Is Education killing Creativity?

The involvement of Creativity in education has been researched and written about increasingly, particularly over the past twenty years, with more and more emphasis placed upon its importance in both the academic and personal development of children. Today, the vast majority of educators and policy makers surrounding education agree it has a crucial presence within our education system. So, how is Creativity still not fully included within the system? Do schools kill Creativity?

In a 2006 talk given by Sir Ken Robinson, an internationally renowned advisor on education, he explains how education and the world around us focus on the stigma of being wrong. Children on the other hand, are not afraid of being wrong, in Robinson's words “they’ll have a go”. He explains how by the time they become adults; they have lost this and have developed a fear of being wrong. They are “educated out of it”. Our society focuses on the mistakes of others but if you are not prepared to make mistakes, to be wrong, how will you develop any new ideas?

In school, children are steered away from certain subjects on the misguided advice that upon choosing to do subjects such as Art or Music; they will never get a job in these fields. (Robinson, 2006) I, myself, can be included as a child who was told this and, therefore, I focused on what were classed as more academic, useful subjects, such as languages. Unfortunately, I followed this advice. My sister, on the other hand, did not. Whilst attending the same secondary school as myself, she was given the same guidance on matters. She has now graduated, in full time employment, at the age of 23, in her home-town. She is a professional Graphic Designer. A profession classed under the misinterpreted version of creative, with the incorrect notion that you will have very little chance of progressing onto employment. Although, in the unlikelihood that you are successful in finding said job, you have to be prepared to pack up your life and move away.

“Our education system has mined our minds, in the way that we've strip mined the earth...for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won’t service”.

By this, Robinson means that our education system has been educating us for the benefit of society, as a whole, not for our individual identities. Our children are our future. We need to rethink the system to accommodate their needs, not the just needs of society.
 Primary schools, throughout England and Wales, are slowly beginning to evolve with the introduction of schemes such as the Foundation Phase/Stage and Forest schools, but this is not enough. Promoting creativity and all that it encompasses whilst children are of the most crucial ages of development is vital. However, the Foundation Phase is only for children between the ages of 3-7yrs, all their good work is seemingly quashed as children migrate through to key stage three and beyond. 

Below is the 2006 video of Sir Ken Robinson’s speech ‘How schools kill creativity’.