Do schools kill creativity?

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Comment by Eloise Glorieux on May 20, 2007 at 7:57am

This was a very powerful video. I would like to hear more!

Comment by Cyndi Danner-Kuhn on April 29, 2007 at 4:40pm

I agree this is the best. I show it in class each semester and I too cry when I watch. I have a daughter who is dyslexia and a dancer. He was so describing her. She is a senior in college now and has offers from major ballet company's already. CREATIVITY!!! I just want to scream every time I hear about a school district eliminating the arts because of money. NCLB is leaving most children behind. It needs to be dumbed.

I hope someday I can go to TEDtalks!!

Comment by CJ Bryant on April 9, 2007 at 8:05am

Funny - I just finished an essay on Lessons They Teach Kids for my writing seminar. Basically a set of reminiscences from childhood, but a couple of them are pertinent, I thought...

The first was an incident from kindergarten:

In kindergarten, they had the most wonderful thing ever. Old wallpaper books. You could cut pieces out of them and use them in your collages. They also had tempera paint and crayons and other art supplies that they set out every afternoon along with some scissors and construction paper and who could resist that? They called it free play and I lived for it. I cut up old magazines and wallpaper and made spirals out of construction paper and punched holes and used cardboard tubes and made mobiles and cards and landscapes and a couple of months into class Ms. Mullinex dragged me from the art table and made me go play with the dolls in the little cardboard kitchen during free play even though I explained that the dolls and the kitchen were lame and the play wasn’t free if she MADE you do it. I put Betsy Wetsy in the oven which make Megan Hilty cry until I threatened her poodle and reminded her I knew where her house was. This got me out of the kitchen and onto the floor with Mike Dempsy playing with the blocks, but that was pretty unsatisfying too. I started spending free play reading in the corner at which point Ms. Mullinex gave up and let me back at the wallpaper books because we weren’t supposed to be reading until the next year.

The next was an altercation in 2nd grade:

I was in the second grade when I got sent to the principal’s office the first time. We were going on a field trip in the afternoon, for which we were supposed to wear jeans. I ate lunch at Pam Sippola’s house that year, cause Mom had a job at a doctor’s office, so I just wore my jeans to school in the morning too, since I wouldn’t be going home in between. I should have realized logic had no place in school. Even after I explained my predicament, I was not allowed to return to class. Apparently, my jeans would contaminate the rest of the class and not allow them to concentrate on Dick and Jane, so I had to spend all morning sitting in the office. I think it was kind of a relief later in the year when I had the altercation with the librarian and called her a fascist and got sent to the office. At least I felt like I was sitting there for a good reason. She wouldn’t let me check out Tom Sawyer. I thought she was being arbitrary and autocratic. She thought I was being smartmouthed and an upstart. I secretly thought I had a better vocabulary.

I solved the library problem by making friends with the librarian at the public library, who let me break the rules and check out pretty much whatever I liked. Luckily, around fifth grade, I became best friends with an incredibly creative girl and together we did great things outside of school and are still up to no good today :)

Not to say all of my school experiences were negative, but it was hardly a creatively nurturing experience overall.

Comment by nlowell on April 8, 2007 at 1:30pm

I was hard on Andi Gutmans ZDNet video because it lacked the crucial elements to make it "good."

This one doesn't.

Take the time to enjoy it if you haven't already. :)

Comment by Christopher D. Sessums on April 8, 2007 at 12:51pm

This is one of the most powerful speeches I've ever seen/heard. I cry every time I watch it. We need to stir collective action now to prevent further suffering of thousands of children, seriously....