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PRESENTATION: DO SCHOOLS KILL CREATIVITY?

Why do schools kill creativity?

Nowadays many people around the world start to question Modern Day Schooling.
There are various, very important issues concerning education. What is going wrong in
education and why? Is there any need to change? Why do so many people drop out of school?
Is there any reason of that situation? Do schools kill creativity? And if you say I can make a
difference in education what would you do? In my presentation, I have answered all those
questions. I highlighted why creativity is so important and how Modern Day Schooling is
killing it. Also, I tried to explain what is going wrong with the school system and why we
need to change it. There is still an open question how we can fix the education system, which
gives the readers opportunity to reflect themselves as single units who have an impact on
education.
There are many connections between Steve Jobs, Gillian Lynne, Mark Zuckerberg,
Amancio Ortega and Bill Gates. But what is really important for the purpose of that
presentation is that almost all of them dropped out of normal'school when they were
teenagers. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and Pixar Animation, dropped out of college at the age
of 17. Gillian Lynne, the choreographer of Cats'' and Phantom of the Opera" when she was
just a kid was diagnosed with a learning disorder. Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in
his last year to complete his project connected with Facebook. Amancio Ortega, the founder
and former of Inditex fashion group (Zara, ect.), left school at the age of 14 and Bill Gates,
the Technology Advisor of Microsoft dropped out of Harvard to start his own company.
The statistics show that in the United States there is 30 % high school dropout rate. Why is
that? What is the real problem? Kids, teachers or the school system?
Ken Robinson in his book Creative schools" pops the question: What is an education
for? He highlights the story in which many people wrongly believe: Young children go to
elementary school mainly to learn the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics. These
skills are essential so they can do well academically in high school. If they go on to higher
education and graduate with a good degree, they'll find a well-paid job and the country will
prosper too." In few words, the educational system is prepared to firstly teach basics skills,
then forces young learners to use that skills to get to better high schools, then graduate with a
good degree and all that to get well- paid job. It means also that what schools teach is only
basics. There is no place for creative thinking, for individuality, for having different talents
PRESENTATION: DO SCHOOLS KILL CREATIVITY? 2

and different needs. That story is a very dangerous myth and one of the main reason why so
many reforms do not work.
The most important about kids is that they are not afraid of making mistakes. They
will always take a chance if they have an opportunity. What we know nowadays is that if we
are not prepared for being wrong we will never come up with new ideas, something original.
Creativity is now as important as literacy and we should treat it with the same status. While
children are growing up, most of them lose that capacity. They start to be frightened of being
wrong. The education systems are run in that way where there is no place for mistakes and
where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. As a result, adults are educated out of their
creative capacities.
The first reason why schools kill creativity is that they were made as a response to
industrialism. The educational systems were developed before the middle of the nineteenth
century and were created to prepare students to work in factories, for mass production. But the
world has progressed, and now we need the people who think creatively, innovatively,
critically, independently with the ability to connect. Second reason is that there is a hierarchy
of subjects: maths over dance, languages and maths over humanities, humanities over arts.
What is more, classes are timed so there is no place for the flow of creativity.
The consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're
not, because the thing they were good at school wasn't. And I think that we need to change
that. We need to rethink why we educate our children.
Prince Ea compares teachers to doctors. Because a doctor can do a heart surgery and
save the life of the kid. While a great teacher can reach the heart of that kid and allow him to
truly live. He thinks that if we can customise healthcare, cars and Facebook pages, then is our
duty to do the same for education. To upgrade it. Change it. To reach the core of every heart in
every class. We need to give every gift an equal chance.
To sum up, there is a need to rethink the fundamental principles of education. The
only way adults can do that is by seeing their creative capacities for the richness they are. That
is a very important task we all share to educate the children so they can face up their future.

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