Does Education Kill Creativity?

With his quick wit and humorous presentation, Sir Ken Robinson does a TED talk about the lack of creativity in today's classroom.

In all of my years of schooling, particularly in my four-and-a-half years at MUN, I have never once stopped to think about the lack of creativity in the classroom. I have always taken for granted that you go to school, it's a place that is boring, and you get to do fun stuff in your extracurricular activities or when you get home in the evening (if you have time between all of your homework). In fact, being in the Faculty of Education is the first time since my grade twelve music class that I can remember being encouraged to be creative.

What does this prepare our students for?
Robinson talks about the reasoning behind the drill-and-practice method of instruction as a product of the industrial age. When he puts it that way, it seems as if we are putting students on an assembly line to crank out future graduates.

This does not prepare students to be real people. Real life is not black and white. I recently read an article about how students do not remember the tests that teachers gave, or the homework that they assigned at night, but how they care for their students. How did the teacher connect with the student? This is a concept that seems to be missing from "modern" education. 

"Creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the sane status."
 To me, what this means is that we should spend equal time allowing students to be creative as we do teaching them to read and write. If a child is in school for six hours a day, they should be free to be creative for at least one third of this time. For me personally, when I am being creative, I am doing much more than creating something. I am learning a new skill! For me (and I am sure many others), creativity builds confidence,  which allows me to become more successful in the non-creative aspects in my life. If creativity allows our students to become the learners that they need to be, why aren't we inspiring them to unleash their creativity?

What does this video mean to me?
This video inspires me to bring creativity into my classroom. Instead of having students write a test, perhaps they can write a song about what they have learned. When I was in high school, I re-wrote the lyrics to one of my favourite songs so that I could remember the theories of several different biologists. To this very day, I can sing the song, and remember the significance of each biologist. This same idea should be brought into our schools every day. I guess it all has to do with finding your students' "zone", and finding the best ways in which they learn individually. Encourage them to be creative in their learning, and they will have a deeper, and more meaningful learning experience.