In his interview with the Guardian, international education expert Sir Ken Robinson said:
"All children start their school careers with sparkling imaginations, fertile minds, and a willingness to take risks with what they think," he says. "Most students never get to explore the full range of their abilities and interests … Education is the system that’s supposed to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way inthe world. Instead, it is stifling the individual talents and abilities of too many students and killing their motivation to learn."
"It’s the system – it’s too linear"
Is it true, as Robinson argues, that schools destroy creativity? If so, what can be done to change it? If not, then what are people on about?
Let’s discuss!
The December Freethinkers’ Night is going to take place on Thursday, 30th December 2010 at 4 Points Bar & Restaurant, Centenary Park, Kampala, starting 6PM. Entrance is FREE.
Freethought Kampala 
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
December 31, 2010 at 3:04 pm
yossah godfrey
creativity has been about making mistakes and learning which ones to keep and there’s hardly any room for that. its a function of time yet the educ system often robs us of time. its so much about testing short term and long term memories, turning the brain into a storage device instead of a processing device. the “big daddy” mentality is also pounded into students robbing them of believe in self to solve issues…!
criques of the rocker feller and carnegie educ foundations in the U.S argue that the system was dsigned to ensure that humans arent capable of critical thinking thus producing gullible obedient sophisticated slaves.
changing it is down to individuals, educate yourself!
already filling my home library(@ 23) for my kids. non will step into those so called schools.
January 2, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Bruce Gorton
I think it is basically untrue.
Schools actually foster creativity.
They provide basic knowledge which can then be sparked into greater forms of expression, they provide socialisation with other children, and most importantly from the viewpoint of creativity they provide homework.
In my experience homework fosters a lot of creativity by having children come up with excuses to not do it, or for not having done it.
We don’t get creative when we have no limitations, we get creative in trying to subvert those limits.
January 3, 2011 at 12:14 am
James Onen
You might be accused of making an unwarranted assumption here…. that it is only through the formal state-regulated education system (the common understanding of ‘school’) that children can be provided with basic knowledge (which can then be sparked into greater forms of expression), socialisation with other children, and homework, etc. Surely it is conceivable that there might be other (and even better) ways of achieving this, no? And if indeed no, by which argument has the possibility of the existence of other ways been ruled out?
About creativity… all kinds of hardships ranging from poor climate, starvation, beatings, imprisonment, etc… also stimulate ingenuity on the part of the poor souls who have to endure those hardships, and minimise its negative effects by being creative. I’m not sure this would mean we’d need to advocate for people to be subjected to such hardships, would it? So when you say homework fosters creativity by children having to come up with excuses not to do it, you risk opening the door to the advocacy of all manner of otherwise undesirable hardships for the purpose of fostering ‘creativity’ in those who would want to avoid them.
I’m not sure I’ve formed a concrete opinion on this matter, but after much reflection I find that this issue is alot more complex than one might initially envisage.
My thoughts.
January 3, 2011 at 6:25 am
EB
The most creative Ugandans I’ve come across are uneducated mainly slum-dwellers — I don’t think this is by accident. Go visit any Kampala slum and you’ll find the most creativity in various areas (business, the arts, even engineering.) From production lines making brooms and shoe brushes to street performers acting out live plays.
Enter middle-class educated Kampala (where I’m from). The dullest most uncreative bunch you’ll ever meet. You’ll be hard pressed to find one inch of creativity from these self-important copy-cats who went to school and did their homework. And as Sir Ken points out, they were not like this when they were younger!
January 3, 2011 at 6:47 am
EB
This is one of the things I liked about studying law in my under-grad. Law is one of the few University courses that encourages and rewards creative thinking. You are told, “Here are the principles, here are the laws, here are the facts … be creative.”
In fact, I found, come exams, the more creative you were the better you did. The less creative, the worse you did. As one lecturer repeatedly told us “Tickle my mind!” I would frequency enter the exam room, unprepared in the traditional sense and just winged it! Those were the exams I killed! The exams I over studied and crammed for weren’t that great. It took me a while to recognise that pattern.
In our exams/course-works/research, we were rewarded for *creatively* arguing and defending our positions backed up by facts, previous cases and statutes. Many students got the “facts, previous cases and statutes” part, then struggled with the “creatively” part. I think a lot of it had to do with our British-derived O and A level system that as Sir Ken points out, kills all forms of creative thinking. Law pre-dates the industrial revolution that O and A levels he argues seem to be catered for. Thats why most people struggle with the course.
By second year our class halved simply because the education system hadn’t prepared those students adequately. They simply couldn’t get the lecturers demands to “tickle our minds!”, and to their shock were kicked out of the course. While “unserious” students like me remained. Who didn’t study as hard; listened rather than took notes in class; worked part-time rather than joining study groups; brought up unrelated topics in class “If I write a song with someone, who owns it?” Traditional education doesn’t encourage or reward that sort of thing. This is the problem that Sir Ken highlights.
January 6, 2011 at 6:11 pm
YOSSAH
E.B so true on the creativity and slums, i researched and there is a positive correlation, Malcom x apparently left “sciences” bse they allowed no room for argument. i remember in my A level a teacher believed i was a 23 points plus material and was hell bent not letting me register literature, my beloved which told me that everything was right provided i proved so. “i came to school to succeed in life, not to pass exams!” was how i got this chap off my back. i recently launched a poetry collection,”IMMORTAL WHISPERS” and the nit wit shows up “i thought you did economics at the university” even my economics classmates and lecturers were like, why didn’t you do literature? even when German economist Allois shcumpeter stressed creativity’s pivotal role in dev’t a thing the NEW ECONOMY is pegged upon.
E.B i got a taste of law in my 1st year, business law, ‘simple’ as it was 3 quarters of the class had retakes! the damage has been done especially our system in ug, i find so many dudes who are afraid of there own thoughts! partly i believe b’se there thoughts were not approved by a teacher.