Schools Kill Creativity Quotes

Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity” (which became one of TED.com’s most downloaded talks ever),

I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold… These are not invisible men. Poor Bruce. Poor frightened Bruce. Once upon a time you wanted to be a soldier. Bruce, did you know that an openly gay Englishman was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do — and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don't they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn't have killed himself and maybe you wouldn't be so terrified of who you are. The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there—all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that, and until we organize ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we're doomed. That's how I want to be defined: as one of the men who fought the war.

Sir Ken Robinson’s 2008 talk on educational reform—entitled “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”—has now been viewed more than 4 million times. In it Robinson cites the fact that children’s scores on standard tests of creativity decline as they grow older and advance through the educational system. He concludes that children start out as curious, creative individuals but are made duller by factory-style schools that spend too much time teaching children academic facts and not enough helping them express themselves. Sir Ken clearly cares greatly about the well-being of children, and he is a superb storyteller, but his arguments about creativity, though beguilingly made, are almost entirely baseless.

When spontaneity and individuality and really good original stuff occurred in a classroom it was in spite of the instruction, not because of it. This seemed to make sense. He was ready to resign. Teaching dull conformity to hateful students wasn’t what he wanted to do.

Schools kill time and creativity. Find ways to workaround these limitations

that play is trivial. Play is a waste of time. Play is unnecessary. Play is childish. Unfortunately, many of these negative messages come from the very place where imaginative play should be most encouraged, not stifled. The word school is derived from the Greek word schole, meaning “leisure.” Yet our modern school system, born in the Industrial Revolution, has removed the leisure—and much of the pleasure—out of learning. Sir Ken Robinson, who has made the study of creativity in schools his life’s work, has observed that instead of fueling creativity through play, schools can actually kill it: “We have sold ourselves into a fast-food model of education, and it’s impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.… Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it’s the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardizing in the way we educate our children and ourselves.”2 In this he is correct.

The life that produces writing can't be written about. Is is a life carried on without the knowledge even of the writer, below the mind's business and noise, in deep unlit shafts where phantom messengers struggle toward us, killing one another along the way; and when a few survivors break through to our attention they are received as blandly as waiters bringing more coffee.

I want to start everything in New, what's the bad point?? I don't want to have problems with people which we can be friends or nothing, but not argue as before. What's the purpose what did you gain??? Points?? Money?? PS3??? Xbox??? Nothing just useless and making troubles with people, if we must discuss something let's to be about the fucking Bulgarian Schools, talk about them, I hate them as much as you hate them, I hate the Bulgarian as much as you hate them, I hate the fucking teachers in the fucking schools with which just have fucking problems. How can somebody joke with your spelling or with your mistakes for months???? ... What more to tell you??? That I'm sorry that I'm a Bulgarian guy, because I'm sorry, I can't live with this fucking people, what do they created??? Nothing just staying home and jerkoff non-stop, very creative! And guest what happened??? Here come the "?" people which are terrorists in france and have killed a lot of people and here will be planed the same....,what more only the thought that somebody has graduated from the best school existed in Bulgaria and to have fails with the writing like making so easy mistakes that nobody will make ever, to make mess on the sheets and many other things and this on very important day. A day in which you choose the president or the pre-minister or some kind like this, which is important. I'm very sorry that I'm Bulgarian guy, I don't want to be the cases are this, I want to be an American or a guy from Great Britain, but whatever to be, but to know this language. All people use it, and we are the only people which or some others as one User said that France and Germany are also with the worst English in case that Germany words are like English, but little fucked like spelled and written different like Sänger - singer songster schreiben WOw, this is really fucked just look how arae spelled how are written little like joking with English, aren't they??? If they aren't okay, that's your opinion _ I don't have something against it! If there was chance to be other race no matter what American guy or whatever ot to change my country ot my native language I will do it. If there is chance to and learn English, I go and learnt it without giving and shit about the fucking Bulgarian, I won't call my parents, friends and everything, just everything will be mainly for learning English the best way as possible. I fill fucked there are people which can't read, english, to don't talk about bulgarian, all day I'm seeing how mass media brain washes. I don't see how can be improved Bulgaria it's a fail I know why Adolf Hitler wanted to destroyed it and why Churchill Wanted also, I'm not sure about Churchill, but for HItler I'm sure that he wanted to kill us because of that, whatever you understand me what level we are as nation. I hate the fucking Bulgarian people what to learn from them to joke with people badly??? Very Creative??? To jerkoff all time and to don't give a damn shit about the things around the world?? Or to be with friends which can't think or people which are so much stupid that I'm sorry about them... Whatever, read it if you want if you don't want don't read it, but first check it before you block me. Thank you I appreciate your reading!

The first trait is servility. At school, our education system hammers out our individual voices and kills our natural creativity, turning us into servile, course-material slaves. Our

And her apparent eagerness to follow Tyler into the cauldron dried up all my professional zeal, and I had nothing more to say. Samantha just watched me to see what I would do—and for the first time in my life, I had absolutely no idea what that would be. What is the correct facial expression to put on when someone tells you their lifelong fantasy is to be eaten? Should I go for shock? Disbelief? What about moral outrage? I was quite sure the subject had never come up in any of the movies or TV shows I had studied, and even though I am considered a clever and creative person in some circles, I could not imagine anything at all that might be appropriate. So I stared, and Samantha looked back at me, and there we were: a perfectly normal married man with three kids and a promising career who just happened to enjoy killing people, staring at a perfectly normal eighteen-year-old girl who went to a good school and liked Twilight and who wanted to be eaten, sitting next to each other in a walk-in refrigerator at a vampire club in South Beach. I had been trying so hard lately to achieve some close approximation of normal life, but if this was it, I thought I would prefer something else. Outside of Salvador Dalí I really can’t believe the human mind could handle anything more extreme. And at last even the mutual staring began to seem too strange, even for two dedicated non-humans like us, and we both blinked and looked away.

When Mahler went to a composing retreat, she began having an affair with Walter Gropius, the architect who founded the Bauhaus School. I do not really like the Bauhaus School. But if you started dating the founder of an architectural movement, I’d support you and think your choice was great, and I’d pretend to like his architectural movement when we were all hanging out because I’m a good friend. So Alma was an adulteress and creatively unfulfilled—but she was just killing it with her choice of men.

How did the Finns build the best readers in the world? By eliminating standardized testing and emphasizing the importance of reading and critical thinking, by nurturing deeper thinking and creativity, and by leading their students away from the drill-and-kill instructional approach that is currently permeating American schools.

The world and worldly people in it made me fool, Kept me blind, ignorant, unaware and used me as their tool, Killed my creativity, suppressed my innate abilities not from now but from the school, It's not only about me but it's about all of us if you know they made us herd pool, We all know how we deceive each other even after knowing that's not so cool. Become real meet reality and speak your truth even if they hang your neck on a stool.

Some children respond to our educational matrix with This is my natural home. But there’s a whole range of mismatches between that matrix and the rest of the actual human beings who are funneled into it. Just past I’m good at school, we find I can do this, it’s just boring, progress through I can do some of this, but other parts of it are a complete mystery to me, continue on to If I grit my teeth I can probably squeak by, and end with I am stupid. I can’t do this. It’s just unending torture that I can’t get out of until I graduate. If your child falls anywhere on this mismatch spectrum, there’s a very good chance that the problem is school, not your child. And this is most definitely not the message that most struggling learners receive. Our current school system, as Sir Ken Robinson explains in his wildly popular TED talk “Do Schools Kill Creativity?,”3 was designed to produce good workers for a capitalistic society. Built inextricably into that model is the assumption that “real intelligence consists [of a] capacity for a certain type of deductive reasoning . . . what we come to think of as academic ability.” Deep in “the gene pool of public education,” Sir Ken concludes, is the unquestioned premise that “there are only two types of people—academic and nonacademic; smart people and non-smart people. And the consequence of that is that many brilliant people think they’re not, because they’ve been judged against this particular view of the mind. . . . [T]his model has caused chaos in many people’s lives. It’s been great for some; there have been people who have benefitted wonderfully from it. But most people have not. Instead, they suffer.

Brittany has been wary this whole week. She’s waiting for me to play a joke on her, to get her back for tossing my keys into the woods. After school, as I’m at my locker picking books to take home, she storms up to me wearing her sexy pom uniform. “Meet me in the wrestling gym,” she orders. Now I can do two things: meet her like she told me to or leave the school. I take my books and enter the small gym. Brittany is standing, holding out her keychain without keys dangling from it. “Where have my keys magically disappeared to?” she asks. “I’m going to be late for the game if you don’t tell me. Ms. Small will kick me off the squad if I’m not at the game.” “I tossed them somewhere. You know, you should really get a purse that has a zipper. You never know when someone will reach in and grab somethin’.” “Glad to know you’re a klepto. Wanna give me a hint as to where you’ve hidden them?” I lean against the wall of the wrestling gym, thinking about what people would think if they caught us in here together. “It’s in a place that’s wet. Really, really wet,” I say, giving her a clue. “The pool?” I nod. “Creative, huh?” She tries to push me into the wall. “Oh, I’m going to kill you. You better go get them.” If I didn’t know her better, I’d think she was flirting with me. I think she likes this game we have going on. “Mamacita, you should know me better than that. You’re all on your own, like I was when you left me in the library parking lot.” She cocks her head, gives me sad eyes, and pouts. I shouldn’t concentrate on her pouty lips, it’s dangerous. But I can’t help it. “Show me where they are, Alex. Please.” I let her sweat it out a minute before I give in. By now most of the school is deserted. Half of the students are on their way to the football game. The other half is glad they’re not on their way to the football game. We walk to the pool. The lights are off, but sunlight is still shining through the windows. Brittany’s keys are where I threw ‘em--in the middle of the deep end. I point to the shiny pieces of silver under the water. “There they are. Have at it.” Brittany stands with her hands on her short skirt, contemplating how she’s going to get them. She struts over to the long stick hanging on the wall that’s used to pull drowning people from the water. “Piece of cake,” she tells me. But as she sticks the pole into the water, she finds out it’s not a piece of cake. I suppress a laugh as I stand at the edge of the pool and watch her attempt the impossible. “You can always strip and go in naked. I’ll watch to make sure nobody comes in.” She walks up to me, the pole gripped firmly in her fingers. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” “Uh, yeah,” I say, stating the obvious. “I have to warn you, though. If you have granny undies on, you’ll blow my fantasy.” “For your information, they’re pink satin. As long as we’re sharing personal info, are you a boxers or briefs guy?” “Neither. My boys go free, if you know what I mean.” Okay, I don’t let my boys go free. She’ll just have to figure that out herself. “Gross, Alex.” “Don’t knock it till you try it,” I tell her, then walk toward the door. “You’re leaving?” “Uh…yeah.” “Aren’t you going to help me get the keys?” “Uh…nope.” If I stay, I’ll be tempted to ask her to ditch the football game to be with me. I’m definitely not ready to hear the answer to that question. Toying with her I can handle. Showing my true colors like I did the other day made me take my guard down. I’m not about to do that again. I push the door open after taking one last glance at Brittany, wondering if leaving her right now makes me an idiot, a jerk, a coward, or all of the above.

In the official story of the sixteenth-century conquest of Mexico, the one that all Mexicans learn at school, Mohtecutzoma, the tlahtoani, the spokesman and leader of the Aztecs, was a traitor who surrendered to the conquistadores from Spain without a fight and was killed by them. But the oral tradition of Mexico gives a different account, one in which the world of dreams is extremely important. According to this tradition, Mohtecutzoma was a master of the art of dreams and prophecies, as all governors and warriors were expected to be, and in a lucid and prophetic dream he saw the future of Mexico. He knew it would be conquered and a great mingling of races would take place — and there was nothing he could do about it. It was the dream of Centeotl, the creative principle of the universe. That was why he decided to give his land to its new owners without a fight, to avoid pain and bloodshed.