The importance of creativity

I randomly came across this video and it is one that I think every teacher or future teacher should watch. It’s about 20 minutes long, so watch it when you have some free time and definitely be sure to watch the whole thing. I found the end to be very inspirational. The speaker, Ken Robinson, makes some excellent points about the fact that we tend to put certain subjects way ahead of others. We as future teachers need to realize there needs to be a change in the education system.
One point that I extremely agree with is the fact that when most teachers see a student who fidgets a lot or can not sit still they immediately want to “fix” the “problem” with medication, and claim that the child has ADHD when in fact the student might just be in need of letting out his creativity. I hope you all enjoy the video as much as I did.

4 Comments

  1. Hi! I am going to try viewing the video again later, it was having some trouble loading. Your comment about letting out student creativity is an interesting one. When I think about the way I was educated, it is opposite to the way that I want to teach. It’s a backwards notion that children are forced to sit still in desks all day. Maybe this is where our understanding of technology and even physical and arts education should come into play, instead of medicating a child that doesn’t need to be medicated, why don’t we look at different ways of keeping them on track in class? Thanks for sharing this video!

  2. We also need to remember that some students do have ADD and ADHD, and not recognizing this is worse than not. I have been struggling with this for years with my youngest son and his school, and with me for all of my life. Sometimes LD is LD. Teachers can recommend that students get tested for ADD, but it takes parents and doctors to diagnose and medicate

  3. You are definitely right… thank you for making that point because unfortunately, sometimes they do have it. I appreciate your comment because it is always important to look at something from all angles.

  4. Thanks for sharing such an entertaining, intelligent video. One thing I thought of while watching it is how some art teachers are downright terrible… they focus purely on students’ techniques, and don’t allow for any freedom of expression. As Ken Robinson says, creativity is undervalued in our society, but thankfully things are changing.

    I also found the part about ADHD interesting, because I learned in KHS 139 that young students often do not have the muscle mass necessary to sit still for long periods of time. Often all students need are short breaks to stretch, and they will be able to focus on learning again. Thanks again for posting this.


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  1. By Thoughts on Blogging « April Soloway’s Weblog on 18 Jun 2008 at 5:43 pm

    [...] and gave me so much to think about that I couldn’t bundle it all into a little comment, Kari’s post, which shared a great video from Ken Robinson, Sharlene’s post, with an awesome [...]

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