Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Before I begin, I’d like to thank the workshop organizers for inviting me. I’ll be talking about the controversial issue of whether the education system undermines creativity.
I have a deep interest in education; I think we all do, partly because it’s meant to bring us into a future that we can’t fully grasp. If you think about it, children starting school this year will retire in 2070. Despite all the expertise available these days, nobody knows what the world will look like in five years’ time. We’re here trying to educate them to make up the difference, yet the unpredictability remains extraordinary.
My belief is that all kids possess tremendous talent which we squander, ruthlessly. With that said, let’s talk about education and creativity.
In this progressive new age, creativity is now as important in education as literacy.
Over the past few years, I’ve been on many exchange programs. What I’ve noticed is that every education system on Earth has the same subject hierarchy. At the top are mathematics and science, followed by humanities with the arts at the bottom. Going deeper within that, there exists another hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally regarded more highly than drama and …show more content…
Number one- the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school; things you liked, on the grounds that you were never going to get a job doing that. Is that right? “Don’t do art, you won’t be an artist” Benign advice- now, profoundly mistaken. The second is academic ability, which has really dominated our view of intelligence. If you think of it, the whole system of public education is a protracted process of university entrance. And the problem is that many highly talented and brilliant people think they’re not because the things they were good at at school were actually stigmatized. And we can’t afford to go on that
I have a deep interest in education; I think we all do, partly because it’s meant to bring us into a future that we can’t fully grasp. If you think about it, children starting school this year will retire in 2070. Despite all the expertise available these days, nobody knows what the world will look like in five years’ time. We’re here trying to educate them to make up the difference, yet the unpredictability remains extraordinary.
My belief is that all kids possess tremendous talent which we squander, ruthlessly. With that said, let’s talk about education and creativity.
In this progressive new age, creativity is now as important in education as literacy.
Over the past few years, I’ve been on many exchange programs. What I’ve noticed is that every education system on Earth has the same subject hierarchy. At the top are mathematics and science, followed by humanities with the arts at the bottom. Going deeper within that, there exists another hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally regarded more highly than drama and …show more content…
Number one- the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school; things you liked, on the grounds that you were never going to get a job doing that. Is that right? “Don’t do art, you won’t be an artist” Benign advice- now, profoundly mistaken. The second is academic ability, which has really dominated our view of intelligence. If you think of it, the whole system of public education is a protracted process of university entrance. And the problem is that many highly talented and brilliant people think they’re not because the things they were good at at school were actually stigmatized. And we can’t afford to go on that