If you haven’t yet watched the much talked about TED talk “Are Schools Killing Creativity” it is a must see. I first watched it over a year ago and recently watched it again. It raised some new questions and thoughts about the hierarchy of education today and how can we begin to shift 20th century thinking in schools to support 21st century skills such as creativity?

The video brought to mind a few questions…

Are schools educating through an outdated value system?
Sir Ken Robinson talks about the current hierarchy in education based on a value system put into place during the industrial revolution. Disciplines that were necessary to learn skills to be successful in the work force were given the most importance such as science, math, and humanities. It seems today, we are still educating through a system that upholds the same hierarchy, even when the workforce of today requires a completely new set of skills that aren’t fully learned through these disciplines: problem solving, collaboration, innovation, synthesis of information,…and the list goes on.  Why haven’t schools kept up?

What role does “assessment” and standardized tests play?
If what we are teaching neither keeps up with skills necessary for our students to be successful in the workforce nor does it meet their variety of learning styles, how can we be assessing the right things? We need to reassess what we place importance on and will make students successful in an ever-changing world/work place.

How do we foster creative thinking?
Before discussing how schools can foster creativity, I think it is important to point out the difference between creative thinking and critical thinking. Being an art teacher for 11 years and being a practicing artist, I have often thought about whether “creativity” can be taught or whether it is an innate quality that some individuals simply possess more than others. “Creativity” is often defined with a skill set that which describes “critical” thinking: analyzing, synthesizing, problem-solving. I find creative thinking to be more of a self directed free thinking that includes innovation, discovery, experimentation, and new application that are uniquely their own but include the processes of critical thinking. As educators we can foster creative thinking by structuring learning environments that encourage it, but I believe it comes from within the individual learner vs. an input of skills learned from the educator.

A thought-provoking video indeed, one that each time I watch brings to light the need for a major shift in the way we approach education.