Sir Ken Robinson: Schools kill Creativity

   After watching Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk on schools killing creativity, it helped me realize that many schools never come up with anything original. Many schools express apathy towards the fact that intelligence is distinct and not everyone is knowledgeable in the same way "Truthfully what happens is, as children grow up we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads. And slightly to one side." When Sir Ken Robinson said this, he meant that everywhere in the world, the only people whose intelligence was made known was those who were mostly left brained. Many right-brained artistic people, like Gillian Lynne, were always believed to have some form of learning disorder. "And she said it was interesting, when she was at school, she was really hopeless. And the school, in the 30s, wrote her parents and said, 'We think Gillian has a learning disorder.' She couldn’t concentrate, she was fidgeting". In the end, Gillian ended up simply needing an outlet to let all of her energy and creativity out that her school did not provide her. 

    Looking into the future, when schools are forced to take budget cuts, artistic and creative classes are the first to go. Due to these art classes going, many people do not know their potentials due to lack of exposure to arts. "The consequence is that many highly talented brilliant people think they're not". In Denver alone, many people are finding that their art programs are taking huge budget hits that they can't afford to take. Without these classes, many don't realize the talent that they have. Many may even assume their failures. Art classes in schools aren't even the only place where people are not seeing their full potential to those who are teaching them. Even in the dance world, many with talent are losing hope. Savion Glover, best known to many as the one who dubbed Mumble's taps in the movie Happy Feet said this in an interview from 3:11 to 3:45 on YouTube. 

" You have the talentless judging and the talent losing their hope"

Although the situation is not exactly what we see in society, Savion's main point was that those who are the ones who are suppose to present the future of dance on television shows like "So You Think You Can Dance" and "America's Best Dance Crew" are shutting down the talented although they do not have much right to. We see a similar idea happening throughout schools. Many people who are not aware of the creativity that some have are telling them that school is a struggle for them. 


     Throughout our world, Sir Ken Robinson observed that everywhere the importance of school subjects is identical everywhere. "But something strikes you when you move to America and when you travel around the world: every education system on earth has the same heirarchy of subjects. Every one, doesn’t matter where you go, you’d think it would be otherwise but it isn’t. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on earth." Even in America, I have noticed that more emphasis is placed on math and if you want it otherwise, then you better find a school that specializes in arts.