Schools Should Plead "Not Guilty" to Murder

Schools are meant to educate children in a wide variety of areas. Some areas of knowledge, however, are given precedence over others. In his talk entitled "Do schools kill creativity?", Sir Ken Robinson answers "yes." He believes that schools cater to the math and sciences, setting them a step above the humanities and several steps higher than the arts. Rather than educate all talents equally, education systems around the globe choose to focus on subjects that "will get you a job" and ignore others such as dance and drama, for which you "can't get paid." Schools kill creativity, says Robinson, and many of my classmates in Educational Technology agree.

On her blog, Jen Carlson "completely agrees" with Robinson on the issue of creativity in the schools. She feels like children are made to feel afraid of failure, that being wrong is awful. She also thinks that emphasis is placed on core subjects, like math and science, while others, like the arts, are not given any time because they're just "hobbies." Joyce Zhang provides similar arguments in her blog. With all the emphasis on certain types of education, she thinks that degrees in math and science are becoming less valuable. Like Robinson, she thinks that everyone is being pushed to get "more and more degrees," making talent in the more strongly emphasized subject matter less unique. She proposes that teachers urge kids more often to "think outside of the box," as the saying goes. At her blog, Mimi Roon argues that all the emphasis on being perfect and increasing proficiency in certain subjects has led to an obsession over grades. In conjunction with this obsession has come a loss of creativity. She believes that people learn from making errors. "Whatever happened to thinking outside the box?" she asks us. Finally, Susie Murphy writes on her blog that creativity needs to be nurtured through our school system. Students learn differently, and those differences need to be addressed. She believes students must be able to "think out of the box."

After listening to Robinson's excellent talk and reading my classmates' responses, I am left with mixed thoughts on the matter. There are a few points with which I strongly agree. Degrees really do seem to be losing their importance. The emphasis on needing a bachelor's and now a master's and possibly later some doctoral work resembles the arms races of the Cold War; everyone needs to have an advantage. Also, behavioral disorders are being diagnosed with greater frequency. It is hard for me to tell whether the methods of analysis have improved such that more children are being properly diagnosed or if it's just easier to write "ADHD" on a sheet and move on. I mean, is it really that odd for a kid third grade to want to move around a bit? Maybe in this day and age of greater childhood obesity it is, but I digress. In addition to these points, I also believe that certain areas of knowledge are being marginalized. I'm a big believer in multiple intelligences, and deciding that someone's gifts are not valuable is absolutely wrong. Every student has something to contribute to society, whether it be a "beautiful mind" or "happy feet."

When it comes to our schools, I think they're doing a good job of educating, both to structure and to creativity. I've had plenty of teachers encourage me to pursue my interests, even if those interests laid outside their field of expertise. It's not the schools or teachers that are choking creativity to death; it's the administration that does most of that. The teacher who has spent his or her whole 20 years in the "real world" as a teacher knows that creativity is important; the superintendent of public schools who may have spent just a few years teaching while trying to move on up and escape the classroom is the one determining what needs to be taught. We need to back up and zoom out. Schools aren't killing creativity; we're asking them to euthanize it.

It's a vicious cycle. Parents want their kids to grow up to be doctors and lawyers because of all the things their parents said to them, and so on. We need to encourage kids to be creative in their daily lives. We need to let them know that their creative abilities are useful, and I think we do to some extent. Just think of the following: YouTube, the iPhone, Coldplay, "So You Think You Can Dance?", and pioneering in invisibility. There's no way any of those, personal opinions of like/dislike aside, come about without creativity, without emphasizing uniqueness. I definitely think that schools could benefit from a lesser emphasis on tests and a greater emphasis on creativity, but let's not say they "kill creativity" because I don't think they do.

Everyone likes to say we need to "think outside the box." What box?