Monday, September 15, 2014

Schools vs. Creativity?

What are your thoughts regarding Sir Ken Robinson's video presentation regarding "schools killing creativity?" In your response, please reflect, think, ponder, question, or wonder. Please complete this blog response after watching the video.

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

My thoughts about this video are very mixed. I didnt think he talked much about school killing creativity other than when he mentioned the dancer. Other than that he was very hard to understand, not by the way he spoke, but the style that he spoke with. Even though I was confused it was a wonderful presentation and the story about the dancer was a great way to describe how schools "destroy creativity".

Anonymous said...

Sir Ken Robinson's video presentation on whether or not schools were killing creativity was a true statement. Schools are killing creativity when they put us in 1 hour classes and make us sit there and only use our brains. We do have elective classes that let you take dance, gym, or art but really math is counted more important than art ever is. Math is important and probably is more valuable than art but they don't give us enough art or dance. They make us take a certain amount of these classes but it isn't enough. The world is becoming bigger and with that we can’t just sit we need to move, give our brains a break. I am one of those people who has to do something if they want to think like do a handstand or move this gives your brain the time it needs to think and you think clearer, differently. In the video he also talks about being wrong through our education we are taught it is bad to be wrong through grades any bad grade you have is something you did wrong. Most teachers say they don’t care about grades only if you learn. Why can’t we stop the grades and all the competitions and just learn.

Anonymous said...

I thought that it was interesting that he stayed on topic and strayed a little. Schools do kill it for most kids unless you just keep on imaging the things in a world of your own then putting it on paper as a drawing then into words.

Anonymous said...

I believe that school is important but kids do need to have a bit more freedom, in school you are told not to get things wrong. Your afraid to get an answer wrong. I am more of a creative person then an academic person myself, I fidget and have trouble thinking in the same ways as others. I struggle in subjects like science and math but in my choir class I have the best time ever. In my art class as well. Not everyone is like that but some people are, some people need to have the freedom to be creative. Schools, in a way, take away that right to be creative.

Anonymous said...

I agree with what he was saying about schools killing creativity. I know from personal experience that joining any classes other than academic classes. I had to trade off hours just to be able to take choir because all of my time was taken up with math, LA, SS, science, french, lab and business. Even when i'm in choir we are only allowed to sing certain kinds of songs and we are afraid to make mistakes with the music just like in anything else. My generation has certainly been taught that creativity is a bad thing and that taking a risk when it could possibly be wrong is the worst thing. I love most parts of school bur I would definitely agree that school is killing creativity.

Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed listening to Sir Ken Robinson's video on "schools killing creativity". I think it was really interesting on the points he makes about children and their creativity. He makes a very good point on the fact that no one has any idea on what will happen in the future; not only in the real world but in the education realm as well. Robinson stated that education hits deep like religion” and I would have to agree with him. There is always a lot of debate about religion as there is for education. Another point he made that really hit me was that all kids have extraordinary talents. I firmly believe that as well. Robinson also tells the audience that children are not afraid to take chances and be wrong and I think that is something everyone can learn from children.

Anonymous said...

Re guarding the Sir Robinson video on "schools killing creativity" he makes an amazing point on how in schools children are taught to only use there heads and that the rest of the body is useless. He explains that math, science, and all the other subjects students study so hard on yet, dance and art are not even considered. Also, he makes the point that through public schooling teachers teach every student to be a professor in one of the subject in school. There is nothing available for the kid who wants to be a dancer and designer. Sir Robinsons thoughts on "schools killing creativity" are understandable and true to the public school system.

Anonymous said...

I agree that school are killing creativity because you are supposed to be focusing on your school work and how you do in school, getting good grades. I think that the schools that specialize in preforming arts or even any type of arts are good because then you will look forward to going to school and doing what you love to do. Also i think that being creative can help you in school because your projects will be more colorful and fun. Be more Creative!

Anonymous said...

I loved this video I think he had many really great points and it was extremely inspiration. It was really cool when he told some of the stories and the way he tied the into the points he was making. I agree with him that we are educating for certain jobs why can't we educate for all jobs or educate according what we want to do. The point he had about little kids taking more risks then adults do or people do as they grow older really made me think. It is very true, when we are little we don't care what others think or how others see us, we don't mind failing but as we grow older we are taught failing isn't an option. We are given tests that say if you fail you fail the class and you don't graduate. We are scared of what might happen if we fail rather then trying and learning from our mistakes. Ken was really inspirational and I really liked this video and all the points it brought about education and the way we live today. I wonder if this speech made anything change anywhere or if it made the educators think more about the way they are teaching.

Anonymous said...

School may kill creativity but school can help you get a strong education and give you the ability to have a good job. Without school our brains wouldn’t develop all the way because you don’t have math or english to keep you knowing proper grammar and knowing how to do simple math equations. Along with school creativity can come after school by showing your creativity through pieces of art or sports. You need to have an education because you need to get income and have enough money to function on a daily life. If you get a good education you will get a good job and you can still be creative on top of that. You can have school and still have a good creativity.

Anonymous said...

I believe school is a place where kids go to be told what to do. There are rules, do’s and don'ts, guidelines, and homework. Each day students will show up with different things on their mind. There are some kids who are too scared to even raise their hand because they don't want to be wrong. That should be a wake-up call to some teachers and administrators. If you have a class full of kids who are afraid to simply raise their hand, it shows how kids are changing these days. I think that the creativity, bravery, and creativity is gone. It is telling kids that they have to be a certain way to be right and perfect. There is no room for us to have our own thoughts and mindset. Everything is being controlled for us.

Remi said...

I truly agree with what Sir Ken Robinson had to say; school does kill creativity. Although I do agree with what he has to say, not everyone. I wish all people thought like him because this could change the world. There are faults with his and my idea of changing the world by changing education and being open to creativity. across it. The video has a total of 28,484,703 views, and there are over seven billion people in this world. For starters, not everyone is going to agree with what he is saying, and not everyone has access of this video and some countries can't even afford to have school in general. Some of the most creative and beautiful thinkers start out like a brand new knife. They are sharp and work well, then after going through school and being educated, they are dull and can barely even function like they used to because they have been used so often and occasionally incorrectly. Schooling isn't exactly fair. We aren't being taught things that are always necessary. It's what dull people consider necessary. Schooling needs to be changed and or country, or better yet, the world could be changed. Who knows, a cure for cancer could be invented, but we would never find out after being invalidated by what society, comprised of parents and teachers, who we must "look up to" and consider important.

Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed listening to Sir Ken Robinson's video. I do agree with him about "school is killing creativity."In school, kids are supposed to take multiple subjects in order to graduate. Some of the subjects kids enjoy and others are no importance to them. When getting a job, you need certain skills that relate to that job. Taking a math class when you want to become an author is not helpful in that case. Having ideas about one subject can be ruined when taking different classes. If someone is creative in one class, taking other classes that don't relate might cause them to lose their creativity on the things they love. What would be the point in taking so many classes, when you only need a couple to get a job in what you love?

Anonymous said...

Sir Ken Robinson's video showed how our school systems are run and how they should be changed to create a better learning environment for students. One of the quotes that he mentioned during his talk was a quote from Picasso. He stated that schools are killing the creativity and are not accommodating students that learn in a different way than other students. I think that the schools should have more classes such as social dance to help create the social aspect while still teaching in a different style to help other students focus better. Also, for our future careers we might not be using all of the skills that we learn every day. If someone wants to become a dancer when they are older, they should not have to take math every day and not be able to take a dancing class.

Anonymous said...

In the video the man states that we all were creative, outgoing, not afraid of anything. But as time went on we got shier and shier, thinking of what others think or do. We all try to achieve something but it is not alway easy. If you want to be a dancer you have to be the best of the best, if you want to be a football player you have to be great at that as well. All of this connects to educations and creativity because throughout education we lose our creativity. When we are young we have an abundance amount but we lose it. Imagine if we kept the same amount of creativity as we grow, how great would we be. Why we lose creativity throughout education is because we are always having to be excellent in math, english, science, history but in drama, music, PE we don't have to be excellent we just have to get by. With just getting by we lose our sense of creativity, losing what makes us different.

Anonymous said...

My thoughts regarding Sir Ken Robinson's video presentation regarding how "schools kill creativity", I would have to agree with him. Each and every kid in the world has there own talents, whether it be musically, artistically or even sport wise. Robinson quotes in the video " My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status." Sometimes education is constantly killing the creativity and talents of kids. Homework during the weekdays, but also on the weekends which hardly gives students the time to be creative and talented. I would definitely agree with Sir Ken Robinson all the way.

Anonymous said...

I believe in Sir Ken Robinson’s opinions. The education we get is teaching us to be a professor in every main subject we learn. But what if we don’t want to be a professor. What if what we want to be when we grow up doesn’t have as much learning as we are being teached. We don’t do the practice we need for what we want to do until college. That is 12 years wasted on something we may not need. Don’t get me wrong though I do believe education is very important. We don’t want to be stupid, but we don’t want to waste our time on a subject that won't help us reach our goals or reach our dreams. Now, the world made many things that help us at our daily life. But like Mr.Robinson's story about the ADHD girl, maybe medicine to calm us down or to change our personality is not good at all. That girl would never had found her true passion if she took a bunch of drugs each day to change her attitude. That is happening to us today. The society of education is teaching kids that this crazy part of you can and should be changed, but sometimes it shouldn’t. I wonder if people did what the wanted and got the education they need for their jobs during high school, not just college, more people would accomplish what they want to in life. But does society really change us? Is the education standards to high for some people? Could we actually accomplish what we want if they had classes for what we want to do when we move out of our parents house in high school? What if there was no education though? What would happen if we taught ourselves? If we never went to high school like we are now? Education is important, but could it be changed?

Anonymous said...

I believe that schools need to engage students in there creativity level. Most schools tend to teach the basics. They teach math, languages, English, history, and science. But students leave the school as seniors not knowing a thing about life or what they should do in life. It's sad to think that schools don't focus on the students creativity. Teachers believe that students should be more mature, but the more mature that we become the less creativity we have. As I look at people going through life, I realized that they are bored or are boring people.

Anonymous said...

I think that Ken Robinson's video regarding “school killing creativity” is very true. In his video, he is arguing that instead of putting students in classes for hours five days a week and make them sit there and use only their brains, we need to move. The difference in importance between math and all of our electives is too heavily different when they are both equally important. For example, in his video he told the story of the dancer and how everyone thought that she was sick because she was always moving. I think that when he told that story, he was trying to show that people are so old- school oriented and they expect people to sit in a class for one hour. But as the world is becoming more advanced, people need to realize that math and science aren't the only important things in school and that we need to move.

Anonymous said...

Sir Ken Robinson’s video embraces and talks about how schools are “killing creativity”. From this main topic it makes me wonder about what kids have had hidden talents, but then have gotten told to “stop fidgeting, hold still, stop drawing... and so on” Sir Ken Robinson talks about one example specifically, about this one dancer who was told she had a learning disability because she was moving around and not being able to focus enough during class. She wen to a doctor to see if something else was wrong, but instead she found out that she was a dancer. She later then got put into a dancing studio and when older opened her own dancing studio. This is one of probably many examples. So why in school do we have long period classes? Why is math given more credit than dancing? We sit in hour long classes every day, but then only have an elective class maybe twice a week. This is a question that I have on why academics such as math, English, science, and so on give more credit in school than art, dancing, soccer, and many others. School should be a learning place for people with many interests and not just with science, English, math, and many more.

Anonymous said...

I believe that Sir Ken Robinsons thoughts on how "education is killing creativity" is right. In Sir Kens video he tells us of a girl who couldn't stay still in class. Her teachers and parents believe she had ADHD but one doctor tested that theory by putting her in a room with music playing. She began to dance. She become an amazing dancer after her mother put her in a dance school. I don't think teachers and parents don't always realize that some subjects in school aren't always necessary for some kids. We don't need to waste time on things we will never use in the next 10 years. We should be given classes that will make us successful individuals. I think up until high school kids should be able to choose what classes they need to and want to express themselves and to succeed. We are told to do this and to do that but we aren't very often told to do what we want and that's where Sir Ken Robinson saw the problem. Can we change the problem? Or is our creativity going to be gone by the time we get out of school?

Anonymous said...

I think Sir Ken Robinson has a great thought process about all of this. I agree with him 100%, school definitely takes away creativity. I think in school now we are forced to stick to the four main subjects, math, English, science, and history. But why does someone who is really good at dance, or soccer, or painting, or anything have to take those classes? Like Robinson said someone who is good at dance should be in a dance class not a class like history. We need to expand the education system because not every kid is the same and some have different talents then others.

Anonymous said...

My thoughts regarding Sir Ken Robinson’s video presentation regarding “schools killing creativity” are that he is right. When he was talking about inflation in schools and how a GED does not get you as far as it used to, it made me question my future. 4 years of college used to get you a great job but now you would need possibly 6+ to get a great job. School makes it hard to be creative because of the strict guidelines and you might be afraid of being wrong even though you're just right in a different way.

Anonymous said...

I think that schools do kill creativity. My friend loves to draw. and anytime that she did during school the teacher always yelled at her. Also we have our core classes every day, each class one hour. But we don't have any creative classes like dance, gymnastics, or gy,

Anonymous said...

In this video, Sir Ken Robinson shares his very interesting opinion on today’s education system. His beliefs are very clear in which schools and students today are more worried about grades than the learning necessary to get to those grades. The true purpose of education has been marred by the pressing importance of grades and GPAs. In today’s society, education is evaluated by the number of paragraphs in an essay or the amount of equations one can solve in a certain period of time. This causes students to scrape mindlessly through, for example a math class, in order to obtain a good grade. Of course math, science, english, history, foreign language, etc. are important. However, if students aren't concerned about the actual material, what's the point of a good grade? Who’s to say that english or math is a more important skill to have then artistic or musical ability? Being creative, which is typically a result of participating in the arts, is a critical life skill. Creativity allows new ideas to be born, different problem solving methods to be nurtured, and new approaches to life that can’t be taught through traditional classroom curriculum. While it is important to be educated in traditional subjects, it may be as important to create a student who can think outside the box, and come up with unique ideas and solutions that would apply to society today. Some things like creativity just simply cannot be taught, but they can and should be encouraged and fostered through the arts.

Anonymous said...

As a child, your mind is free to roam, creativity is a prominent statement of all childhood but as we grow older, society tells us that creativity is not as important as I believe it should be which is why I agree completely with Sir Ken Robinson’s beliefs in his 2006 TED talk. During the conference, Sir Ken states that, “We do not grow into creativity, but instead, grow out of it.”, I personally have experienced this first hand. As a child I loved to be as creative as possible, I wasn’t one who did the project the same as every other first grader. Doing this however wasn’t getting me the grades I “needed”, so I became one who followed the instructions, getting less and less creative by the day. By the time I was in fifth grade, I was struggling, with teachers, with assignments, I was lazy and uncreative. Until one day, we discovered that two of my favorite teachers were creating a new school, one that I would come to attend through all of my middle school career. This school was different, this school supported creativity. Although many of my fellow classmates see this school as a “weird” school (which it was, I accepted that though) but I am glad for my time there. They taught me to be creative once again, and I wish that everyone someday finds someone or something that helps the rediscover creativity the way that Anastasis Academy helped me. Sir Ken Robinson is right, school has restricted many kids (too many kids if I do say so myself) from creativity, but I believe that one is never to old to replenish their stolen creativity.

Anonymous said...

When people think of there child's learning they want to believe that they will be successful in school and they won't have to focus and the negative things that in reality are happening. I know for me personally I wanted to fight me having a LD because I presumed it made me seem weak or not smart. By the time I was in 6th grade i knew that I would never be in any way shape or form the brightest kid in my class. Even though my parents said otherwise. They tricked themselves into believing that I could out smart all the others. They said I was extra smart because I had many LDs and I still managed to make it into to Aspen Academy. As my three years contained there I bargain to believe that I could over come the disability and told my self that I could do this that I want something more. Well as it turns out, it's still in the works in not the smartest nor the dumbest I have much room for improvement and much room for frailer

Anonymous said...

I feel like schools did kill creativity. Schools have kids take the required classes like English, math, world language, history and science. Kids aren't able to express their artistic abilities in these classes. I understand some kids aren't very good at drawing or painting but they could be really good at technical things or showing their artistic abilities in dance or acting or sports. They should have kids be required to be involved in one of these even if its not during the school day. This will encourage kids to get out there and make new friends. Also the kids that are more shy are able to get out there and do something that they want to do and they will be able to express who they are.

Unknown said...

Sir Ken Robinson's video made me think on how creativity is dwindling down, and how from my point of view is sometimes frowned upon. I was sitting in art class, a place where creativity blossoms and expands and considered a big part in many peoples lives. Then I overheard a girl judging these boys who had sang down the hall earlier that day. Her comment being very pungent saying "ewe drama kids" made me hesitant to share that indeed I am a drama kid. although this doesn't directly connect with Kens video, my example shows how kids can criticize and judge and how this can be another factor in how school is killing creativity. although this comment didn't affect me I am strong willed, but if I was shy I would have been afraid to share what makes me, me.

Anonymous said...

School killing creativity is a topic that has been discussed a lot, Sir Ken Robinson is just one of the many people that I have heard talk about it. My opinion on the subject is quite in the middle of both sides. I think that school kill a little bit of the creativity in people, but also they can help support the creativity. There are classes in most every subject that kids can take and further their education in that path and a lot of the classes are a fun and easy class. Further education in a subject you like will bring you a easier way to follow it and get a job. Also,live a happier life because if you are doing something you like as a job, you will never work a day in your life.