Blog 1: Sir Ken Robinson "How Schools Kill Creativity" TED Talk

In Sir Ken Robinson’s “How Schools Kill Creativity,” Sir Ken Robinson illustrates the importance of changing school systems because without this change, creativity will disappear. During his talk, Robinson constantly describes the epidemic of children in school being educated out of creativity. The common discipline in schools is to keep children away from being interested in the outlying subjects such as art or music. This discipline limits and ultimately kills creativity. Sir Ken Robinson in “How Schools Kill Creativity,” describes the need to discover a cure for putting and end to imagination and originality.

Sir Ken Robinson utilized many effective techniques such as being very easygoing, having lots of humorous anecdotes to ease tension, and using proper voice inflection to get his point across. Throughout his TED Talk, Robinson was very laid back. He was never tense or nervous and made his talk very conversational which helped to make the talk casual and more informal. Robinson was able to give a light air to the conversation by also telling many humorous anecdotes. While the anecdotes sometimes dragged away from the point, the humor made it easier to relate to the points that Robinson wanted to make. Finally, Robinson used different voice inflections to make it known when the point was supposed to be serious or funny. The different voice inflections kept the speech from sounding boring and unimportant. Being casual, humorous, and utilizing different voice inflections were the most effective techniques that Sir Ken Robinson incorporated into his speech.

In his TED  Talk, “How Schools Kill Creativity,” Sir Ken Robinson correctly describes why it is crucial to “radically rethink what education looks like” because without doing so, people will always be afraid to be wrong or creative. According to the Huffington Post, out of all the developed countries in the world, the United States only ranks seventeenth in terms of education and Finland ranking first. That means sixteen other countries have more effective school systems than the U.S. which creates warning signs that the country needs to change now before it is too late. There are two big reasons as to why Finland schools are so successful: kids do not take ONE standardized test until the end of their senior year of high school and there are no rankings, comparison, or competition between students (Hancock). By seemingly eliminating standardized testing, this puts less pressure on students and less emphasis on the classes on top of the social pyramid (math, science, humanities, and world languages). With this lesser amount of focus on core subjects, children are able to think more creatively and outside the box since they do not have to stress about taking intimidating standardized tests. There is also no separation between smarter and less smart students or rich and poor students. All students learn the same things at the same pace. This allows ‘outlying’ students, students more interested in elective type classes, to not be “educated out of creativity.” Classes are not favored in terms of core or elective, each student has a chance to be creative in their own way. Keeping the existing school systems in place could lead to accidentally killing off potential creative geniuses. Creativeness needs to not be discriminated against or medicated if it is going thrive within the human world. In one of Robinson’s anecdotes, he narrates a snippet of Gillian Lynn’s life, a woman who is a renowned choreographer. Early on in school Gillian had trouble staying still, now known as ADHD, but during the 1930s ADHD had not been invented. Gillian went to see a specialist with her mom and after about 20 minutes of conversation the doctor and her mom ‘left’ to talk privately; on the way out the doctor turned the radio on. As soon as Gillian’s mom and doctor had left, she began dancing. The doctor told Gillian’s mom to take her to a dance school, and when they finally went Gillian described it as a room full of people just like her. Robinson goes on to describe how someone could have decided to give Gillian medications thus putting her unknown talents to rest (Robinson). The problem today is, rather than help children discover their talents, doctors medicate one’s issues and kill creativity that could blossom into an extreme talent. In order to avoid killing creativity, it is vital that people need to rethink the ways in which education is thought of and presented to children. To further increase creativity within schools and children, students should be allowed to choose their own schedules, teachers, and how many days a week the class is. I believe that it is still important to have all four core classes required; I believe you should be able to choose how many days a week a particular class is, but students should not be allowed to have a class less than one day a week unless it is a lab. Through this type of scheduling students can choose classes more related to their strengths and interests. Say there is a student who loves music, they should be able to take as many band and/or music classes as he or she would like.  This way, the student can expand learning on their passions and talents and not be forced to fit in with the image of a typical student. By expanding this area of a student’s power, schools should see numerous students flourish in something creative and different. If society refuses to “rethink what education looks like” creativity will meet a quick extinction.

Works Cited

"History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Smithsonian." History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Smithsonian. Smithsonian Magazine, Sept. 2011. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.

Robinson, Sir Ken. "Ken Robinson: How Schools Kill Creativity." Ken Robinson: How Schools Kill Creativity. TED Talks, Feb. 2006. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.

Zhao, Emmeline. "Best Education In The World: Finland, South Korea Top Country Rankings, U.S. Rated Average." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 27 Nov. 2012. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.