Last year, I posted a Ted video featuring Sir Ken Robinson. The talk was entitled “How Schools Kill Creativity” and it was one of the first posts that got me some buzz in the blogosphere. I thought it was only right that this year I share his follow up to that first video.
Yet again, I could add something, but the talk really speaks for itself. Enjoy.
“Sir Ken Robinson: Bring On The Learning Revolution!”
much “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew, and act anew. We must diesnthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country” - Abraham Lincoln
Ollin
Please share this post with your friends by using the buttons below
A fantastic presentation, and an important one. I think you’ll like this one by him and RSA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
Schools are always playing catch up in a changing world, and the world is just changing so much faster these days.
I thought you would like this one. Thanks for sharing. I’m going to check out that vid… now.
I enjoyed this post. I was a 4.0 student; at my age, now that I can take a look back, I realize that it was a waste of time. I remember the teacher that told me I could not color because I insisted on blue hair, or the one that told me I could not read because I read faster than the rest of the group when we read aloud … I believed them. I can come up with many more samples of “killing creativity” that are still fresh in my mind. In the sense of finding my true passion, I am a late bloomer – I put creativity to the side and became the model student. I learned to be a robot of the system – a perfect 4.0 model. Today, I regret the day I stopped using the blue crayon for hair in coloring books.
It is terrible isn’t it? I love the video that Cities of the Mind shared in the comments. How we all start with a 98% ability to be creative and we lose that ability dramatically because we’ve been educated.
That’s it. It’s time for the revolution!
I have always believed schools kill creativity in some way, we are taught how to live in one way but not to live holistically. I just wrote a guest blog post on a career website about the things that schools do not teach us like how to nurture your creativity and how to balance your life holistically.
You know I’ve been thinking the same thing for a while now. Only in the past year since I started this blog, did I start to approach my life holistically. It has changed my life for the better. That is exactly how school should be taught: holistically. Instead, like Robinsen says in his first video: we only address the mind at schools. But really that’s only about 1/4th of who we are as humans. Thank you for your thoughts.
Tread softly on their dreams…
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to watch this video again–it meant even more this time…
I’ve always hated school but never stopped loving studying…
I was a rebel scholar, shunned by the “factory-scholars”, aided by the “farmer-scholars”
The metaphor of schooling being like agriculture reminded me of the etymology of the word “education”: to draw out from………
I taught that was beautiful, and I liked posting it because it very much connects with the themes of my blog. Writing and becoming who we are in life is very much an organic process that cannot be “manufactured.”
Ollin,
This was one of my favorite talks of Sir Ken Robinson. I’m not sure if you know about his website http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/. If you are ever in the mood to be seriously challenged, check out some of the thoughts he posts on there. It is quite intense.
Great post. And I agree, the video does speak for itself.
“What this is it? You have been around for 36 months and this is it!?! You’ve achieved nothing…”
Thanks for sharing that Sal! Yeah, that was one of my favorite parts, but my most favorite is the fireman story. Awesome.
The fireman story was pretty amazing. Did you get a chance to listen to the speech he did at his first TED conference? He talked about the child who wouldn’t hold still in class, she kept moving around and disrupting the class. If you haven’t heard it, I won’t spoil it for you, but that talk was the fan for the small flame of creativity in my heart. After that I knew I wanted to help create a community and place for creatives to come together and flourish. He is an amazing speaker and thought leader.
Yes, I love that story, too. This post is actually a follow up that first video. I posted his first talk last year and it was popular, so I thought this year I’d post his second video.
He’s kind of a good luck charm for me. I’m hoping he does a third video and then I can post it next year.
I’ve listened to both of Robinson’s TED talks several times because they are so inspiring. (I wrote a little about the first talk on my blog.) I don’t know how fast schools can change to actually serve children adequately. I feel a sense of urgency and hope that creative people can contribute something to schools. Change can happen by helping one school, one classroom, or even one child at a time to become focused on discovering passion. There is an overwhelming amount of work to be done, but we need to start doing something now. Thanks for bringing up this topic, Ollin!
I think to begin to spread awareness about the issue is the first step. So I think we are doing good with like millions of people having seen this talk. It’s a good start, and I’m hopeful!
Yes, keep spreading the word!!!
Yes, I will!
Hey Ollin,
This video is wonderful; full of insight.
I’m reading ‘Hard Times’ at present so it’s rather timely. There still remain Gradgrinds and Bounderbys today, intent on slaying imagination as if it were an obstacle on the exalted road to intelligence.
What they forget, is that without imagination, without dancing dreams, there would be no invention, and no progress. I overheard a child say this to his mother yesterday:
“Can you knit a cake?”. Long live lively imagination.
Conor
Awww, yes I am sure there’s a way you can knit a cake! What a wonderful imagination. I’ll have to add that book to my reading list. Dickens right?
Dickens indeed. His style is brilliant.