Societal+issues+forum

Are schools killing creativity?
[|Sir Ken Robinson], one of the world's leading speakers on Education, believes that our school systems kill creativity. In this thought provoking talk, he talks about the pitfalls of the current education system. media type="youtube" key="iG9CE55wbtY" height="315" width="420" Couple of interesting observations he makes. 1. Schools stigmatize mistakes. Students lose their urge to try out things for fear of being proven wrong and stigmatized. 2. Our education system values arts subjects in a lower standard than mathematics and sciences.

In one of the follow up speeches he describes more about the education paradigm media type="youtube" key="zDZFcDGpL4U" height="315" width="560" He believes that the education paradigm is still built on the times of industrial revolution where the goal of education was to meet the demands of industrialization. Students are educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. He stresses the need for divergent thinking and collaboration to foster creativity.

Another interesting discussion i came upon while reading the comments on the video was about students and parents viewing school education solely by the grades, so that they can get into good colleges. Is this killing students desire to try out new stuff? Would a student be more inclined to take up safe subjects just to preserve grades rather than subject he/she is really interested in, for fear of risking grades?