Ken Robinson On Schools Killing Creativity

“We are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso one said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.”

I’ve seen this video probably ten times, and each time something new stands out to me. This time, the idea of a student as a kind of intellectual artist was interesting.

Robinson uses the example of an artist in a literal sense, alluding to Picasso and the young artist in art class in schools. But if you consider every student a budding thinker, the intellect itself becomes the most primal art.

The ideas that originate in a budding thinker’s mind is then manifested through art, sports, music, writing, and so on. But by endlessly conditioning students to adhere and comply rather than blossom and take chances, creativity is stunted.

And not just in the context of a child’s insistence on painting “unknowable things,” but the perhaps the most primal urge of all.

Curiosity.

Image attribution: flickr user flying sidewalks