Sir Ken Robinson and Creativity

I am part of a book club at my school and we are reading Mel Levine’s book A Mind at a Time.  In one of our meeting the conversation evolved to discussing how we can best highlight student’s individual strengths.  It was a great discussion. 

Afterwards I was talking to one of the participants and we were discussing creativity.  I mentioned to her the wonderful presentation Do School’s Kill Creativity by Sir Ken Robinson and suggested she watch it.  As I was searching for the video to send to her I also found this great interview from the Guardian with Sir Ken Robinson from February of this year:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/10/teaching-sats 

The entire interview is a great read.  In particular I found the following two quotes compelling:

Our approaches to education are "stifling some of the most important capacities that young people now need to make their way in the increasingly demanding world of the 21st century - the powers of creative thinking", he says.

He goes on to talk about the “element” (also the title of his new book The Element – which I can’t wait to read)

All of this prevents the next generation finding its "element". This is "the place where the things you love to do and the things you are good at come together". The "element" is essential to our wellbeing, our ultimate success and the effectiveness of our education system, he says.

I can only imagine what a school would be like where creativity and the ability for each student to find their “element” would be like… what a fabulous place.  This is where education needs to go – this is what we should be striving for. 

(Just in case you haven’t seen Do School’s Kill Creativity I’ve embedded the video below)

 

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<---Cross post from Katie Christo's Edublogs site--->