are Children “Naturally Creative”?
“The wish of all parents is that education will give their children the opportunity to become good human beings, have confidence in life, and to have happiness. Well, it seems that education does almost everything except that.”
Sir Ken Robinson’s words have been ringing loud in my ears ever since I came across the recording of the Peace Summit 2009: Educating the Heart and Mind on YouTube back in July. My youngest child started school this September and it hasn’t been easy, but she is seeming a little more accepting of the situation each day. Is that okay, though? Is she settling in, or is she actually just gradually conforming to our educational system, which, frankly, is well overdue an upgrade?
My daughter is a wild, hilarious little thing when she’s within her comfort zone, and she has a great imagination. I’ve no doubt that with the right guidance, at home and at school, she will become a highly creative individual. But I’m not convinced that the national curriculum is set up to serve her or her peers well, right now.
Creative powers need to be cultivated in children - because they’re the powers that will deliver us into the future. Current educational systems are rooted in the principles and ideas of industrialism, and tend to quash children’s imagination in favour of academic achievement. Yet the Industrial age is long behind us. We’re deep in the Information Age – and with technology advancing at such a rate, the greatest superpower left to us humans is surely the power of creativity?
Already, we’re seeing so many jobs being lost to AI. Personally, I feel fairly secure in my profession, because I’m creative. Strategists are highly creative thinkers – without creativity, like so many others, we’d be redundant to the bots.
As Sir Ken points out in the clip of the 2009 Peace Summit (skip to 28:51), you can’t just allow humans to be creative. You have to teach them. Children are naturally imaginative, but creativity is applied imagination, and in the age we live in now, I wholeheartedly believe it is the greatest skill we can learn.
“You can be imaginative all day long but never do anything. To be creative, you have to do something. It’s a very practical process. It’s putting your imagination to work, so to speak. It’s applied imagination, and it depends on skills, and on training, and confidence and knowing.”
My children are lucky enough to go to a wonderful school which places great emphasis on good mental health, which I hope allows its children to learn and grow unbridled by fear and anxiety. But I still wince when my son comes home and tells me his day has been mainly maths, english and science lessons, as per the national curriculum. I understand the importance of a rounded education, but is it time to restructure our concept of ‘school’ to ensure the next generation are prepared to think creatively in the real world?