“My education was interrupted only by my schooling”- Winston Churchill

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.”

Every person's memory is his private literature.  ~Aldous Huxley

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.  ~Michel de Montaigne

I recently had a bit of a strange experience, which was my inspiration for this article. So let the first briefly share it with you: I started taking Spanish classes this summer, but could not take the exam at the end, because I went on vacation. When I came back two weeks later I went to take the exam, and looking at the exam paper, my mind was completely blank. I could not remember anything. I studied! Maybe not too much, because everything was still pretty fresh in my memory. Or at least I thought it was. Even more strange, I started remembering French, which I had taken for about 5 years, but its been two years since then!

Has something like this ever happen to you before?

It was a first for me. And it really got me thinking. Yes, of course I know about short-term and long-term memory. But I have never met face to face with this phenomenon before, and so clearly.

So let me first explain a bit in case you're not familiar with the subject. Memory works in two different ways: short-term and long-term. The difference is the length of time the information is stored.

The information stored in short-term memory is available only for a limited period of time, but long-term memory can store much larger quantities of information for potentially unlimited period of time. Its capacity is immeasurably large.

So that is why you can remember which flowers grew in your mother's garden when you were four years old, but you can't remember what your teacher said just ten minutes earlier. Strange, isn't it?

So my question is, when do we use which memory type, and is it possible to do it consciously?

It seems to me that the entire system of education, not just in Turkey, but in the world, is based on short-term memory. It's overloaded, unorganized and mostly unnecessary. Students are given a chaotic soup of information, from which it is hoped that they retain at least, I don't know, maybe 20% at most? At least the basics. But some don't even retain that much.

There is a bit of a logic behind this system, I suppose, to expose the students to a maximum variety of different subjects, so they learn a little bit of everything and later in life can choose, already knowing a bit about their specialty. But does that work really? I went to a private high school in Ukraine. We had advanced physics, chemistry, law, economics, maths. I graduated with excellence. Now, I sometimes hesitate when counting change when buying things.

I think there is a difference between giving students a large variety of information, and pushing them to a point of exhaustion. After a while, if there is too much, instead of learning a bit of everything, you learn nothing at all. If there is too much, the memory gets tired and confused.

Really, it seems strange that teachers don't understand this when creating syllabuses. Give students 30 pages to read, or give them a summary? And if they want more details, then give them a book. In a perfect world they would read. But we have to be realistic and practical. People simply do not need to know the detailed and inner workings of every subject. They need practical knowledge. And when they choose what they want to do in life, then they can go into details. But then it will be voluntary.

I think that the difference between whether or not you use short term memory or long term isn't only in repetition. It has to do with interest. If you like a subject, if it is important to you, or if it is fun, you are much more likely to remember.

I had a math teacher in 6th grade, who was the best teacher I ever had. He once made us all close our eyes, while he went out and came back with a guitar, pretending to be our teacher's twin brother, and played/sang us a song in which some of the lyrics were math formulas we had to memorize. About 8 years later, I still remember the melody and lyrics to the song. Enough said.

What do you think?