Passion, Creativity and Education

Education is meant to take us into a future that we can never predict. How can we ever hope to educate our children for a future that will be completely different in 5 years from what it is now. Sir Ken Robinson points out in the following presentation that our education system is totally ill preparing our children for the future.

We are all impressed by the extraordinary abilities of children. All kids have tremendous talent – and our innate creativity is as important as literacy and should be treated with the same status.

Kids will take a chance. They are not frightened of being wrong. If they don’t know, they will still have a go. Lets face it, of your not prepared to be wrong you won’t create anything or come up with anything original. By the time children reach adulthood they have lost all capacity to be creative.

Our education system and corporations are educating people to believe that mistakes are the worst thing you can make.

“We don’t grow into creativity we get educated out of it.” ~ Sir Ken Robinson

Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects:

Mathematics/Languages/Science
Humanities
Arts

Even in Arts (at the bottom of the hierarchy) there is a sub-hierarchy with dance and drama below art and music. Why are not all skills and talents treated equally?

Our education system is based on academic ability and is designed to support industry. Kids are steered away from things they love on the grounds that they will never get a job if they peruse their passion. We can’t go on losing talented people like this.

More and more people will be graduating from University for the first time in history as India and China become more affluent. Suddenly degrees are now not worth anything. Even now you need a PhD as a minimum requirement for some jobs .

We need to seriously review the concept of intelligence in our education system.

For more information you can visit Sir Ken Robinson’s new website www.sirkenrobinson.com