tina Aoro says:
I agree with this man.
Jiangyuan Wei says:
I think the all the thing I learnt from school is useless
JIAYI HE says:
Totally I agree with him. Just like what he said was that all kids were like artists. And the 3D(Diverse, Dynamic, Distinct) he mentioned was quite amazing. That will be a guide for the movement of education system.
Keyboard Dancers says:
15:19 exceptional anecdote
R R says:
Education contradicts itself all the time. All my life I've been taught to write long papers with no less than X amount of words and X amount of paragraphs and X amount of pages. Now that I'm in college learning how to write novels and scripts, they tell me I need to be more concise.
Thanks, school ??
Adele D says:
Dude with no creativity is talking about creativity
Dark Soul says:
?????????? ??
Eto says:
I TOTALLY agree and you'd be surprised at a song I made about Creativity, just out of the blue. I just posted it on my channel
Saeed ibrahim says:
It's really wonderful
ESSKEETIT Lil dumb says:
Dude.. I am here from Linkin park's liked videos!!
brian nguyen says:
One step at a time, there is a lot of old comment here about nothing have change. I can only ask 1 question back "Is it?" Back to what Sir Ken said, the education intuition only exist for less than 200 years. Evolution take hundred to million years. We do we pessimistic about only 1 decades or 12 years. We all should think of change as something slow and ever flexible not about whether or not it really appearance right now. Trump maybe our president now, but soon he will not be. If lest decade not work, then let try next decade. I'm right now 27 years old, and I promise you in next 2 decades or 4 decades, the landscape will be difference; even if just a little. If not, my nephew, who is now 2 years old, will be make the change 2 to 4 decades afterward. If not, my grandchildren, who is not yet been born, will be make change 2 to 4 decades after that. Life go on. Change start with 1 then to 2 then to 5; it an exponential equation not linear.
Richard Bowers says:
"The teacher will not appear until the student is ready."
Maple Leafs says:
SÜLEYMAN ŞAH ¿? says:
Çevirisini YAPIN YAAA
Lox says:
5:53 some people just don't believe that they can do something amazing.
BestmanPi says:
Eso de que las escuelas matan la creatividad lo digo yo también. Como suelo decir, en la escuela, en lugar de enseñarnos, nos amaestraron.
Shatha Saadeh says:
What's good to hustle if your mentality caged in
Gordon Barnes says:
I've always been a creative person, and I've found that letting me do my own work and solve problems myself is so much better than simply being a memory machine in front of a whiteboard. And trust me, I've learned more about economics in a twelve minute YouTube video than I ever did in my Economics class. School is not where you go to learn. It's where you go to comply and memorize verbatim and numbers. You got the right answer? Doesn't matter because you factored instead of using the quadratic formula. Art classes were my favorite, because at least I felt a bit of freedom there. I could actually put myself into my work instead of just copying literatim from a textbook.
ShubHam Maurice says:
15:00 Is that eff bezos..btw nice ted talk
Shanika Kelly says:
No wonder I always fall into a deep depression by the end of the school year
Ng D Manh says:
PAVANZYL says:
I have just retired from teaching in "higher" education. I agree with the idea if educational inflation. If everybody is special, nobody is special. If everybody has a bachelors degree, it is meaningless. However, smartphones are also destroying education as celebrities and their doings and screwings are what drives the conversation. And egotism – "my likes" are more than yours… Glad to be old!
PS: I live in South America.
Robert Dibisch says:
2006 more like who cares gramps
Evolved Copper says:
As a kid of a teacher I was always interested in "the way education is handled". School doesn't bury us, a system that doesn't innovate, doesn't develop talents and is too inflated does.
In school my will to be creative really got shattered. Only when I got out I tried to spark it again, truly difficult
Any person that dismisses intelligence in a form other than academics clearly lacks it
Hindu Goat says:
schools are built on conformity
conformity is the opposite of creativity
James Anti says:
My artsy teachers enabled my creativity but the higher ups looked down at me and criticized me
Irene Davo says:
Never heard of Sir Ken Robinson til today
F R says:
I come back every other year when I need some Inspiration° for me this is the most brilliant speech ever!
SuB SONiC says:
A strange and largely pointless talk. Being creative is nice but most of us arent creative or dont care. Finding your niche is nice too, but you cant guarantee you will find it soon or ever.
Random rebuttals:
Primary and secondary education exist to give us all a common context. If kids cant read, write, do arithmetic, or dont know the important moments in history or how government works, they will create a poor society of people who cant communicate or interact with each other properly.
At the optional tertiary level, you can get a liberal arts degree for a fairly holistic education or a technical education if you are more practical-minded. Neither path necessarily leads to merely being a university professor. The professorial path is usually for those who want to give back after a successful career, those doing research, and those professional students too afraid to ever leave school.
There isnt a society on earth or in history that has demonstrated a widespread aptitude for being creative. While the speaker admitted that kids being wrong isnt the same as being creative, he nevertheless failed to give an example of kids being genuinely creative rather than being wrong. Adorably wrong, yes, but wrong nonetheless. Again, basic education exists to put us all on the same page or context. Kids dont know anything so you must constantly teach them what is real or imaginary, right or wrong, cheap or expensive, etc. And like pet dogs, children constantly yearn to learn these things.
As for the dancer he spoke of-totally irrelevant to creativity, but anyway… she was clearly an exceptional case, like steve jobs or bill gates or einstein or any other genius who didnt make waves in academics but blew their niche out of the water. How many parents joining the standing ovation would be happy if their kids dropped out of college to start a dumb business or try to make it in pro sports? What if the dancer had suffered a career ending injury? On the other hand, nothing short of brain trauma will ever take away your education.
The opening and most nonsensical claim: we dont know what the world will be like in 5 years.
Well… obviously? Hardly a new issue. We do the best we can and work within our limitations. This would only be a problem if you didnt teach your students critical thinking, which is actually possible, unlike teaching creativity.
And yea, he totally ignored physical education, so it will continue to be neglected and underdeveloped, so adults will continue to not know how to stand or sit or pick things up properly, how to swim, run, jump, defend themselves if bullied, fall without injury, strengthen their core muscles, etc etc. Never mind that such education would he more effective than medication at lowring incidences of lifestyle diseases and overuse injuries.
Stop kidding yourselves. Education doesnt need a new paradigm or new methods. It just needs a revised and updated curriculum. Few people need more creativity. Nor do we all need to follow some grandiose dream or discover some innate talent. Just perfect what is already in the system.
Kevin Rustles says:
[WHEEZING INSTENSIFIES]
Nicky Baillargeon says:
when i was younger i was super into writing and photography, but now that i've been in middle school/ high school for awhile i'm fucking miserable i can't think of anything
김미리 says:
William Koscielniak says:
School kills everything. Creativity, The Soul, Self Esteem, Individuality, Innocence, Critical Thought, etc.
Jaxson Burke says:
For me, school killed absolutely everything. They made learning new things feel like a job or a strenuous task. It felt more like a conveyer belt; just come in, get the work, do the work, achieve a passing grade, off you go. Wanna hear the ironic part? I went to a public school system that's consistently ranked in the top ten in my state. Ever since I left high school, I've never been more curious about the world. I enjoy exploring different fields, reading about stuff I never thought I'd care to know about, etc. It's taught me how one's surroundings can drag a person down. In the six years since I've 'graduated', I don't feel burdened by a system that promotes conformity over individuality. Don't get me wrong, I had some wonderful teachers but most of them were such blowhards who had no business being educators teaching a dull and meaningless curriculum.
Joshua Marcotte says:
17:40 spit the truth. I took the pill; I calmed down… :/
Also; COLLEGE IS NOT NECESSARY. I had full rides all over the country. Guess what? I'm an uneducated welder and I'm happy. 🙂
The Chrononaut's Wifey says:
Somehow 1/4 of my education 8th-12 grade was all concert and marching band. I was blessed.
KILLERROBOT99 says:
Schools definitely try to force kids, who will be the next generation, into thinking and doing how they want them to.
Require them to learn what they want them to learn and teach with a force of making them learn and be correct. But if they try to be creative or try and get it wrong the school thinks two things:
1. They aren't trying or don't care about learning.
2. They aren't trying hard enough, so they are wrong.
I failed certain classes in school, like Languages, Literature, etc… and I was told "If you don't try hard enough, you won't get anywhere in life.", which is a terrible thing to say to someone who is "learning what they want to do".
I wanted to be an Engineer but my school system told me it would be impossible if I don't learn what they said I needed to learn. So I changed my wanted career probably 5 times. Eventually in HS, I said "I'm going to join the military." and guess what the system said? "You will just be wasting your life."
Well fast forward again, I did join the military. I served for 4 1/2 years, until sadly I lost my leg. Well I went to college for a few years after my recovery, got some certificates and now Fast Forwards to now. I'm 32 and own a company that has been going solidly for years.
So to the school system that said "You will get nowhere in life", "you will waste your life", and "You won't get anywhere with that attitude." F*** You
Pahari Mini says:
If you are not prepared to be wrong, you can't come up with anything original … Wah … 100% right
Alice Wilde says:
'public education is a long university entrance exam' brilliant
no such thing as talent or intelligence either God is with you or he isn't
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