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Is it a coincidence that pretty much all
children love to write stories, have fantastic imaginations, enjoy getting messy, painting, making music, inventing characters, acting out plays, drawing and making things? Why don't we carry this natural capacity throughout adulthood? Why would
nature intend us to lose these gifts?
Eight years ago, a man named Ken Robinson made a
TED speech that revolutionized the topic of
education. It caused many parents to pull their kids out of
school, it was a matter of hot debate among experts, and it has been watched on the TED website over 31 million times to date (not including over 7 million more times on YouTube). Many of you may be familiar with this lecture, but for those who aren't, we highly recommend you take the next twenty minutes to sit down and listen to what this man has to say.
Robinson is an expert on creativity and
education, and he strongly believes that at the moment, the two concepts don't seem to co-exist. In this speech,
Robinson argues eloquently and passionately that education is destroying our childrens' capacity to think outside the box. Ken Robinson led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and
cultural education, an inquiry into the significance of creativity in the
educational system and the economy, and he was knighted in 2003 for his achievements.
Comment: With the world descending into a dystopian freak show, is it any wonder that those just coming into adulthood are increasingly uncertain about their place within it? Add to that the devolution of real human connections into a series of cyber-interactions, and it's amazing anyone can function at all.