Conventional Education and Creativity

Nerdy parenting stuff alert! If this doesn't interest you, feel free to scroll down to the previous post, or click here, lazy fuck.

I heard a great lecture today from Ken Robinson, who did much to make me rethink the way I look at conventional education in this country.  I've been hearing a lot about opposition to 'No Child Left Behind' and against conventional education - and instead of just outright reject what they were trying to say, I thought I'd take a listen.  I'm glad I did.

Ken Robinson asserted that "creativity is as important as literacy" and creativity should be treated with the "same status."  In the world of conventional education, we are essentially killing our children's creativity.


Ken noted that throughout every culture in the world, there is a common hierarchy of education.  That hierarchy looks something like this:

1. Math 
2. Language
3. Humanities
4. Arts.
• Music
• Drama
• Dance
  

 Since public education really began to gain hold in the midst of the industrialism in the 19th century, our educational priorities were built around this.  Considering this - it's not very conducive to the natural rhythm of the human mind, unaware of any formal constructs of education.  We're all born as explorers; little scientists, hungry for creative expression, but through the eyes of educators, any deviation from the norm is seen as an obstacle.  It's said that with the way the universities are setup, you would think the final cause of a proper education would be molding the children of the world into little university professors.  Creativity isn't something you grow into, but something you grow out of, as the speaker suggests--and the way our system is designed, it stifles creativity, and asks for all to fall in line.

Ken tells an anecdotal story of teacher that asked her student what she was drawing.  The student said she was drawing "God."  The teacher responded, "But nobody knows what God looks like."  The child looked up at her and said, "Give me a few minutes and they will."

Our culture stigmatizes being wrong.  Creativity doesn't flourish in being wrong, but it does flourish where there are no preconceived boundaries on what's acceptable (using common sense, of course).

As obvious the need for an education that best preps us for a life in an industrialized nation, educating ourselves--and our children--should not be approached in a way that rewards children based on the memorization of facts and superlative test-taking abilities as "No Child Left Behind" seems to enforce.  What works for one child, doesn't always work for another.  This is obvious.  Not all children are created equal - and NCLB, I feel squanders the creativity in a teacher who is instead pressured to put all of their resources forward in extracting a level of performance that, in reality, is dependent on the inherent maximum abilities of each child.

The speaker cited UNESCO as stating that within the next thirty years, more people will graduate from universities than since the beginning of history.  Though on the surface, this is obviously a great step, it most notably  means that degrees lose their prestige and holding power because of their ubiquity.  Whereas a HS diploma used to be the epitome of a solid education, it's no longer now the case.  The BA is the new HS diploma and the MA is the new BA.  Our educational system is optimized to create a league of professors in world rich in diversity; comprised of a vast array of talents.

Mr. Robison closed with a story of a lady named Gillian Lynne.  Gillian had been taken by her mother to see a doctor because she had been underperforming at school due to her lack of focus.  She fidgeted often and was distracted easily throughout the lectures.  A.D.D. wasn't a known disorder in the 1930's, so the doctor didn't know what malady to ascribe to her.  He asked to speak to the child alone.  He turned on the radio, and left Gillian by herself for a moment.  He discovered that she wasn't sick - she was a dancer.  He later encouraged her mom to put her in dance school - this being her only prescription of conventional education.

Her mother enrolled her daughter in the Royal Ballet School where she later became a solo artist among other things, and later went on to to collaborate with a man named Andrew Lloyd Weber as the choreographer for Cats.  She's now a very successful multi-millionaire who simply does doing what seemed natural to her, and was only helped in the right direction.  Nowadays, most doctors would be quick to slap the child on the head, prescribe them with pills and send them on their marry way.

I'm not suggesting that I plan to buck the system and rip my child out of school because of a fringed view on educational reformation, but I still think it's something to take to heart as I try to help my child out, one-on-one.  It seems our children's 'ailments stand-out more when they starkly contrast with the pre-fitted template we're haphazardly asked to squeeze them into.

Maybe you have a different opinion?  After all, it does seem extremely counter-intuitive to think that conventional education could be stifling creativity--and I'd agree that my first knee-jerk reaction was that of 'poppycock!'  However, it's still worth noting that even Leonardo Da Vinci, the original renaissance man didn't stick to one subject; he dabbled in many.  Painting, sculptures, drawing, engineering - whereas nowadays, our natural explorer is suppressed and we're must decide a specialty at a relatively early age.  Most adults I know say they never dreamed of doing what they do for a living, they just sort of fell into it and stayed in it because it made sense at the time.

We are bound by a template of education supposedly best to prep us for a lifetime of specializing in something that we (for the most part) may not be the most passionate about.  If you're living your dream - (as I'd define as something you're surprised they pay you for) then I think you're extremely lucky.  But for the majority, a one-sized-fits-all approac
h to education is worth scrutinizing, no matter how uncomfortable, and counter-intuitive it may seem to do so.  Your child is worth it.





Source of notes:
See the video: Ken Robision's lecture, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"

ON EDUCATION; No Child Left Behind Law Leaves No Room for Some 

a 'sticky' situation

You might remember in 2002 when the Cobb County school district in Atlanta opted to circumvent a sticky situation between several parents and the scientific standards of their school board by inserting a sticker inside their biology textbooks that stated evolution was "a theory, not a fact" and should be "approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." Maybe not so surprisingly, the A.C.L.U. immediately accosted the school board for their overzealous impediment on the constitution, but the school board stated they were only wanting to assuage those parents who were pretty upset with what appeared to be a no-win face-off against evolution being promulgated in public schools.

In November of 2004, Clarence Cooper - a federal judge in Atlanta – began hearing testimony about this situation and in early 2005 ruled that the placement of these stickers within the textbooks violate the constitutionally mandated separation between church and state, and further, by perhaps putting much emphasis on the phrase ‘this is a theory’ aside the phrase "not a fact" summarily after--it appeared to have the possible, even if inadvertent aim, of dissuading the students from giving a respectable level of credence to evolution.

It was believed that the wording may very well play on the students' preconceived notions of what a theory is without giving much weight to the actuality of the rigorous standards a 'scientific theory' must withstand, and the consensuses that much be reached, to be labeled as such. A scientific theory isn't an arbitrary guess, after all.

Keeping that in mind, it’s somewhat fascinating that Florida's anti-evolution school-board members may have gotten far less than what they actually thought they were getting, and far more of what they don’t want.

Yesterday, By a vote of 4-3, the Florida school board members opted to have the word 'evolution' replaced with the phrase 'the scientific theory of evolution' as the meat of their compromise, thereby ironically using the powerful phrase ‘scientific theory’ as the opponents’ own coup-de-grace. Until now, Florida's schools weren't required to teach evolution. The old curriculum guidelines didn't even mention it by name.

Nice.


Additional resource(s):

The Oklahoma House of Representatives has passed a bill that says that a student can receive a passing grade in an Earth Science class if they say that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the Earth an hour ago, and then planted false memories into every single living creature on Earth to make it seem like they’ve been around longer.

Read the rest here.

(He's being facetious, but you get the point.)