“My education was interrupted only by my schooling”- Winston Churchill
Following up on my last post about a phenomenon called the Indigo Children, I would like to elaborate on the most important idea: that, whether or not you believe in the indigos, it is undeniable that today’s world is moving very quickly, and we must keep up with it. We cannot afford to have one of the most important systems –education- become outdated.
Children nowadays are different, whether we explain it by evolution of genetics or by simple adaptations to the new technologies and challenges of today. My four year old niece has her own laptop, and calls me on skype on her own. I didn’t have an e-mail address until I was about 13 or so.
The world is changing, but the education system is still the same. Mathematics and the sciences at the top, physical education and arts at the bottom. And it is aimed at making everybody the same. Standardized. And anything different is wrong. If you’re not good at math, its practically the same as saying you’re going to fail at life. And before it was like that: you had to learn facts, graduate, get a college degree, get a good job.
But now everything is different. A college degree isn’t a guarantee of a good job. You need something extra. You need to be innovative, creative. You need to stand out, to be different.But isn’t it ironic that your entire life you had to learn to fit in, learn to follow rules and be inside the box, and suddenly, its’ like, none of that really matters.
Creativity is what drives progress. It’s what, in a way “makes the world go round”
So why is it that the education system seems to be aimed at stripping children of the gift of creativity?
This article was inspired by a video that was sent to me from one of you, my dear readers, of a speaker at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference, Sir Ken Robinson, called “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” (Please youtube it when you have a free minute.)
He talks about the fact that education has its priorities wrong: not to teach really, and not to inspire and light a spark in the children, but to fill them with the standard program and create a fear of making mistakes. He makes an incredibly good point during his presentation: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.”
It’s the idea that children and young adults have this burning potential, that, if not recognized, or if it’s suffocated by standardization, can go to waste. He gives an example:
“I’m doing a new book at the moment called, Epiphany, which is based on a series of interviews with people about how they discovered their talent. I’m fascinated about how people got to be there. It’s really prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman who most people have never heard of, she’s called, Julian Lynn.
Have you heard of her? Some have. She’s a choreographer and everybody knows her work. She did Cats and Phantom of the Opera. She’s wonderful. I used to be on the board of the Royal Ballet in England, as you can see. And eh, anyway Julian and I had lunch together one day and I said, ‘Julian how did you get to be a dancer?’ And she said it was interesting; when she was at school she was really hopeless.
And the school in the thirties wrote to her parents and said, ‘we think Julian has a learning disorder.’ She couldn’t concentrate, she was fidgeting. I think now they’d say she had ADHD, wouldn’t you? But this was the 1930’s and ADHD hadn’t been invented, you know, at this point, so it wasn’t an available condition, you know. People weren’t aware they could have that.
Anyway, she went to see this specialist in this oak panelled room and she was there with her mother and she was led and sat on this chair at the end. And she sat on her hands for twenty minutes while this man talked to her mother about all the problems she was having at school. And at the end of it (because she was disturbing people and her homework was always late and so on, a little kid of eight) In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Julian and said I’ve listened to all these things your mother has told me I need to speak to her privately so he said, ‘wait here we’ll be back. we won’t be very long’ And they went and left her. But as they went out of the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk, and when they got out of the room, he said to her mother, ‘just stand and watch her.’
The minute they left the room she said she was on her feet moving to the music and they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said, ‘You know, Mrs Lynn, Julian isn’t sick she’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.’ I said, ‘what happened? She said, ‘She did. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. We walked into this room and it was full of people like me; people who couldn’t sit still. People who had to move to think.’
They did ballet, they did tap, they did jazz, they did modern, they did contemporary. She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School. She became a soloist. She had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet. She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School and founded her own company; the Julian Lynn Dance Company, met Andrew Lloyd Weber.
She has been responsible for some of the most successful musical theatre productions in history. She has given pleasure to millions and she’s a multi- millionaire.
Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.”
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March 26, 2011 at 12:57 AM
I think Mathematics and sciences are top because they bring money:) In today's world everything is valued with only the economic value it can bring. And sciences-maths are needed for basic needs of people (like health, engineering) but arts and social sciences are seen as sth extra, that we will not die without :)
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