Where to now?

Standardization kills creativity. The Leaving Certificate is the leveller for secondary school students here in Ireland. Using it we rigorously examine our students each year in an effort to compare their academic ability. It rarely seeks opinion preferring to extract regurgitated ‘Cliff-Notes’ over original ideas. It affects the morale of not only the students but the teachers too. Ken Robinson says “The problem comes when these tests become more than simply a tool of education and turn into the focus of it”. (Robinson, K. 2009 p. 237). Personally speaking this element of our current education system hugely affects my morale. I find myself telling students to learn Irish essays off by heart because this is what it takes to succeed in the exam. I spend more time preparing for the exam, than I do on actual language skills and this is hugely frustrating. It’s also promoting the demise of the Irish language. What can we do?

“The most powerful method of improving education is to invest in the improvement of teaching and the status of great teachers”. (Robinson, K. 2009 p. 237). Time and again teachers complain about the inadequacies of the system, about how “The Leaving Cert is a test of memory and not of intellect”. But teachers are not the problem. Schools up and down the country are full of fabulous teachers working within an ailing and archaic system. Robinson suggests that we focus on personalization rather than standardization.

We need to discover the individual talents of each child, to create an environment where they want to learn and can discover their true passions. Lessons need to be student-centred and lessons should be what student interest dictates. Students should be able to interact, communicate and collaborate.

Robinson also asserts the notion that “school systems should base their curriculum not on the idea of separate subjects, but on the much more fertile idea of disciplines”. He feels that this would make a more “fluid” and “dynamic” system.

Finally education should be personal taking into account the individual learning styles and talents of each student.

Finding Your Tribe

Ken Robinson says that for most people who have found their 'Element' i.e. work which combines passion and talent, that connecting with other people who share their talents, feeds their creativity. Robinson refers to others in your field as your "tribe". Robinson introduces us to Helen Pilcher a scientist turned author/comedian. Helen says "Leaving the lab was scary but not as scary as the prospect of staying. My advice, should you be contmplating making that leap, is to make like a lemming and jump." (Robinson, K. 2009 p. 110). Therefore when you haven't found your tribe and you are not inspired by others in your field it's time to get out!

A Music Teacher! Is that a proper job?

On the ‘The Apprentice’ on TV3 on the 9th of November a music teacher, Sam Conroy was belittled for teaching “only music!” It was suggested to her that music wasn’t a real subject and “how could anybody teach, only music?” During a staff discussion on the topic the following day a colleague of mine said “That’s typical of what people think. You only have to look at parent-teacher meetings to know people don’t care about music, they never even make the effort to show up!” As a language teacher I was astonished at this. I always have a great turnout to parent-teacher meetings. This highlights the fact that parents place much more importance on languages than they do on the arts, a view that has to be altered, if students are to be true to their natural abilities and talents. Our jobs are the implementation of who we are and “Education is the system that’s supposed to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way in the world” (Robinson, K. 2009 p16). However, instead, we are educating people out of creativity, stifling their individual talents and “killing their motivation to learn” (Robinson, K. 2009 p 16).

Searching for Meaning through Creativity

The power of human creativity is obvious everywhere, in the technologies we use, in the buildings we inhabit, in the clothes we wear and in the films we watch. But the reach of creativity is very much deeper. It affects not only what we put in the world, but also what we make of it – not only what we do, but also how we think and feel about the world. We spend much of our time trying to figure out what it all means. We don’t just see the world as it is. We view it from our own internal reference; that is we interpret the world through the particular ideas and beliefs that have shaped our own cultures and our personal outlook. All of this stands between us and the world acting as a filter on what we perceive and what we think. “What we think of ourselves and the world makes us who we are and what we can be” (Robinson, K.2009 p81).

However, if we can create our own world view then we can recreate it too by taking a different perspective and reframing our situation and this is where creativity has a huge part to play. In the preface to Man’s Search for Meaning, Gordon Allport manages to convey the capacity of the human spirit to triumph over it’s surroundings. “to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.” (Frankl, V. 1959, p. 9). The prisoners in Auschwitz and other concentration camps; by choosing to see their situation as an undertaking; that if overcome, would prove them worthwhile members of society, was ‘reframing’ at its most powerful. Frankl himself later in the novel says “without suffering and death life cannot be complete”. (Frankl, V. 1959, p. 76). It is a splendid account of the human spirit that people could look upon such extreme suffering as an addition to their experience of life and in doing so could transcend their physical environment.

Frankl also asserts the power of the imagination. “Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom”. (Frankl, V. 1959, p. 47). It is therefore of vital importance that we instil in our children the power of creativity and imagination.

I Could Have Danced All Night!

Activities that we love fill us with energy even when we are physically exhausted. Activities we don't like can drain us in minutes. "When you do something you love the rest of the world just slips away" (Robinson, K. 2009 p89). FUN MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE

Ken Robinson-Creativity

In education creativity is as important now as literacy. We have to rethink the fundamental way we're educating our children. We should embrace the gift of human imagination and educate for the future.

Whistle while you work!

Behaviour therapy tells us that we are what we do. Our jobs are the implementation of who we are. It makes sense that we all engage in work that gives us meaning. We need to create an environment in our schools in which we nurture each child's individual talents and passions. Often parents steer their children away from their true talents because they think that they have to follow conventional paths in order to be successful. The goal here is to convey the benefits to everybody of connecting properly with our individual talents. I feel very passionately about this, as everyday in school I see students being forced into areas that do not inspire them and worse still do not make the best use of their natural abilities. It would be far more beneficial to see students doing things they love to do and being aware of their own particular talents. Ken Robinson, in his book, The Element, describes people who have achieved the balance between passion and talent, as those who; “have discovered their Element- the place where the things you love to do and the things that you are good at come together”. (Robinson, K. 2009, p.8).

 Our work must inspire us!

Hierarchy of school subjects.

Every education system in the world has the same hierarchy of subjects. Maths and languages are at the top, humanities in the middle and at the bottom are the arts. There is even a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music have a higher status than drama and dance. Ken Robinson tells us "there isn't an education system in the world that teaches dance everyday to students the way it teaches them mathematics." Why? Maths is important but so is dance. If your talent lies in dance and not in mathematics then the education system is failing you!

Allow children to be creative!

In his biography of Einstein, Walter Isaacson says “As a young student, he never did well at rote learning. And later, as a theorist, his success came not from the brute strength of his mental processing power but from his imagination and creativity. He could construct complex equations, but more important, he knew that math is the language nature uses to describe her wonders.”(Robinson, K. 2009 p. 50). As the sign below proves, we are continually trying to prevent children from experiencing the world creatively and hence are prohibiting their understanding of nature’s wonders.