“We are educating people out of their creativity. By the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity to take a chance. They have become frightened of being wrong.”
See more from Ken Robinson below.
An article about a “creativity test developed for NASA but subsequently used to test school children” notes that of 1,600 children between the ages of 4 and 5 tested, 98% “fell in the genius category of imagination.”
The article continues, “But this is not the real story.
“The scientists were so astonished that they decided to make it a longitudinal study and tested the children again five years later when they were ten years old.
“The result? Only 30 percent of the children now fell in the genius category of imagination.
“When the kids were tested at 15 years the figure had dropped to 12 percent!”
The author asks, “What about us adults? How many of us are still in contact with our creative genius after years of schooling? Sadly, only 2 percent.”
From We are born creative geniuses and the education system dumbs us down, according to NASA scientists, By Coert Engels, Ideapod, December 16, 2017.
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A Time magazine article (“Are We Failing Our Geniuses?”) noted:
“Those who write education policy in the U.S. have worried most about kids at the bottom, stragglers of impoverished means or IQs.
“But surprisingly, gifted students drop out at the same rates as nongifted kids–about 5% of both populations leave school early.
“Later in life, according to the scholarly Handbook of Gifted Education, up to one-fifth of dropouts test in the gifted range.”
From post: “Failing Our Geniuses” (Time magazine article), College Confidential, Aug. 2007.
(Photo from the Time mag. article: ‘Claire Evans attends Reno’s Davidson Academy’.)
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The video below of a talk by Ken Robinson – “Do schools kill creativity?” – is an excerpt from the longer video from the TED conference [Technology, Entertainment, Design] – which summarizes the talk:
“Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it.
“With ample anecdotes and witty asides, Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize — much less cultivate — the talents of many brilliant people.
“Why don’t we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it’s because we’ve been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers.
“Students with restless minds and bodies — far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity — are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences.”
“We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says.
“By the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity to take a chance. They have become frightened of being wrong.
“And we run our companies like this, by the way, we stigmatize mistakes. And we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.
“I don’t mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative.
“What we do know is, if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
Also see transcript article of his presentation: Do schools kill creativity?
Ken Robinson is author of the book Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative.
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This video is a book review by Jurgen Wolff of Robinson’s book, from Wolff’s post Out of our minds (how to be more creative)
Jurgen Wolff is author of the book Creativity Now!.
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In her article “Gifted Kids, Gifted Adults” (apparently offline), Marianne Kirby made the excellent point that special classes are not necessarily what gifted and talented kids need to thrive.
She writes, “Might I have benefited from a program tailored specifically to my intellectual and social needs?
“Sure. We all flourish when placed in a specially designed bubble that centers the world around us. But should this bubble be necessary?
“Kids that are the kind of gifted talked about in the Time article [Are We Failing Our Geniuses?] are almost invariably, as is mentioned in the article, autodidacts.
“This is a good skill to have because, even if your brain is nurtured and cherished, at some point you aren’t going to be in school anymore.
“I’m still an autodidact. The majority of my learning happens because I teach myself.”
Related video (on Oprah.com): Teachable Moment on Finding Creativity as an Adult – Author and spiritual teacher Elizabeth Lesser talks with creativity expert Ken Robinson about finding your most creative self as an adult.
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Also see my related article: Getting out of school alive
and related post: Kids and creativity in the classroom.
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Douglas Eby (M.A./Psychology) is author of the Creative Mind series of sites which provide “Information and inspiration to enhance creativity and personal development.”
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