Educated out of creativity?

Perhaps the following story will have some resonance with your own experience of education. Perhaps.

Growing up, I had two great loves when it came to learning: the English language, and the creative arts. I loved to draw, and I loved to write.

My primary school teachers had the wisdom to allow both to flourish, and even encouraged me in my drawing where the education system had run out of space.

However, my entrance into a new 'enlightened' school in Year 7 changed everything. Disappointingly, English was about the only precious resource I was deemed able to produce, and so I was promptly catalogued into intermediate English, where I served out my entire high school incarceration.

So that was English.

Art was relegated to an even more lowly position. After some screen prints and lino cuts, it was time to move on from art, and into the 'real subjects'.

It was at this point that I lost all faith and all interest in the education system. I won't paint the last 4 years of high school for you, other than describe them as miserable with only a few exceptions. And damning.

The two educational passions of my childhood had been weighed and found wanting. As I left Yr 12, my UAI indicated that even a career serving chips at McDonalds would be wildly aspirational.

I didn't pick up a pencil to draw again until 2 years ago. And it wasn't until last Wednesday that I decided to have a crack at poetry. Why? Because for 6 years' of my secondary education and a good chunk of my tertiary education, no one made it seem all that important.

(I choose to phrase it that way, rather than say 'No one thought it was important' because I know that was not true of some of my educators.)

Can I say what a relief it is to know that I can still pick up a pencil and draw, or tussle with the keyboard and produce the waffle known as this blog?

(There seems to have been a certain resilience in my hard-wiring which has survived for 32 years in spite of the attempts of some educators to reformat my hard drive. Perhaps you have had a similar experience; I don't think I'm alone in this regard.)

Sir Ken Robinson is a well-regarded British educator and a captivating communicator. He gave this talk in February 2006 at the TED (Technology Entertainment Design) Conference in Monterey, California. I heartily recommend you take the 20 minutes to watch the clip; it will possibly be the most stimulating 20 minutes of your week.

Note the following big ideas of his presentation:

*The value of human creativity, as it is expressed in all its diversity, over against our culture's present obsession with a very limited range of human ability

*The problem of a limited view of intelligence impoverishing our present and future

*What happens when we live with the burden of 'always being right' (the stigmatisation of mistakes from our childhood education through to the corporation), and what this does to tentative expressions of alternative intelligence

*The seemingly unavoidable consequences of 'academic inflation' where today's MA has only the weight of yesterday's BA

*The need for a complete overhaul in our thinking about intelligence and creativity because we no longer live in a world whose needs are dictated by the Industrial Revolution.

Whether you're a propagator or receptor of education (or both), this video will prompt some sort of gut-level response (positive or negative).

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the design of education, and how well you think that design fits with what see around and within us.

(Many thanks to my mate David Jones for providing this link late last year, after a fascinating afternoon watching my 2-year-old son design and play with wooden blocks.)