Do schools kill creativity?

Here is an interesting tidbit. Each year more than 50,000 mathematical papers are published and currently there are more than 1,000,000 of them out there. Most have a viewership of around 12 (friends and family) and a readership of about 6 (the faculty that sits at the researcher’s defense of his work).  

Mathematically at least, the rediscovery rate is probably greater than 50% - maybe even 80%. That, good people, is a humungous waste of human effort and world resources.  

This gives me a definite feeling of unease about exactly what this whole system of education is all about and where it is taking its practitioners, proponents and participants.  This means of course, that I am very worried about where 85% of all people in this world are going.*chuckles*.  Apparently I am not the only one who is peeing his pants over this issue. Below is a brief paraphrase from a talk given by one such bloke with some of my own observations thrown in.  The text is a hybrid of his thoughts and mine so don’t castigate the guy for my issues – heh. Enjoy *winks*

Liked that? Apparently so did 4,754,332 others. The world is not that bad eh? *chuckles* 

The children who are starting school this year will be retiring in 2066. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise out there, what the world will look like in five years’ time let alone 50 years time. And yet we’re meant to be educating them for it. The unpredictability is … um… extraordinary. 

Add to that the fact that through a targeted process, we are systematically suppressing the creative skills of children through our “one-size-fits-all” method of education and the ways in which we recognize the achievements of that process. Many children who are incredibly enabled and innovative are systematically weeded out by an education science and education process that mostly recognizes excellence if it is academic and if it falls within the framework of “the skills that are most in demand”.  As a result of this process of segregation and stratification our world is rapidly losing some stout human beings  who are not yaysayers to a system, who are not afraid to make mistakes and who are not afraid to be creative and innovative in their thinking while blowing up the school lab in the process. Most who thumb their nose at the existing guidelines for measuring intelligence are shut out, ignored, disenfranchised and marginalized. This goes against the very definition of intelligence which is clearly known to be diverse, dynamic, interactive and creative. 

This, despite the fact that we live in a world where the sum total of human cerebral effort is mostly to naught, where supposedly intelligent people who have worked their way “to the top” through academic excellence are now working equally hard to bring about its destruction. This, in a reality where endless rhetoric takes precedence over action. This, in a farce where a person who goes to a discotheque to lap dance is frowned on while an academic who goes there in order to write a paper on someone else lap dancing is smiled on. This, in a global situation where there is little creativity and no solutions to a world beset by multiple threats that can each, on its own, bring about Armageddon.  We have created, supported and lauded an education system where those who have the best chance of solving the world’s ills are shut out of having a go at it at all.  

Ken Robinson speaks from the heart about how precious, unique and beautiful our creativity is and how tenderly it should be nurtured. We are born creative, and are educated out of it. Funny... ... ...