PART ONE: Schools killing creativity? – Riz Kahn speaks with world renowned creativity and education expert Ken Robinson.

If you’ve got half a brain, chances are you already love Ken Robinson. I know I do. His presentation on TED is an outstanding starting point for reflection on the need for an educational system that promotes creativity and experimental innovation.
Former CNN news anchor Riz Kahn recently interviewed Robinson for Al Jazeera English, providing him a good chance to develop his ideas on the current state of education.

Robinson expresses his worries towards the educational system as it’s still based on an old idea of intelligence and an outdated concept of economic need and purpose. He dramatizes the reasons why school institutions have become strong contributors to the systematic suppression of individual talent. The overwhelming logics of standardization have given focus to the issues of curriculum and evaluation, putting the very process of teaching into a secondary level of importance.
There’s a good amount of misunderstanding towards his ideas on creativity, as something that refers specifically to the realm of Arts. Robinson emphasises the importance of creativity in all areas of human intelligence – creativity as a manifestation of intellectual complexity, an ability to make connections between learned references and individual experiences. Something that’s in fact not so much a talent but a learned ability to solve problems. Creativity should not be perceived as a mysterious art to be practiced only by the most gifted minds, but a thinking tool that allows for the connection of ideas through an open process of reasoning.


PART TWO: Schools killing creativity? – Riz Kahn interviews Ken Robinson for Al Jazeera English.

Ken Robinson concludes on the need to raise standards and introduce a whole new approach towards the assessment of creativity, stating that school systems don’t need to be reformed, they need to be transformed. Our collective failure to promote creative capacities is a tragedy for the future of our economies; something that we should all realize we just can’t afford.

Via Core77, Designverb.