Do Schools Kill Creativity? By Sir Ken Robinson

Children are no longer encouraged to be creative in the test prep environment. Instead, they are being taught to perform well on standardized tests and are labeled as unintelligent if they don’t. Young children are born with creativity and we see that when they are playing and pretending. According to Sir Ken Robinson, in Slon’s (2013) article, “by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity” to be creative. The fundamentals of creation and experimentation are not part of the standardized testing mechanism.

Kaufman and Beghetto (2014) further suggest that creativity can be fostered in children to a certain extent by providing them with opportunities to express their own unique ideas.

In today’s society students aren’t pushed in high school to pursue their full potential, which makes students think they don’t need to put hard work into school making them lazy. The outcome of this is bad grades and upset parents making them believe they aren’t smart and that is why they are getting the grades they are receiving. In actuality these students aren’t being pushed and the teachers aren’t tapping into their talents to show them the full academic potential they have.

Children’s creativity must be extended by the provision of support for their curiosity, exploration and play. They must be provided with opportunities to explore and share their thoughts, ideas and feelings, for example, through a variety of art, music, movement, dance, imaginative and role-play activities, mathematics, and design and technology.

Our educational culture only satisfies a select group of students who are at the top and leaves others behind. These book smart kids deserve to go where they are going, however, what happens to the kids who are not as book smart as others? Many students are having a hard time because they are not book smart even if they may be good at something that is not educational. As stated in Jack Schneider’s article, America’s Not-So-Broken Education System, “The education system simply stopped working. It aged, declined, and broke, but we can fix it by first ripping it apart” (Schneider Par 2). As of now, the education system is very unsupportive of some students and teachers. Backed by the government, public school pay does not support teachers in America while in other countries, being an educator is considered a privilege. By not supporting teachers, it is hard to find educators who are willing to put in the work to help their students. As a result of not having good teachers who are motivated to teach their students, it is also likely that the students that they end up having to teach are also unmotivated as well. In this cycle, some teachers and students gain practically nothing from going to school, which demonstrates the broken education system that we have at this time. The ever aging education system is not up to date with either

Creative learning is about how children are actively involved in their own learning, where they are given the opportunity to make choices and decisions which develops their problem solving skills and imaginative thinking.  It can be achieved through providing a creative environment allowing exploration through play.  For example the construction area, where children are given the opportunity to build with different objects and materials, using their imagination.

I am not attempting to prove that creativity and independent thinking are not essential for developing youth, in fact they are key to the functionality of every adult. However, school is a preparation for a career in the adult world. The American education system prepares students for what the working world values most, the ability to .Throughout childhood, there will be other opportunities for adolescents to mature in ways that are not addressed in

In this age of high-stakes standardized testing the idea of creativity in the classroom has become less and less popular. Susan W. Cress and Daniel T. Holm present a compelling case study for keeping creativity in the classroom in “Creative Endeavors: Inspiring Creativity in a First Grade Classroom” published online April 1, 2015 in the Early Childhood Education Journal.

This is because over the years the academic success found in the recent generations has dropped. The root of the problem that Richard Rothstein the author of, “The Myth of Public School Failure” has found is the lack of funding for public schools. Unlike the private schools briefly mentioned earlier the access to certain benefits are limited because the public education is catering the idea of “free” education for all. As most citizens know taxes are implemented to keep the education program going but it is not a direct fund like a private institution. Local government has control over implementing the curriculum being taught and how money is being divided. In the article, “The Myth of Public School Failure,” Rothstein argues that funding is being stretched thinly between special education, nutrition, and other various aspects of the system High school plays a significant role on the lives of an individual because there they gain knowledge on how to understand issues going on in the real world. Having educated citizens means having a well-rounded society. Having said that, it can only be accomplished if teachers are paid their worth, funding opportunities for students to receive real world experience, and qualizing school

When you look at present day education and compare it to education in 1900 or in 1950 there is a drastic change. In 1900, 78 percent of children ages five to seventeen were enrolled in school, 11 percent of children ages 14-17 were enrolled, and very few continues going to school long enough to graduate high school. Kids who did continue going to school still were not there everyday but were there and average of 105 out of 150 days. Imagine what that would be like in today’s age and what parents or teachers would have to say about that in today’s society. In 1950 education became more important and focused more on emotional, physical, and mental development as well as the basics skills, reading, writing, and mathematics. The number of high schools that furthered education started to increase. This could also be from school integration causing blacks and whites to be included in school together, but that still meant that more people were receiving higher education to help make a change in the world and have expectations and goals for the

According the most recent national assessment recorded in the Washington post, “the nations high school seniors have shown no improvement in math and reading performances since 2009.” In the most recent years, education has taken a huge downfall. Since 2010, over 45% of students drop out. Many students have problems with the grading system, so many different testing programs and having to follow a set of rules and not expand on those rules. The education system needs to induce more creativity, enforce the ways on how education is important and elaborate more on the rules of grading.

Creativity is equally as important as literacy, and we need to start treating it that way in schools around the world. According to Ken Robinson’s claim in his, “How Schools Kill Creativity” speech, he believes this to be exceptionally true. All children are creative and talented, however, we have grown up in a world where we believe that it’s wrong to exemplify our creativity. Robinson uses both, pathos, and ethos to help make his claim. He arises emotion in you; he causes you to really think, to trust him, and to question ultimately, how things are being done in the educational system. We as a world have become so consumed with the idea of putting each child into a category of what they’re going to be successful in, regardless of their creativity or passions. You’re either good at math, science, or English; everything is based on your academic ability. What happens then to the people who aren’t academically smart, but are more creative? They are then made to feel that what they have to offer the world simply isn’t good enough, but the truth is, it is good enough. Over time however, we are taught out of our creativity. Schools around the world kill creativity by instilling a sense of fear in the child that what they are doing, and how they feel is wrong, this ultimately discourages them, and they fall victim to the industrialized educational system that we have present day. Robinson believes now more than

Ask any highschool student what the powerhouse of the cell is, they’ll reply “Mitochondria,” without processing the question. Ask what slope intercept form is… “y=mx+b”. High Schoolers will be able to tell you the precise structure of an atom, or the names of all three ships Columbus sailed on in his exploration. Ask them why they have a social security number? What a credit score is? Or, how do you do taxes or apply for a loan? And they will stare at you in a blind gaze. If we take a step back and think of what we really learned in four years of high school… what does it amount to? What does a good education look like? Why are we questioned what number/percentage we received instead of what did we learn? Education today prioritizes what scores we receive instead of what we have actually taken away from the work, and fails to provide us with the most basic life skills that we need to succeed.

Creativity is the ability to produce work that is original yet appropriate-something that others have not thought of but that is useful in some way (Kaufman & Sternberg, 2007; Sternberg, 2003b). The significance of creativity for children’s development is very high. Creativity helps children develop the overall areas of development; physical, social, emotional, language and cognitive. A child learns to innovate as well as invent while doing creative activities. Through creative practices child finds multiple methods of looking at various situations, assessing these situations and finding new solutions. Children often desire to be able to express themselves without any

Getting an education from a school for some reason is considered the ‘key’ to success. The key to our life goals and dream jobs, but why? We are letting a letter grade determine if we are smart or unintelligent regardless of any other acquired talent. Ralph Emerson states in “The Education” text, “the power of performance is worth more than knowledge.” This quote is extremely powerful because it can relate to a child. From day one, children are taught what to think and what they ‘need’ to learn. They are being brainwashed by these schools that should be called factories. Schools kill any sense of creativity and reasoning because kids and teenagers are so overpowered with a fear of failing and letting a letter grade decide what kind of student they are. Failing throws a label on our forehead and lowers self confidence all because test scores are so highly looked upon and all that people care about. Sooner or later, we are going to all be considered robots if we continue sitting on the conveyor belt in a factory. This path is leading us in an opposite way of