points of reference

Sir Ken Robinson at TED in Monterey California
conference: TED
video on googlevideo
subject: creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it.
date: february, 2006

Sir Ken Robinson
on the website: internationalspeakers.com
subject: mortality rate of the top companies and the perspective on time.
date: unknown
to my regret this link is not working anymore

Some quotes from the first video:

… all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them. Pretty ruthlessly. My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status.

… f you are not prepared to be wrong you never come up with anything original. By the time they get to be adults most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong.

… we are now running national educational systems where mistakes are the worst things you can make. And the result is we are educating people out of their creative capacities.

Our educational system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there is a reason. The whole system was invented round the world, there were no public educational systems before the 19 century, they all came in to being to meet the needs of industrialism.

We know 3 thinks about intelligence:
1) it’s diverse, we think about the world in all the ways we experience it
2) it’s dynamic, … the brain is wonderful interactive, the brain isn’t divided in compartments .. In fact creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value more often than not comes about though the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.
3) it’s distinct,
I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology one in witch we reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our educational system has mined our minds in the way we strip-mined the earth for particular commodity and for the future it wouldn’t service.

Children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise displayed, what the world will would look like in five years time and jet we are meant to be educating them for it.

Like sir Ken says everybody has an personal opinion and a deeply rooted experience about education, so here goes.
I love and have been a strong believer of the idea he brings forth for some time now. But such a dramatic change will take time and effort and possibly even disaster.
The general educational system will only change, like history dictates, if the companies ask for it and for now most companies are not looking for creative conscience people questioning policy. And in some way understandably so. The economy is dependent upon a mass of productive people educated to do a specific task in life without questioning it. Crucial to sustaining our present state of prosperity.

I haven’t read the book or listened to more extensive speeches but I think you can only massage the system and take it step by step.
Only based on my personal experience I want to point out what I see as opportunities to do so.
I’m educated as an artist and I guess every school of the Arts in Holland can be accused of navelstaring as well as every other educational institute. It’s almost only focused on the high Arts itself as the ultimate creative expression. Indoctrinating their students that they should strive for that goal. Even conscienceless knowing only a very small percentage will be able to grasp that high level of autonomous quality within that narrow – somewhat isolated – not economically based branch called the Arts.
And even then making a living is not guaranteed. Most of them have low paid jobs where no education is required. Not able to make use of their potential creative output within the economic system.
As Sir Ken Robinson points out, we can’t effort to do so if we want to have a future.

How to prevent this from happening time and time again?
Like Ken says:

… creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value more often than not comes about though the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.

From that perspective, that I share, I think we should make the arts just another major to graduate in on university level. In this way those two worlds mix in a physical sense and this will make it impossible to ignore eachother.
Then the students should be made proactively aware that their particular sense of creativity are being asked for in all branches of live and work. So that they could optimize their changes and see where their specific talent/quality takes them.

But sadly at the present these different worlds don’t mix. Resonating deeply within my professional career. It took me years to see that there are great oppertunities for everyone involved. And today I’m still struggling to bridge the two worlds knowing that other world is as alien to me as my world is to them. I’m constantly looking for similarities to make people, companies and myself realize that my creativity can be put to use in all kinds of processes in society. Aren’t we all builders of paradise?