Creativity is what ultimately nurtures innovation. And innovation is the future. The big question is – are creativity and innovation inherited in each of us? The answer is yes.
Sir Ken Robinson, a creativity expert, in his Ted Talk claims that no child, even the most seemingly gifted one, is exceptional during the whole childhood. In his speech, Robinson claims that every child has an exceptional creative capacity. What happens is that it is the school and adults who squander kids’ potential and hold them back from discovering their inner geniuses.
The first argument Sir Ken Robinson makes in his speech is that the modern educational system does not encourage mistakes. Initially, kids are not at all afraid of being wrong. But many of them lose this capacity.
“If you are not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original” – Ken says. If you look back at all the biggest inventions of humanity, you can clearly see that all of those have been made through sequences of mistakes. Thus, by making learners frightened of making mistakes, we kill children’s creativity.
In every educational system, there is a pretty common hierarchy of the subjects taught at school. The most important ones are considered to be math and languages. Then come humanities, whereas arts are typically at the very bottom of this hierarchy.
According to Robinson, when we start educating children, we typically focus on what’s in their heads, leaving the arts and creativity out of the equation. This way kids simply grow out of their creative capacities.
So, do schools really kill creativity? Apparently, the answer is yes. In schools, creativity and innovation are not encouraged. And there is no tolerance for mistakes. We also shove kids into limited frameworks of what is generally believed they will need in their future.
Finally, we tell kids who and what they can or cannot be way too often. And to ensure their successful future, as a teacher or parent, you can always change the way you think and give way to children’s creative urge.
