1 September 2008

Do schools kill creativity?

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.

If you have not visited the TED website before, please do. TED means Technology, Entertainment, Design - an annual conference that attempts to provoke and inspire by bringing together some of the world’s most influential thinkers and performers. There’s a lot that’s fascinating, and certainly, a lot more that won’t necessarily go down well with everyone. But there’s so much that are provocative in the best ways.

Here’s a talk by Sir Ken Robinson that’s simply titled, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” Now with a title like this, you wonder if there’s something that might resonate with homeschoolers.

Sir Ken argues that we’re living in a world where our definition of intelligence has shifted, and where paper degrees do not mean as much as they used to. He tells his audience that intelligence is (a) diverse - multi-facetted and varied, (b) dynamic - interactive, and (c) distinct - creative (“Creativity is having original ideas that have value”).  And creativity is sadly neglected in our schools today, to the detriment of society. Check out Sir Ken.

0