Nurture your nature

There have been a few repeating themes in my day, maybe because I’ve been reflecting on some things, but the repetition prompted me to review some things I’ve experienced before. One thing was a particularly good TEDTalk by Sir Ken Robinson on the subject of creativity and education. He is brilliant and entertaining as well, but more importantly, his words at this TEDTalk, released in June 2006, are relevant to the evolution of our species.

Perhaps you have already seen this, because it has been widely distributed and publicized with the tag “Everyone should watch this.” But, it is so good and so relevant, it’s worth a little déjà vu.

Ken Robinson’s TED talk
Do schools kill creativity?
Posted Jun 2006

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

Sir Ken Robinson

Author/educator

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

Why you should listen

Why don’t we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it’s because we’ve been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies — far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity — are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says. It’s a message with deep resonance. Robinson’s TED Talk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? “Everyone should watch this.”

A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government’s 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His 2009 book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, is a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 21 languages. A 10th anniversary edition of his classic work on creativity and innovation, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, was published in 2011. His 2013 book, Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life, is a practical guide that answers questions about finding your personal Element. In his latest book, Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education, he argues for an end to our outmoded industrial educational system and proposes a highly personalized, organic approach that draws on today’s unprecedented technological and professional resources to engage all students.

What others say

“Ken’s vision and expertise is sought by public and commercial organizations throughout the world.”
— BBC Radio 4

Transcript Excerpt:

0:11 Good morning. How are you?

0:15 (Laughter)

0:16 It’s been great, hasn’t it? I’ve been blown away by the whole thing. In fact, I’m leaving.

0:23 (Laughter)

0:29 There have been three themes running through the conference which are relevant to what I want to talk about.One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity in all of the presentations that we’ve had and in all of the people here. Just the variety of it and the range of it. The second is that it’s put us in a place where we have no idea what’s going to happen, in terms of the future. No idea how this may play out.

0:56 I have an interest in education. Actually, what I find is everybody has an interest in education. Don’t you? I find this very interesting. If you’re at a dinner party, and you say you work in education — Actually, you’re not often at dinner parties, frankly.

1:11 (Laughter)

1:15 If you work in education, you’re not asked.

1:18 (Laughter)

1:21 And you’re never asked back, curiously. That’s strange to me. But if you are, and you say to somebody, you know, they say, “What do you do?” and you say you work in education, you can see the blood run from their face.They’re like, “Oh my God,” you know, “Why me?”

1:35 (Laughter)

1:37 “My one night out all week.”

1:38 (Laughter)

1:41 But if you ask about their education, they pin you to the wall. Because it’s one of those things that goes deep with people, am I right? Like religion, and money and other things. So I have a big interest in education, and I think we all do. We have a huge vested interest in it, partly because it’s education that’s meant to take us into this future that we can’t grasp. If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise that’s been on parade for the past four days, what the world will look like in five years’ time. And yet we’re meant to be educating them for it. So the unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary.

Please continue with the video below as Sir Ken Robinson gives an entertaining and educational message about creativity in education. It’s truly brilliant.