How Schools Kill Creativity

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I sit at my cold, uncomfortable desk, listening to my teacher drone on with the boring lecture. The teacher finally stops talking and proposes a question. I feel unprepared to answer the question because my brain has been fried, and my ears, talked off. I start to fear making a mistake, because I might say something wrong; I know that if I do slip up, I will be shot down by the teacher. After this intimidation, he announces that it's test time. Another scantron is passed out. Time to fill in hundreds of bubbles that seem to overwhelm by brain: A B C or D? This is the kind of scenario Ken Robinson talks about in his Ted Talk, How Schools Kill Creativity. Because of this sense of fear and stigma of being wrong placed in the classroom, and a huge focus on standardized testing, our potential to become creative, imaginative thinkers is hindered.
Adolescence is a crucial time for development, and one skill that we should continuously nurture and practice is creativity. This is the kind of conclusion Ken Robinson comes to in his Ted Talk, How Schools Kill Creativity. Robinson makes note that ¨because of this lack of development, we could potentially grow up to be adults that can never come up with anything original."
Kyung Hee Kim, a creativity researcher at the College of William and Mary, stated that since 1990 children have become “less able to produce unique and unusual ideas.” He explains how he believes that the program instilled in our educational system, No Child Left Behind, has really hurt creativity: “If we just focus on … testing, testing, testing, then how can creative students survive?" Standardized tests have become the number one source of measuring one’s wisdom, and sometime, it can be an inaccurate representati...

... middle of paper ...

... knew it back then, and nowadays, it applies to our generation more than ever.

Works Cited
Robinson, K. (Writer). (2006, February). How schools kill creativity [Transcript, Television series episode]. In Ted Talks. NYC, New York: TedTalks.

Rettner, Rachael. "Are Today's Youth Less Creative & Imaginative?" LiveScience.com. LiveScience, 12 Aug. 2011. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.

BoysTown. "Boys Town - Saving Children, Healing Families | About | Father Flanagan | Father Flanagan Quotes." Boys Town. IRS, n.d. Web. 13 May 2014.

Landale, Victoria. ""All Children Are Born Artists, the Problem Is to Remain an Artist as We Grow Up." – Pablo Picasso." Victoria Landale. MediaFactory, 22 Aug. 2013. Web. 14 May 2014.

Venier, Leanne. "We Say We Like Creativity, but We Really Don't. Here’s why…." Leanne Veniers Healing Colors Artwork. WordPress, 10 Dec. 2013. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.

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