Assignment 3 Reflection essay

“Governments decide they know best and they’re going to tell you what to do”
- Sir Ken Robinson

Does today’s education system kill creativity? The question is indeed a bold one and understanding if this is true or not relies on your own experience and thoughts.

Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk about this subject raises several questions, which is pinpointed on my own personal opinions. Education and knowledge are two vital ideas in our existence. It is through those two factors we as humans can evolve and understand one another. Yet what happens when there is a subjective way of educating people? Will it then be regarded as a nourishing fragment for our way to develop?

I agree with Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk about how education system kills creativity. It strips down the vivid and curious thoughts you have as a child and transforms your mind into a routine-based drone. At the same time it is necessary to have subjects that emphasizes on regular matters, such as math and language but what we have in today’s education system is a way to make sure that if you want to succeed as an astronaut, achieving for an acting career or become an artist you probably will have the teacher or even your parents saying; “That’s sweet but you should study to become a doctor or an engineer.

Another argument that I fully agree with Sir Ken Robin is the matter on how we are afraid to be wrong. It is obvious that children needs to know what is right and wrong, you cannot go and steal or break down all the glasses in the house, but when we build up a system that mentally punish us for being wrong, we create a fear of failing. The best way to know something is to make sure you got it wrong at the first place. If you accidently smashed your thumb when hammering you know till the next time that you need to go easy. Being wrong should be something that is not as frightening as it sounds like. 

Following up on another topic Robinson mention is his reflections on education. I found it interesting on how he explained education is taught according to the needs of industrialism. The present education curriculum is forms us into workers for the society. Once again it is important to have people who work in industries or else our whole system would fall apart. However if you have too many people educating in works that are safe to get, then those subjects that where thought to be creative and unusual would diminish. Hence it would limit the creative workspace. An example that I am familiar with is how the education system works in Kerala, India. 

Kerala has the highest rate of people reading and writing in the entire country. The education system is one of the best and the growing amount of educated people is on levels never seen before. People all over the world really hunt people that come from Kerala for work. Yet the setback in this case is that people coming from Kerala lack the ability to take on a manager role or inventing new ways of improving the state. They mainly work in fields of engineering, doctors, and nurses, professions that are vital and necessary. But when it boils down to creative work, artist or entrepreneurs they often hire foreign people. Thou the state of Kerala has improved a lot and almost has eliminated poverty in a country that is both developed and under developed, the lack of creativity leads the state to a stop. 

There are more to Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk that I agree with and could go on forever. If we at a young age would have teacher who where encouraging and stressing on the factor that failure is not that bad and take advantage of it we would have a river of new inventions. At the same time, with everything else, too much of one thing is not good, if we only had actors then who would be the cameraman? It is a fine balance of what we need and what we want that needs to be put out on the table. Right now we are only following the needs and not the wants.