Do Schools Kill creativity?

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Comment by valeria on August 5, 2011 at 7:12pm

It really seems that schools kill creativity, well I think art museums and galleries are offering many art activities that might help children and adults to be creative and to know more about contemporary art. For example check it out my blog with the activities that we do at the Saatchi Gallery on Sundays. 

The Paper Theatre workshop is inspired by Folkert de Jong sculpture  and basically each child + family member makes a unique and creative theatre with a new personal interpretation of the sculpture. 

 

 

Comment by James Aldridge on July 16, 2009 at 12:39pm

Have a look at this - www.5x5x5creativity.org.uk - might reinspire/reassure some of you!

Comment by tinteart - chocolate paintings! on July 4, 2009 at 11:11pm

I think school is more of a social lesson than anything else, and not necessarily a positive one. When someone said to me the inevitable 'school are the best years of your life' it depressed me intensly, shit if this is as good as its gonna get im screwed :P We can all remember how tough school was, the good and the bad teachers, the bullies and the friends you make. You ask school kids what their favourite subject is and a hefty chunk of them will say art. There must be a reason for that. I went to a Catholic primary school, and art was frowned upon, deemed pointless. It's one of the few things you can get school kids excited about! A lot of my good memories of school stem from the art room. Passion and interest should be encouraged, not squashed by the curriculum.

Comment by Giulio Baistrocchi on September 15, 2008 at 5:00pm

well schools are like a prison for ''good'' kids, they learn how to deal with discipline and learn to be proper citizen.To my mind school's aim is to destroy your imagination and to fighjt this is like a survivor experience. i ve been through italian french and english educational system, and it is just a system. therefore to preserve our own imagination even in prison is the anwer. schools are a system who is supposed to deal with another system: society. In school we learn to follow society, reject it or simply take the elements, the wheapon for our success or survival.the culture we learn is opppressive but the world we live is oppressive likewise so with culture(not education which is a different subject) we can understand these opressive mechanisms better. a kind of freedom comes from this knowledge by putting together contradictory data and comparing it, family schools media books etc... .
a neverending attitude, combined with a certain fatalism, in order to defend our creativity.creativity is innate but to preserve it is a peaceful war

Comment by Susanne Niebruegge-Alm on September 15, 2008 at 10:56am

And nowadays its very much harder for kids to rescue their creativity, cause its torn down much more to be useless in germany, then it was in my childhood . The only hope are the left over and seldom to meet teachers, who still see possibilities for kids, who have talents, that are not the so called "usefull talents"...

Comment by Susanne Niebruegge-Alm on September 15, 2008 at 10:43am

The daydreaming- theme i know well...and I agree a lot with your comment pennie. I think school can kill creativity, if there is nothing (at home or elsewhere) what strengthens the motivation to go on. I remember me painting even in gymnasium "school-art"...and at home "my art". Ken Robinson speaks me out of my soul!

Comment by Tonito Valderrama on September 15, 2008 at 1:29am

I feel that schools have become so math and science based in order to create a conformity of business minded capitalists that they have left no room for the individual creativity to grow. With such a demand for economic power as a country our schools are forgetting how important the intangible,unstandardized learning is for children. I don't blame the teachers, but I do blame the government for for forcing a curriculum and standards that meet left brain thinkers only. Let them remember that without art and individual creativity we would not have anything in our lives. For it is the culinary artist that creates the meals, the architect who designs our houses and cities and the artist who helps make this world more beautiful!

Comment by mike hinc on September 13, 2008 at 8:25am

Can't agree more about daydreaming. Always had the feeling that at school intelligence was confused with what Orwell called "a writhing mass of imbecile enthusiasms". The horror!

Comment by Kestrel on September 12, 2008 at 8:46am

Schools as a part of life in the 21st Century do little to enhance creativity. There are some teachers who give heart and soul into developing creativity within a system that does not place value on the creative process or on art as a means of expression - only as a means to making financial gain. Some schools, Rudolph Steiner Waldorf schools for example, place creativity at the heart of their educational ethos.
I chose not to send my older two children to school as is my legal right to do here in the UK. I followed the 'autonomous education' idea and did my best to facilitate their learning. I observed that the beginning of the creative process is often destruction. It seems to me that many school children are never allowed to progress the process of destruction leading to creation and are labelled 'destructive'. How can we learn how things work without pulling them apart to see how they fit together and function? Another important part of the creative process is to sit and do nothing at all. Often seen by outsiders (teachers) as being lazy or not trying hard enough or day dreaming. This passive state is to be encouraged as part of crativity and in shools it most definately is not. Most schools are places where constant movement and hopping from on activity to another are celebrated... staring out of the window is most definately not. Personally that was my favorite activity in school!

Comment by mike hinc on September 12, 2008 at 7:23am

There are many people on this site who as teachers and academics are better qualified to judge than me. But I have been through the school system - several times at degree level and my own feeling is yes, schools can kill creativity...but only if you let them.

IMHO the individual child must learn to discriminate and take from the school what he needs and keep and protect from the school what he wants to. It's a jungle out there and schools should be seen as part of that jungle - not some nice old granny dishing out the candy. The candy's not poisoned but it is laced with laudanum. The child should be as critical and wary of schooling as he is of any other aspect of modern life. Otherwise schools become colleges for industry producing morons for the labour market.

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