Do Schools Kill Creativity?

I’m very sad to hear of the passing of Sir Ken Robinson on Friday last week.

Who is Sir Ken Robinson I hear you ask?

In the world of Education, he is GOD.

Especially when it comes to creativity and building a revolution in education systems across the world.

Do you feel your creativity isn’t valued at school by those other than in the art department?

Or the world in general?

His TED Talk entitled “Do Schools Kill Creativity” is the most watched of all-time with more than 66 million views.

Schools, he argued, focus most of their time on things like rote memorisation and knowledge-mastery.

Relating this to art and design, this falls into the category of learning technical skills of creating art.

So mastering academic, life-like drawing. Or learning how to use Adobe Suite for graphic design, illustration and other design applications.

What else can you think of?

This focus on technical learning alone compromises your portfolio significantly.

Sir Ken provided intense evidence that schools not only do a poor job of advancing creativity, they actually destroy it through a ‘cookie cutter’ approach designed to standardise students outputs.

While most of the world’s educators and employers rush to agree they want students to be ‘critical thinkers,’ how does this get taught in schools?

Is it just critical thinking we’re after?

What about creative, original thinking?

And I’ve realised a few things:

1. Sir Ken really challenged all of these concepts.
2. My mentoring services and 20 week portfolio preparation course embrace his concepts.
3. This year, the top in-demand soft skill according to LinkedIn, is creativity.

(It’s actually been at the top of the list for the last few years in terms of what employers are seeking most.)

And one of the many questions I get asked when students work with me is ‘what careers are there after I graduate?’.

This is one of THE most detrimental approaches to studying art and design further.

If you’ve read my 10 Mistakes Free PDF you’ll have seen the Creativity Wheel.

This illustrates all the skills here that Sir Ken is talking about that are CRITICALLY NEEDED in employment today.

If you don’t know this illustration, please leave me a message and I’ll send it to you.

Food for thought – RIP Sir Ken Robinson – and thank you.