Do Schools Kill Creativity Essay

There seems to be no perfect answer to the question, “What is the purpose of education?” Every expert and activist probably has a different answer. Martin Luther King said the purpose of education is to, “…enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life (King, 1947).” Eleanor Roosevelt argued that the purpose of education is good citizenship (Roosevelt, 1930). Others, like Newman (2006), posit that education is a much broader idea. It is the “entire process by which a culture transmits itself across a generation” (Newman, 2006). In trying to form my own idea of the purpose of education, I tried to look at all of these ideas

Malcolm X once said “education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today”. From adolescence to adulthood almost every person is put through schooling. As one gets older in age, the education they obtain becomes more rigorous in order to stretch their minds far beyond two plus two or what color the sky is. The strategies of critically thinking and being able to analyze/decipher information in front is them is reinforced routinely in the educational system. With this being said, the purpose of education is to aid in enhancing one’s qualification, socialisation, and subjectification skills within the society regardless of how or where one’s education was obtained.

But to fix the problems and to serve the students we must first have a vision of what good education is (Ravitvch). What is a good education? A good education isn’t just learning and comprehending, a good education should also teach us how to work well with others, to use our common sense, to expand our range of friends and how we think. Now, what are the goals of a true education? The goals of a true education are learning how to work for yourself by yourself, to grow and adapt as a whole person, to build up your character, and to have a desire to learn more. If our schools were to meet the goals of a true education, it would leave us with a thirst for knowledge that leaves you restless at night, that only education can fulfill.

There are many studies that show that high stakes testing can affect how students learn how they see their schoolwork as less about learning and more for grades and practice for the tests and finals. The reason I think this is happening is because teachers, parents, and schools have such a hard focus on getting good scores on their tests because it is sort of like a trophy or accomplishment for the schools,teachers,or parents if their students or children have good test scores. Schools often have to show the county school board they are having a higher success rate than other schools so that they will receive more funding than the other schools; this is shown in the cheating scandal in Atlanta a few years back. Good exam scores are seen as

When a test determines if you pass a grade or have to take the a course over, teachers tend to teach students only what they need to know to pass. Teachers have to “teach to the test” which means that they have no room in their lesson plans for activities such as art and music which encourage and cultivate creativity. The instructors must teach the “right” answer and in doing so punish children for the seemingly incorrect one, the one that is not so much wrong as creative (Shellenbarger 2011). When creativity in students is not fostered, it dies, decreasing individualism. With standardized tests come standardized learning, and with standardized learning comes standardized children who are no longer free to live through childhoods that are uniquely theirs. Yes, there is the possibility that a child could strike out on their own and create an inimitable life, but without the opportunity to nurse their creative tendencies due to an overabundance of structured class time spent “teaching to the test”, the chances are extremely low

Standardized tests don't inspire teachers nor students to go beyond what is expected, making them nothing but the common human being. Senior Fellow, International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE), Sheninger, Eric says” “Standardization follows in the footsteps of a century-old education model focused on industrialization, which influences teachers and administrators in a way where the artist in each of them never evolves. This entrenched system produces students that lack creativity, are fearful of failure, work extremely hard to follow directions (homework, study for tests, not question authority), and are leaving schools with undesirable skills in a post-industrial society.” Many artists, such as myself, have been forced to do long nights of stressful math homework, mix with chemistry or writing a haiku. These activities causes our brains to overload as well as our time, leading us artists to not be able to develop our talents and create the non-created. Artist are just an example, but there are many more

I would agree with high stakes testing being a major obstacle in education. With high-stakes testing present, schools are creating a completely different environment that many students do not want to go to. A lot of students may be really good students in the classroom, and may not be good test takers, which makes the situation even worse as more tests are being given to meet the state standards. By creating this kind of evironment at school, students attitudes towards learning are completely changing because we are focusing too much on scores and not on what is being gained through teaching in the classroom. No I am not saying that tests should not be given at schools, but I am saying that the amount of testing needs to decrease, which

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

Ken Robinson thinks schools are degrading the creativity and talent of children ,but that statement is false. Schools are suppose to be a preparation period to get ready for adulthood. Not something that teaches kids about unrealistic standards about the world. School is used to teach us about the things that you will likely need in most jobs. Schools also teach people logical reasoning from right and wrong ,and they do NOT kill our creativity.

The Industrial Revolution was one of the most significant developments in America History; it was the era in which the country supplanted itself as one of the world’s leaders. It is no surprise than that the education system still reflects that era. That is to say that the education system promotes knowledge in math and reading and not skills. Frederick Taylor calls it scientific management, that practice of educating students in order to succeed in America’s new factory oriented economy. This thought has been echoed in the present day by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, well-known entrepreneur and multi-billionaire, who has said knowledge workers are needed to make America more competitive on the global scene. In a similar way the Bush administration in 2001 launched the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA), which essentially made the function of the American education system based on standardized testing. The overarching idea of the act was to make reading and math the most important subjects in school while testing them continuously. This is a dangerous precedent because students have been turned into test taking robots, incapable of creating new and meaningful ideas. Without creativity students will lose the motivation to learn, or even attend school. Students already lack the will to be in school each day and by focusing solely on teaching toward the test it is easy to estimate this will only get worse. Since the focus is on testing

Remember being young and pretending to be an astronaut travelling in space? Is it a coincidence that the majority of the population of children love to invent characters, act, and draw with markers all the time? This was a point in life characterized by play and personal exploration where no one had told us how to use our imagination or had taught us the theories of others at the expense of our own creativity. But what does it mean to be creative? It means having the natural ability to view a concept from a different angle, like seeing a work of art on an empty canvas. So what is it that threatens us to faintly carry this natural capacity throughout adulthood? The answer is school. The system of education is an immense inhibitor to our innate ability to be creative. As students progress from year to year, they are stripped of their innovative minds (or their innovative minds are stigmatized) through the hierarchical organization of subjects, the reliance on a homogeneous curriculum, and the stigmatization of mistakes.

With pressure to perform well on a standardized test, regardless of external factors and whether the student learned the material present on the test, stress and anxiety levels of students and instructors could escalate. Standardized tests remove creativity out of education by creating an unrealistic, one-track way of learning. Standardized tests fail to measure the creativity of a child. Although not a math-whiz or future English major, a student still possesses qualities necessary for success because every student excels in certain areas. One test score cannot prove a student thrives in one subject and lacks in another.

In almost every culture and in all parts of the world, getting an education is valuable to a person’s future. But what is it that makes education so valuable? What is the purpose of an education starting from the early stages of a child’s development into adolescents, and from adolescents into adulthood?

Ken Robinson was an effective speaker and made some really good points on how kids lose their creativity over time as their education continues. He talks about how to be original you have to be human and make mistakes, but schools are now engraving into the children’s head that mistakes are the worst things you could do. As stated in 5:45 of the video by ken, “If you don’t prepare to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original”. Being original is the key to creative but not a single person can make their dreams come true without making mistakes and education prevents kids from even trying to make mistakes.

This was mentioned by Ken Robinson in two of his Ted Talks. He spoke of how schools are killing creativity and