Summary About the Relation Between Education and Creativity

We all know human beings have extraordinary creativity, and it's that put us in a place where we have no idea what's going to happen in the future. I have a big interest in education, and actually, I think we all do, because it's education that takes us into this future that we can't grasp. As the main object of education, children have extraordinary capacities for innovation. I think we've all agreed on that. However, my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly. So I want to talk about education and creativity. My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.

How about let’s start with this?

Do you remember when you were a little kid, when you encountered with something new or even strange, or when you’re exposed to an unfamiliar place, what did you do? Even though you don't know how to do it, you’ll always take a chance and have a try, Will you? That’s because you're not frightened of being wrong. Now, I don't mean that being wrong is the same thing as being creative, but I do mean that if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original. We’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. We stigmatize mistakes. We make children become frightened of being wrong. So, the result is, we are educating people out of their creative capacities.

So why is this?

If you travel around the world, you’ll see every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts. Still why? You may ask.
The cause can be traced to the purpose of public education is to produce university professors. We put them in the highest position. We hold them up as the high-water mark of all human achievement. But we shouldn’t do this, for they're just a form of life, another form of life
There is another...