Does the current school system kill creativity?
polycounter lvl 8
Hi,
So I've recently been introduced two videos on the famous side TED that literately changed the way I look at education.
The two videos in question are by Sir Ken Robinson, an english PhD in education(as far as I can see):
The first is from 2006, and my guess would be that you guys may already have seen it:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
The second is from 2010:
http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html
So, after watching both videos, you can boil his point down to that the current education system is based on linearity and theoretic skills like English, Math, Psychics and so on.
Now I find this interresting, since I felt my entire life that education didn't have anything to offer on entry level that would allow me to work with what I loved(in this case it's expressing myself through a visual medium).
I'm aware the school systems are different from country to country, and I'll admit my understanding of the american school system is limited, so I'll try my best to convert my points.
In Denmark every kid is forced by law to attend grade school, this is the first and most basic education that you usually start at the age of 7 and then follow for the next 10 years, until you're ready to jump onto the next education. My guess would be, like in Denmark, the American grade school gets gradually harder and harder, so each year you get a new math book that's a little bit harder and will teach you some new things. Now that's great and all, but what really bummed me, is the lack of creative lessons. In Danish grade school you basically got 4 different "creative" lessons, those are:
- Math lessons starts from the very beginning and lasts through the entire course of your grade school(10 years)
- Art lessons also starts from the very benning, but only lasts 5-6 years before it gets canceled and replaced by Geography and Psychics.
Now, I don't expect myself to end up as some lab proffesor with a PhD in multi-dimensional particle collision relations or something fancy like that, so for me the cancellation of art was a real bummer since it was really the only part of grade school that really pushed my buttons.
So, after 10 years I'm done with my grade school, and I now stand with the responsibility to find out what I want to do with my life. Am I gonna study math? Theology? Psychics? English? I picked none of them and went with my passion of the expressing myself through a visual medium, now that left me with a problem, there is not a single worth while education in Denmark that will work with art as a main subject all through the teachings unless I take a high school/college equivalent education first. Now that really bummed me and I had to choose a secondary college education that used a loop hole in the danish education system in order to teach 6-7 hours of 3D every week and still be government supported. This is where I stand now, with a lot of friends in the same position, what to do now? All art related educations are still locked and will require atleast 3 years of additional schooling in math, psychics, english, religion etc.
Now, my point in all this ranting is:
Do we live in a world where the school system is designed to suppress visual creativity in order to make sure people "get most out of their life? by ensuring the job market that they get the same amount of "educated" out to fill spots in economy, accounting, paper filling and the 9-5 job behind your disk filling out forms.
So I've recently been introduced two videos on the famous side TED that literately changed the way I look at education.
The two videos in question are by Sir Ken Robinson, an english PhD in education(as far as I can see):
The first is from 2006, and my guess would be that you guys may already have seen it:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
The second is from 2010:
http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html
So, after watching both videos, you can boil his point down to that the current education system is based on linearity and theoretic skills like English, Math, Psychics and so on.
Now I find this interresting, since I felt my entire life that education didn't have anything to offer on entry level that would allow me to work with what I loved(in this case it's expressing myself through a visual medium).
I'm aware the school systems are different from country to country, and I'll admit my understanding of the american school system is limited, so I'll try my best to convert my points.
In Denmark every kid is forced by law to attend grade school, this is the first and most basic education that you usually start at the age of 7 and then follow for the next 10 years, until you're ready to jump onto the next education. My guess would be, like in Denmark, the American grade school gets gradually harder and harder, so each year you get a new math book that's a little bit harder and will teach you some new things. Now that's great and all, but what really bummed me, is the lack of creative lessons. In Danish grade school you basically got 4 different "creative" lessons, those are:
- Music
- Art
- Cooking
- Wood/Metal working
- Math lessons starts from the very beginning and lasts through the entire course of your grade school(10 years)
- Art lessons also starts from the very benning, but only lasts 5-6 years before it gets canceled and replaced by Geography and Psychics.
Now, I don't expect myself to end up as some lab proffesor with a PhD in multi-dimensional particle collision relations or something fancy like that, so for me the cancellation of art was a real bummer since it was really the only part of grade school that really pushed my buttons.
So, after 10 years I'm done with my grade school, and I now stand with the responsibility to find out what I want to do with my life. Am I gonna study math? Theology? Psychics? English? I picked none of them and went with my passion of the expressing myself through a visual medium, now that left me with a problem, there is not a single worth while education in Denmark that will work with art as a main subject all through the teachings unless I take a high school/college equivalent education first. Now that really bummed me and I had to choose a secondary college education that used a loop hole in the danish education system in order to teach 6-7 hours of 3D every week and still be government supported. This is where I stand now, with a lot of friends in the same position, what to do now? All art related educations are still locked and will require atleast 3 years of additional schooling in math, psychics, english, religion etc.
Now, my point in all this ranting is:
Do we live in a world where the school system is designed to suppress visual creativity in order to make sure people "get most out of their life? by ensuring the job market that they get the same amount of "educated" out to fill spots in economy, accounting, paper filling and the 9-5 job behind your disk filling out forms.
Replies
But it's not like it's an evil conspiracy or something. It's just considered that children do not know what they want out of their lives. And I guess that the majority of people to go through schools will have no necessity in "creative" subjects later on in their lives. So it's kinda rational for the education system to drift along with the common case.
I'd say "f*ck school", it's your kid, take responsibility, help him develop the way he wants. If he doesn't like school - ok. No problem with having not the best marks as long as you and your kid know what you're doing. No need to put the blame on anyone else.
As for general knowledge, I think that wikipedia has been more helpfull, then all 12 years of compulsary education.) as soon as I have kids I'll teach them how to use it!
No. It's kind of paranoid to think Danish and/or global education systems are out to suppress your creativity. Maybe they fail to encourage it, but no one is actively trying to keep you down.
If anything, the emphasis is simply on developing future practical skills. You may not get much out of physics for example, but lots of other people do, and they're the ones who design and build and engineer and architect all the material things in our world. Visual art, while awesome, just isn't as practical or in demand.
By and large, education systems support the broadest range of practical skills that support the broadest range of useful careers. If art made the world go 'round, there would be a lot more emphasis on art education, but it doesn't. There are thousands of job openings for software engineers for every opening that's looking for someone to express himself in a visual medium.
A secondary point to this is that not nearly as much education is required. if you want to be a rocket scientist, you're going to be in school studying through your mid-20s. There's no call for that in art, as nearly all of history's greatest artists are self-taught or have minimal education. If self-expression is really what you're after, regardless of medium, there's really not much that formal education will do for you.
The reason that you don't see more digital arts schools here in Denmark, is that both the schools, and those interested in the subjects are taxed beyond their autonomous capacities (as are everyone). Which in turn means that if our government has not caught on to the fact that this might be a viable intellectual resource, they are not funding it. To begin to fund it, there must also be a certain type of degree and etc. So you need to be knee deep in bureaucracy before anything starts rolling. Thats why you are left with 3D college on one hand, that has no option to half-ass it, because they have to teach an unrelated curriculum on the side. On the other hand you have expensive as heck truemax, who reportedly also half-asses it, but thats because of the lacking competition.
As for the grade school, it is not as such designed to NOT teach anything, it's more a case how its designed to do teach something, but that is a very specific skillset that launches you upwards toward that Ph.D. That is solely because that was for a very long time where you had to go, in order to improve our collective intelligenzia. Now, however, we got way more Ph.D's than we got jobs for them. So its mainly because we have reached another time, but that no-one really pays attention because they are busy teaching the same old curriculum.
But before we go revolutionize everything, we should think long and hard about how to go about it the best way, so we do not fuck up a generation.
Without what Robinson discusses that software engineer of yours is useless if he can't solve problems, something he can't do right now because he can't make the abstract connection necessary to solve them, something he wasn't taught and never learnt (unlikely if he's a game programmer but you get the point). So yes, 'art' ('abstract thinking') does make the world go round, it pretty much made everything on it!.
While my original post targeted the Danish education system since it's the only system that I've tried so far. That being said, I can see a failure from my side to express my opinion the right way. My point, relying heavily upon the visual medium, should have been targeted, Like Kat points out, every thing. Creative thinking is not limited to a visual medium, it's everywhere. And the problem as I see it, is that our school system is not designed to encourage young kids to think outside the box to fix a problem, an example could be a math lesson in grade school:
You sit down with a book, read 2-4 pages that explains a math function like plus, divide, multiply and so on. Then you get an assignment that consists of a few tasks that will use the one thing you just learned. Now that's great, but it's very linear and at least got boring real fast. I would have loved some tasks that made me search for the answer instead of relying on the things you just read.
Introducing some kind of problem solving and abstract/creative thinking into every part of our schools, from the beginning to the end, would have a larger positive impact on our coming generations, linearity is not healthy for your mind.
(Also, this should be the generation to try it on, for as far as I can see, the grade schools in Denmark are booming with kids not taking it seriously and dropping out after 10th grade in order to become a mechanic or something similar)
But yeah, I agree, problem solving skills could easily be taught alongside with the standing curriculum, it's just a matter of approach.
Whats more creative then being bored so much that you come up with the wildest ideas.
I mean, we had spider fights under our desks!
I had animation classes in my high school, they were taught by what I hear is a cocky guy that's full of himself, that was did some stuff in the 3D industry, who now works at a community college, and still is a cocky jerk. But by the time I took the courses the teacher was someone with just some photoshop experience. and we had to work in maya on macs which was horrible.
The 3D industry changes too much I don't think a normal high school or basic college could keep with it.
Hmm.. I didn't get that from his post. He mentioned working in a visual medium multiple times, so I assumed that meant traditional art.
Anyway, there might be something to formal education depending upon rote memorization. A lot of knowledge is just that - there's no room for abstract thinking in a history class or something. And lots of great minds didn't do well in elementary school (Edison and Einstein come to mind.)
If we look at 'art' as the abstract thinking that leads to creative problem solving (bit of a stretch, but I follow) then I think the world is doing just fine. The 20th century saw a greater leap in technology than all centuries before it, with previously impossible ideas like flight and wireless communication becoming commonplace. I don't think education has become less open in the last hundred years, but probably more open.
Our schools arent bad by a long shot. But perhaps, with a bit of lateral thinking on the part of the teachers, you could teach some extra skills by how you approach teaching some of those strictly fact based classes. Speaking of which, that makes me think of another TED talk I saw a while ago:
[ame]
"The problem with the modern education system is, they are preparing you for a 40 hour work week, where your imagination must not be stimulated. Where you can't take time to exercise your imagination. There's a lot of good things about the education system, but this isn't one of them"
Again, LOOSE quote, that. But I find it true. At the same time, it also depends on which school you go to.
Here's Newsweek discussing the same thing The Creativity Crisis
I never have had artistic classes, and all my education = maths, physics & chemistry, etc. (science education, too boring) and i ended with industrial engineering with more complex maths...
As note: The problem in my country is that THERE ISN'T education for what we like (3D).
We want but we can't, and now that i'm old... we have some bad and expensive schools where they teach you -how to use Tools-. And i say, Err.. Creativity?= are you serious? They can not teach you how to be creative!
That's a pretty good quote (loose or otherwise), but I think it overlooks the why. Barker's right about school preparing kids for the typical work week rather than 'imaginative' careers, but the world simply needs a lot more of those people. I don't think most basic educations should ignore imaginative learning, but it really shouldn't cater too it, either.
Besides, that would just mean more competition for our jobs
So Robinson et-al are not saying there should be more artists or creative people for the sake of it, they saying their should be more creative, imaginative and abstract thinking.. in other words, people are not taught what they can do with the facts and information the learn by rote, they're just taught to repeat it.
That's what's missing and as Justin highlighted this problem is endemic in the business world where there is a gross shortage of solution oriented people, it's why executive boot-camps are a growth industry, they're having to go back to school to learn how to be imaginative so they can apply that to their business problems. And they still epic fail at it.
The counter argument to that is that it's just an evolvement, had we been able to we likely would have seen similar changes when books, radio and TV became omnipresent, the brain has to physically change in order to make sense of those types of stimuli.
There is quite a fair amount of scientific evidence to suggest there are genetic 'tendencies', in the sense that our DNA helps to wire a person in such a way that they would be at a greater advantage, or more likely to be creative. But crucially, it doesn't guarantee it. SFAIK there is no evidence supporting that hypothesis.
As some of the guys already said, it is generally understood (but not necessarily widely know in the public sense) that the education system is used to produce the kinds of 'workers' it needs. There's nothing conspiratorial in that, education was and is still used that way, as a means to train the larger population to fill the jobs that are available; looking to our own industry we see good examples of this in action, university and degrees on game studies created to fill a need.
People like Einstein and Edison were 'driven' not by what the knew, but by what they didn't, that's the crucial difference, and what Einstein was getting at.. an accumulation on knowledge is meaningless if you can't do things with it. They just put what they knew to 'better' and more 'imaginative' use. Paraphrasing Edison, someone asked him if he never got discouraged by his constant 'failures', he replied "What failures? Every time something broke I knew that was an item I could cross off my list"
But, much like Smilex, it isn't one specific thing but a combination of factors.
Much like the critique the internet suffers, the fictional novel was frothed upon with the same rigerous vigour in the 19th century. The young people shouldn't read, let alone this vile fiction that shall surely turn them into hooting imbeciles quicker than a fart from a duck's bottom.
He had absolutely no leadership abilities, or social skills to speak of.
He was one of the last in his class to get a job, and he has not since yet been promoted in the 11 years since his graduation, and has been surpassed in salary by many other that were hired after him.
The school system fails to realize the importance of what it's really teaching.
Social skills; teamwork, leadership, political/social hierarchy, respecting authority, and interpersonal dynamics.
All school tasks from getting to school on time, bell systems, lunch, class work are all structured to train students to do the mediocre boring jobs most do every day.
Yeah I'd say it influences you a big deal, especially in when you are younger. Imagine if the first 10 years of your education is spent on teaching all the basics(english, math, psychics) but also a constant stimulation for your creativity and creative skills. I wonder where I would have been now if if I had art lessons all the way through grade school.
Edit: Took the liberty of translating of my favorite danish satiric comics, Wullfmorgenthaler, strip about the danish grade school