Do Schools Kill Creativity?

           Public education, in the sense we know it as nowadays, was first introduced not long after the Industrial Revolution. Governments in Europe—the continent in which the Revolution first started—initiated universal education hoping that this would produce workers that had the skills necessary to perform their jobs more efficiently. The first subjects that were taught in these early compulsory academies were reading, writing, and arithmetic: three fields that are relatively simple yet are useful in the industrial production process. As decades passed, compulsory education became no longer limited to these three subjects; a variety of studies such as the humanities, the sciences, and the arts, were included. This widening of the educational spectrum of apparently provides students with a more diverse choice of studies, but whether or not these options are equally available and valued is subject of discussion.

           In the embedded video above, Sir Ken Robinson discusses the relationship between individual creativity and the current educational system. Sir Robinson has a very critical opinion about the globally common trend in education; he believes that the system is killing creativity. Calling modern public education a process to “produce university professors,” he points out the apparent hierarchy amongst the subjects that are being learned in school.

           The current educational policies around the world stress subjects such as language and mathematics as the most important ones. The next subjects down the ladder are the humanities, such as history or social studies. The arts are at the bottom; the arts are usually taught only minimally compared to math or language, and young students are sometimes discouraged from perusing those fields. This set priority list of subjects, according to Sir Robinson, is imprinted by schools into the minds of the students, leading them to avoid the arts and regard them as inferior. Sir Robinson argues that his is a great problem because the arts are the area in which people can effectively express their creativity.

           I partially agree with Sir Robinson’s opinion. I do believe that the arts are no less important than any other subject and should be treated with the same respect. I also agree that many educational systems, including that of South Korea, tend to take the arts less seriously than they do other subjects. However, I do not believe that this necessarily means that schools are killing creativity. I do not think that things such as music, art, and dance are the only methods of expressing and developing one’s creativity. There can be great innovations in fields such as language or science as well. Although probably not as visible as creative designs of artistic fields, great ideas in the so-called “hierarchically high” subjects are indeed significant in improving the quality of our lives. Also, such academic fields may be easier to approach by the average student compared to artistic ones, which do require some natural talent as well as lots of training and practice.

           Sir Robinson, I believe, is correct when pointing out that subjects are being treated unequally in schools. As a solution, schools and other educational institutes should be able to provide students with artistic talent and interest with the necessary programs to further develop their skills. This does not mean including the same amount of hours of art as math in the annual curriculum. Instead, providing things such as after-school classes for interested students would be more efficient and effective in improving the system.