CEATIVITY

TED Conference 2008

Sir Ken Robinson

Lesson Summary:

This lesson reflects off of the work of Master Educator Sir. Kenneth Robinson. We
explore the shift in how teaching has stifled learning over the last 100 years by moving
from an organic approach to mining the mine for the oar of knowledge at the expense of
creativity.

Outline:

I. Introduction
II. Creativity and Kids
III. Educational Systems

Objectives

1. Instill the wonder of learning in students with a respect for the future of it.
2. Rekindle the beauty of childlike passion and learning through reflecting off of how
kids learn.
3. Explore the paradigm of learning over the past 100 years and how it has been
counterproductive to natural creative learning and discovery.
4. Help students to recapture the value of organic learning that is able to swim or walk
outside of the conventional delivery systems of our day.

I. Introduction

A. Education and its unpredictability:

1. Talk about Education and people want to run away from you because we spend
our whole life in the system of it.
2. Ask people to talk about their education and they are passionate about it.
3. We have a huge vested interest in Education because it is education that will take
us into the future that we cannot fully grasp yes.
4. Children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065
5. Despite all the expertise no one can tell us what the future will look like in 5 years
and yet were suppose to me educating them for the rest of their lives
Creativity is as important in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same
seriousness. But we squander it.

II. Creativity and Kids

A. Kids are creative:

1. We limit the creativity of children:

2. . Story: 6 year old in a drawing lesson. Never paid attention in class before but
suddenly she was enthralled with the class and drew with focus and passion.
Curious, the teacher walked over to her and asked what she was drawing. The
girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God”. The teacher replied, “You can’t draw a
picture of God. No one knows what he looks like.” The little girl corrected her
and said, “They will in a min
3. My son Andrew: Dad, where is God? I want to play with him now. I spent so
much time trying to explain how he couldn’t play with God when I should have
been thinking of creative ways to express to him how he could play with God.
We squander and limit the creativity of children.
4. Story: A school was doing the Nativity. Three wise men came up. First said “I
bring Gold, second said “I bring Myrrh, the third said Frank sent this!
5. What these stories have in common is that Kids will take a chance and be wrong.
6. Point: If you’re not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with
anything original. I’m not trying to say that you have to be wrong to be
creative, just that you’re willing to take a risk.
A. Educating People out of Creativity
a. Kids grow up and by the time they are adults they have lost this capacity to
take risks and be willing to make mistakes.
b. We run companies by this principle. We see mistakes as problematic.
c. Were now running national educational systems where mistakes are the worst
thing we could make.
d. The result is that were education people out or their creative capacity
e. Pablo Picasso said: “Everyone is born an artist; the problem is to remain an
artist when we grow up.
f. Shakespeare as a Child: This educator once lived in Stratford, the same
town that Shakespeare grew up in. This is the place where his father raised
him. It’s weird thinking of Shakespeare having a father because we don’t
think of him as a child. We don’t think of him as being seven.
i. He was in somebody’s English Class
ii. How annoying would that be?
iii. “Must try harder”
iv. Being sent to bed by his dad. “Put the pencil down. And stop speaking
like that, your confusing everybody”.
III. Educational Systems

A. Educational Systems around the World.

a. Evaluate educational systems

b. What you will find is regardless of the country all of them have the same
Hierarchy of subjects.
i. At the top is Mathematics and Languages
ii. Next come the Humanities
iii. At the very bottom of the pole are the Arts.
c. Hierarchy in the Arts
i. Art and Music are given the highest priorities over theater and dance.
ii. There isn’t an educational system on the planet that teaches theater and
dance with the same vigor and enthusiasm as we do Mathematics and
language. Why? Why not?
iii. I think this is important.
d. We educate from the waste up and conclude with the head
i. As children grow up we move to focus on the head and then sit on one
side of the brain (Logic)
ii. If you were an alien and try to discover the purpose of this education
process you would ask “Who benefits from it? Who are the valued ones?
Who gets all the brownie points; you would have to conclude by
saying “The system exists to produce educational Professors”.
iii. Mental assent ion is not the watermark of life; it’s just an aspect of it. It’s
just another form of life.
iv. Professors are curious: We life in our head and totally to one side. We
view our bodies as a transport form of transport for our heads.
e. Point: Our educational system is predicated on academic ability.
B. The History of Education
a. There is a reason why the system is set up the way it is.
b. Prior to the 19th century there was not system in place
c. Industrialization was the reason why educational systems were established
i. The Hierarchy of subjects were based on two ideas
1. The studies most beneficial for work.
a. So you were steered away from ideas that didn’t seem
productive for industrialization.
b. Don’t do art, you won’t be an artist
c. Don’t do be an artist or dancer, you’ll never get a job
doing that
d. Pick a career that pays.
e. Don’t do things you like, do things that pay
 f. Benign advice, Profoundly wrong
2. Academic Ability
a. This dominates our view of intelligence
b. Universities designed the system in its image
c. The whole system it’s a protracted process of university
entrance.
d. Many Brilliant creative people think they are not
because of the system.
e. I don’t think we can continue this way.
f. In the next 30 years more people will be graduating
through education than since the beginning of history.
g. It’s a combination of Technology and demography
h. Suddenly degrees aren’t worth anything. It use to be if
you wanted a job you had to have a degree. Now most
graduate go home with debt and just start playing video
games
i. Academic Inflation you need an MA or PH.D...
j. There is a shift in the educational field taking place
right under our feet
C. Intelligence
a. Its Diverse
i. We think in three arena’s
1. Visually
2. In Sound
3. Kinesthetically (Abstract and movement in motion)
b. Its Dynamic
i. The brain isn’t divided into compartments, its highly interactive
i. Quote: “Creativity is the process of producing original ideas that
are of value”. Sir. Kenneth Robinson
ii. Corpus Collossum: A region of the brain connecting the two
hemispheres by nerves.
1. Greater in women than men.
2. Women are better at multi tasking
3. “if a man speaks his mind in a forest and no wom
c. Its Distinct
i. Book by Sir Kenneth Robinson. Epiphany How people discovered
their talent.
1. Interviews Jillian Lynn. Choreographer who did “Cats” and
“Phantom of the Opera:
2. How did you become a dancer? She said it’s curious
 3. In the 1030’s she didn’t do good in school.
4. The school wrote her parents “I think she has a learning
disorder”.
5. Today they would say she had ADHD. But that wasn’t around
then.
6. She saw a specialist sat on her hands as the doctor told her
parents what was wrong with her.
7. Doctor said, “I need to speak with your parents privately wait
here and I will be back”
8. Turned on the radio and watched you for a second. She began
to move around the room
9. The doctor said “Your daughter is not sick, she’s a dancer”
10. Take her out of school and put her in a dance school
11. Jillian said “it was beautiful. The whole school was filled
with people like me. People who had to move to think”
12. She graduated the royal ballet, founded her own company met
Andrew Lloyd Webber,
13. Someone else might have put her on medication and told
her to calm down.
D. Hope for the Future
i. We reconstitute our value of creativity
ii. The academic system has learned to mine the human mind in the same
way we mine commodities from the earth. Rather than raping the
human mind we should engage human horticulture and help it to
flourish and grow.
iii. We have to rethink the fundamental principles by which we are
education our children because it won’t service the future.
iv. Quote: Jonah Sulk “If all the insects were to disappear from the
earth within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all people
were to disappear from the earth, all forms of life would flourish
v. Our task is to educate our children for futures we man new see. But
they will see it.
vi. We have to educate their whole being for the hope they are and the
potential they can bring.