The Importance of Creativity

I greatly enjoyed this speech given by Sir Ken Robinson, " The Importance of Creativity. " Sir Robinson spoke on the importance and vitality of creativity in our education system. He points out that today in our schooling system creativity is not taken as serious as it should be taken, and it is almost being forced out of children these days. In school, mistakes are looked badly upon and not considered a good thing. Sir Robinson did a great job of explaining that " if you are not prepared to be wrong or make mistakes then you will never come up with anything original and your own. Children today are willing to try new things even if there is a chance of having the wrong answer, and that is apart of being creative and different. Yet, our school system stated by Sir Robinson is educating kids out of their creative capacity" because we teach that mistakes are not worth the risk, and are not to be made.
There is a hierarchy in schools. Math, sciences, English always come first, and are taught much more than music, art, dance, and theatre. Sir Robinson argues that these creative classes should be ranked just as high as any other subject. Classes that were designated to help a student get a job (math, science, English) came first, and many students are driven away from subjects that actually interest them ( art, dance, threatre) because it is assumed students could not get decent jobs studying these subjects. Our educational system is forcing creativity out of children, and putting them in the mind set that they must ignore things they enjoy and are interested in and instead focus on the subjects and schooling that will get them jobs.
A very interesting story I enjoyed was about a little girl who was struggling in school, disruptive in class, and was have behavioral issues. The mother of the little girl took her to a specialist to see what was wrong with her. The mother spoke with the doctor for a while explaing her problems. Next, the doctor and the mother walked out of the room, but before he left he turned on his radio on his desk. They continued to watch the little girl and she immediately got up and started dancing. The doctor told the mother her daughter was not sick, she was a dancer. So her mother took her to a dance studio, and she has become one of the most sucessful dancers in the world. The point of this story is that many times we mistake a child for being bad or mis-behaved when really all they need to do is find there passion, a different way of learning that they excel in.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed this speech. It was very helpful, and showed to me the importance of creativity in education.