Are schools killing creativity?
<via Soulpancake>
***UPDATE: These clips were taken from a 19 minute speech at the TED conference in 2006, and can be found here.
This really resonates with what i’ve been reading lately about in my special education course. With “exceptional learners”, it’s important to focus on the abilities of the student, not just the disabilities. It doubly resonates in regards to having creativity educated out of us. I’ve recently been advised to read Mindset, by Carol Dweck. According to my source, there’s a good bit of psychobabble bullshit (what’s the origin of this phrase?), but it has some good things to say about having a growth mindset, not being afraid to make mistakes. Definitely something I feel like I’ve had educated out of me. Where’d the creative little GT kid go, the one who tried to make wax models of the atom bomb for class and built self-standing articulated ATST walkers from k’nex and my own imagination? I hope that geek’s still in here somewhere, I miss him. Anyone else feel like they’ve got their inner creative child gagged and duct taped in a car trunk somewhere?
Wow- that’s an amazing video! I haven’t ever looked at schools or the system in that way… will definitely explore this in more depth! Thanks:)
When I watched this video and read your post, something came to mind immediately. There’s a famous quote that’s featured in a lot of my friends’ social networking profiles:
“Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.”
While that’s an incredibly encouraging message, I feel like it’s just not true nowadays. We have doctors pushing drugs that “gag and duct tape” our most natural emotions, responses, and abilities. Being in a special education course I imagine you deal with this a lot.
It’s funny how our society sees children as innocent… but on the adjective spectrum, that innocence is taken to mean idiocy, naivete, stupidity, or disability. or should i say inability? i get so freaking mad when adults treat children like they can’t do anything or don’t know what they’re talking about. to me, children are like walking messages from God — and I use the term God loosely here as a reference to anything good, lovely, fearless, beneficial to the common good. The way they speak, the things they say, the emotions they so openly express. They teach us the simplest lessons that adults have somehow forgotten. Like being wrong. That’s okay. That’s how we learn. Yet we become so encumbered by pride, competition, so-called superiors… it’s difficult to get over because we are so afraid. When children are afraid, I feel like it’s less about what other people will think of them, but more about their capacity to respond to what’s going to happen.
Today in French Lit, I realized how much more engaged I am in something when I find out I am wrong. I also realized that I am that girl that raises her hand to try to answer every question. And you know what? 50% of the time I’m wrong. Maybe even more. But I ENJOY that. I enjoy not the act of making mistakes, but of recognizing them and remembering not to do them again.
As far as “exceptional learners” go, perhaps in comparison to children with so-called disabilities, I think I may have to write a separate blog about that. I have a lot to say.
I’ve heard that quote, a couple of my friends have used it. How our fear comes from the not being able to handle the potential face-melting power we are capable of. Is this really the case? Do we fear our awesome potential, or are we so crippled by the thought of failure that we don’t even make it off the starting line? So much of what I’ve heard from people involved in special education deals with not limiting the students because of their disabilities. As they say, a disability is the inability to do something, a handicap is a disadvantage imposed externally. A blind person is disabled, but in a dark room with a sighted person, they aren’t the handicapped one.
As for the negative taint of “innocence”, it so often seems that this refers to “innocence to how the world really works”, or “innocence from the soul crushing disappointment of the grown up ‘reality’.” “Aw, poor thing, she doesn’t realize that she can’t be whatever her little heart desires, the world runs on cubicle dwellers and suits and ties, not ballerinas and professional glass blowers.” As Mr. Robinson states, utility and production, the sweethearts of the industrial revolution, have become the guiding gauge for worth in education. Creativity is a non-tangible, not an interchangeable part, not a commodity we can crank out with efficiency and measure and calculate net worth of, so let’s do away with it. It’s like hearing that schools are cutting out art and language classes to focus more money on improving standardized test scores, or doing away with free time at recess because the creative playtime is too “unstructured” and not productive towards the childrens’ education. What do you gain by a standardized test? A measuring device to rate a school and secure funds? What do you lose by stripping away second language education and creative, non-testable courses? How can you measure the ongoing harm caused by educating the creativity and curiosity and multi-dimensionality out of the future population of America? Who knows.
As far as being wrong, I largely built my self-worth on being “smart”, having the right answer. It’s been a rough ride deprogramming myself from that line of thinking, I’m still struggling with it. The reality is, learning, creativity, creation in general is messy. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, the list of trite expressions goes on and on. I think the benefit of children and their “innocence” is that they have the luxury of learning to “make omelets” without worrying about paying bills, feeding children, meeting deadlines, and struggling with the pressure to perform. At least, this is the case with the fortunate ones. Unfortunately, the pressure to succeed academically trickles farther and farther down the grade levels, to the point of parents becoming neurotic over getting their children into the best preschools. It reminds me of the fact that human beings are one of the few animals with such an extremely extended adolescent period, unusual in the animal kingdom because most animals have to get on with the serious business of eating or being eaten as soon as they enter this world. The result is an extended period of learning and brain development, either a result of or necessity for our amazing brain capacity. What we’ve accomplished with this ever-growing pressure to succeed younger and younger is to devalue growth and learning from experiencing the world out of curiosity and exploration, and to place the nose of the child to the grindstone before they’re tall enough reach it. We’re hyperfocusing and retooling towards that which we can weigh and measure, at the expense of the sundry variables which evade measurement. This sounds like the recent complaints about the GDP after our recent financial snafu. An older but still salient example is that when the Exxon Valdez unleashed the massive, ecologically devastating oilspill off the coast of Alaska, the GDP of the area increased, as the influx of people to clean up the spill funneled money into the local hotels, restaurants, and businesses. Using a singular indicator to judge performance, such as GDP or standardized test scores, ignores so many other important variables, and focusing all efforts on improving said indicator at the expense of the others usually leads to a collapse when the “unmeasurable” foundations, weakened from neglect, crumble under the weight.
Wow, I didn’t plan on going off on that tangent, this almost became another blog post itself. Thanks for the thought provoking comment. I’d like to hear what you have to say about exceptional learners, you surely seem like the gifted type, like you’ve got something interesting to say. Enlighten me please.
[...] under construction, but it’s much more. This is particularly relevant, considering my response to Geena in the comments about school killing creativity, and about how the deadening view of [...]