Creative Spark Talk Analysis
Michelle D. Mix
PHL/458
July 2, 2015
Laurence Hanson
Creative Spark Talk Analysis
The Creative Spark Talk that I chose was titled “How Schools Kill Creativity”, presented by Sir Ken Robinson. Robinson is an English author, creativity expert, and educator. Robinson spoke at the 2006 conference. Throughout Robinson’s presentation, his main focus and goal was to bring to light the issue of the current education system, which he believes is stunting children’s creativity. Ken Robinson’s goal and hope is that the education system will be changed in order to help build and encourage student’s creativity.
How does the talk’s content illuminates some of the stages of creativity?
This Creative Spark Talk’s content illuminates some of the stages of creativity by shedding light on some flaws within the educational system. Robinson mentioned that everyone is interested in education and spoke in regards to education. His deduction of one way the current education system is stunting children’s creativity, is due to the fact educators are teaching based on the present and not the future. Robinson believes this is a fatal flaw, as educators do not know what will happen within the time they are educating the student and the student graduates. By the education system focusing primarily on teaching for set skills, Robinson believes educators are snuffing out opportunities to become creative. Vincent Ryan Ruggerio, author of the book, The Art of Thinking: A guide to creative and critical thought, believes the first stage of the creative process is searching for challenges. Ruggerio suggests that the “essence of creativity is meeting challenges in an imaginative, original, and effective way…” (Ruggerio, 2012). According to Ruggerio, the second stage is to express the problem or issue (Ruggerio, 2012). Robinson touches on this point, by concluding that children are not afraid to be wrong, but we stifle it. (Robinson, 2006). He also stated that by being okay with being wrong every now and then, encourages creativity (Robinson, 2006). Ruggerio states something similar, “One of the most common mistakes made in addressing problems and issues is to see them from one perspective only…thus closing off many fruitful avenues of thought…” (Ruggerio, 2012). The third stage of creativity, according to Ruggerio, is investigating the problem or issue. By education with a set skill focus, educators eliminate creativity and students are “educated out of creativity…” (Robinson, 2006). The final stage’s goal, producing ideas, is to come up with enough ideas to decide what to do or what to believe (Ruggerio, 2012). Robinson stated that most people who are good at certain educational aspects don’t receive validation or seen as importance, so it basically stops there (Robinson, 2006).
How does the topic of the talk relate to the concepts of imagination and curiosity?
This talk by Robinson relates to the concepts of imagination and curiosity because most of his talk was in regards to creativity, curiosity, and imagination. Robinson actually stated that the reason he believes we educate children the way we do, is to create more college professors (Robinson, 2006). Due to the way the education system puts an emphasis on math and science, Robinson believes that is stifling the creativity within children that could be cultivated through arts and dance. Educating in this way, Robinson compared it to an alien. He stated we “focus so much on one side of the brain,