Is education killing your creativity?

Posted by admin on Sep 21, 2010 in Academy | 0 comments

Do you ever feel like going to school is a compromise? Like university is just a bunch of academic hoops so that, even if you love to learn, you’ve had to shove down those things you really love to do—the dreams and passions you have for life—for the sake of something more “practical?” And the only thing that gets you through is the thought of the diploma, a good job, and a successful career, dangling like a carrot from a string in front of you.

But what if our idea of education is entirely wrong? What if those things we really enjoy, the things that make us come alive, are exactly what is educated out of us?
“Education either functions as an instrument used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world” writes Brazilian educator and activist, Paulo Freire.
Too often education, even at a university such as Trinity Western, is merely an initiation into the ranks of mass society, a process wherein we are talked out of following dreams, and we give up the expressions of our deepest selves for the sake of succeeding in the job market.
In an incredible speech on the “Ted Talks” series of “Ideas Worth Spreading,” Sir Ken Robinson, himself a renowned professor, reveals that “creativity is now as important as literacy” and should be treated as such.
Our modern education system was created to meet the needs of industrial society. As our society experiences unprecedented rates of change, the educational hierarchies that place math and science well above humanities and arts become increasingly obsolete.
Sir Robinson questions how we can educate children for success when we don’t even know what will happen over the next five years, much less what the job market will look like by the time children entering the current system graduate.
“Why do we teach math everyday to children but not dance,” Robinson asks.
He proposes that the current education system’s emphasis holds as its ultimate goal to create university professors, like himself—people who, in his words, view their bodies simply as transport for their brains, a way to get to and from meetings. If you’ve ever witnessed a professor attempting to dance, this fact becomes quite vivid.
Robinson points out that intelligence is diverse and distinct. People learn in all the ways they experience the world, that is, visually, orally, kinesthetically, abstractly, and so forth. For some people, dancing is how they think, express and understand. For others it may be math or science.
In the end, a university degree is a piece of paper. It can be bought. Sitting in a classroom listening to a qualified professor does not constitute learning, nor even does completing assignments and getting good marks.
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world really needs are people who have come alive,” writes the Howard Thurman. What is important is not the paper, not the grade, nor even the program or class, but this coming alive.
If formal education as it exists is something that is deadening us, numbing our creativity and suppressing the expression of our truest selves, perhaps it is time to reexamine the way in which we educate, and perhaps it is time for some students to reconsider their own selves, who they truly are and what makes them come alive.

Author: Cameron Reed