Thread: Do schools kill creativity?

Originally Posted by juroara

my sister is a high school teacher

in her first year as a teacher she came up with artsy fartsy reading project. And what happened next still shocks me

She had students, 10nth grade students who have NEVER used
- scissors
- or glue

NEVER

they didn't even know how to hold the scissors right

guys, thats scary!!! I can't imagine what that means their gradeschool was like....

creativity is so important. it's how our brains are designed to learn. we aren't designed to learn in a mechanical fashion. someone please save our gradeschools!

Are you sure they weren't just playing a joke and your sister is a tool to the students? "Not knowing how to use scissors or glue" sounds like a great gag to me.

Originally Posted by Black_Eagle

Are you sure they weren't just playing a joke and your sister is a tool to the students? "Not knowing how to use scissors or glue" sounds like a great gag to me.

this was a reading class for high schoolers who have trouble reading 4rth grade material and write like ten year olds, who knows

Creativity seems to be a gift at birth. It is a resilient virtue - truly creative people will survive any kind of bad schooling. These people have a tendency to transcend the education system. Look at the world's billionaires and note how few of them finished high school. Not all of them are creative - many of them are just unscrupulous money-addicted turds; but many of them have exhibited extraordinary creativity.

The reason why so many of these people dropped out of school is probably because of the undeniable fact that schools do not encourage creativity, but they cannot extinguish the flame in a truly gifted, creative person. It could be argued that attempting to teach people creativity would actually stifle it, by spoon-feeding them a perception of what creativity is, instead of giving them nothing and forcing them to create something for themselves. But again, in spite of this, I believe true creativity would survive.

Many of the most creative people had no-one to teach them. Take two art forms that emerged in the 20th century: cinema and animation. Who taught Sergei Eisenstein to make movies? No-one. Yet he came up with the principle of montage, which resulted in some of the most profoundly creative movies ever made. Hitchcock is another one. Although he had Eisenstein to draw upon, this lowly clapperboard operator relied purely upon his own ingenuity in perfecting and defining the suspense film genre.

Who taught Max Fleischer, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Walt Disney et. al. to produce animated cartoons? Again, no-one, yet what they produced was extraordinary in its creativity, and no-one has yet come within an elephant's fart of producing anything as good since.

True. Einstein too was a drop out. I mean what does that say about education?
But I think many briljant people's discoveries, like Einstein's Relativity theory, are the result from going against the grain and rapturing from conservative, mainstream ideas.

Especially me, being a born to be Musician and visual artist, have a problem in a world that underappreciates Creativity.

Depend on the professor I think. Some of them nurture creativity, my graphics professor loved to let us do our own thing. But for the most part, I feel that high schools suppress creativity, not college.

Originally Posted by SKA

True. Einstein too was a drop out. I mean what does that say about education?

That's a myth, though.

He had to transfer once, but for different reasons.

And he didn't get the 'Abitur' right away, since his family moved
to italy, but he got it later. (Abitur is the degree you get in germany)
He was incredibly good in math and sciences, sucked in sports and
wasn't that great with languages either.

But he was an extraordinary student, and also later he nailed university.
(Lots of studying he did himself though)

Has anyone ever heard of a school called Summerhill? I read a book about it last year. It's basically a boarding school that allows students be more free and creative. The child starts when he is young, like age 6, but it's up to him when he wants to start taking classes. According the book, during the first few years of the child's attendence, he just plays outside and has fun most of the time. Eventually, he himself will choose to start taking classes, making the work more interesting to him and less of a chore. The point of the school is not to excell brilliantly at life, but to excell at (and be happy with) whatever career the child wants to pursue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School
http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/

Originally Posted by Mes Tarrant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE...eature=channel

Stumbled across this lecture accidentally and must say I really enjoyed it. Thoughts?

yes, they do....so stop teaching and start modeling

If Einstein were hypothetically a drop-out, that would say essentially nothing about the education system. Because that is anecdotal evidence, i.e., not real evidence.

I was fortunate to have several teachers who were able to teach their subject, without having to worry about jumping through the hoops that the UK education system insisted upon. They were there of course, but because the classes I happened to be in were overall, intelligent, we could cover extra material. I was also fortunate enough to have several teachers who encouraged critical and free thinking, and learning about ideas and concepts that were not required.

The UK's system is a disgrace at the moment. It's filled with rote-learning mostly unrelated arbitrary facts without teaching critical thinking and understanding of the concepts behind the facts.

But certainly in many areas of the UK education system, creativity has no place. Neither do many other valuable skills. The entire system is geared around teaching students how to pass exams. And it needs to change.

Hell, even art class does. They give you all of these specific requirements and rules, every child's piece looks the same.

Originally Posted by Eric

Hell, even art class does. They give you all of these specific requirements and rules, every child's piece looks the same.

I hadn't thought about that... hmmmm...