Creativity TED Talks

The argument of if schools foster or kill creativity is one for the ages. View these TedTalks from
both sides of the spectrum and answer the questions below. Expand thoughtfully in all of your
answers!

Before Watching

1. How do you define creativity?

- I would define creativity as the ability to create on a whim and be original. I think
it’s a gift that not everyone has and it’s something that can be used to help
others.

2. Do you consider yourself a creative person? What has your experience been in school
with creativity?
- I would consider myself a creative-ish person. I used to be more creative than I
am now, but I was never the most creative person. I think my extent of creativity
is coming up with things that already exist and then getting mad that someone
else thought of it first. I think my experience with creativity in school mostly
existed in elementary school when we just had like art classes and things. I also
used to do Reflections and write songs that were trash, but that was creative.

3. Do you think schools kill creativity or do they foster creativity? Explain.

- I think that schools do both. I think that if you’re involved in creative classes like
art classes and photography, then they foster creativity. However, if you aren’t
involved in these classes, then I think schools kill creativity. You have no chance
to really express yourself or be creative if you don’t take these classes, so I think
that it mostly kills creativity because I think the majority of kids don’t take these
classes unless they really have an interest in being creative.

While Watching

Take lots of notes for each video and identify the claim, purpose, and evidence of each!

Do Schools Kill Creativity? Why Real Creativity is Based on Knowledge

Sir Ken Robinson Tim Leunig

Claim: Creativity now is as important in Claim:Real creativity, successful creativity,

education as literacy, and we should treat it world-changing creativity, is based on
with the same status. knowledge.
Purpose: The purpose of this Ted Talk was to Purpose: The purpose of his Ted Talk is to
show the importance of creativity and the emphasize the role of creativity in education.
need for it in our future.

Evidence: Evidence:
He tells a story about a little girl who was The purpose of his course isn’t because it si
drawing during class and the teacher was useful or can be used for anything important
interested to see what she was drawing. SHe later in life, but rather because it is
went over tot he little girl, and the girl told interesting, it will teach them essential skills,
her she was drawing God. The teacher was and most importantly, it helps develop their
bewildered and said that nobody knew what creativity. This is where the jobs are. There
God looked like, and the girl responded by aren’t jobs for people who just know facts
saying that they would when she was done and are able to repeat them, but there are
with her drawing. jobs for people who can think for themselves,
Kids aren’t scared of being wrong. Being who can invent new products, and invent
wrong isn’t necessarily being creative, but it new processes and ways of thinking.
does have the potential to lead to creativity While creative thinking is coming up with
and new, original ideas. “If you’re not new things and being inventive, it is also
prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up based off of previous knowledge.
with anything original. He gives a garbage example about a lady who
We are educating people to outgrow their had a common product and then just made it
creative capacities. into a gel. She didn’t invent anything new and
Picasso said that “All children are born artists. just made it into a new form, so it wasn’t
The problem is to remain an artist as we grow even that creative.
up.”
Every education system has the same
hierarchy of subjects: Mathematics and
languages, then humanities, and at the
bottom is at the arts. WIthing the arts, their is
its own hierarchy. Music and arts are typically
seen as more important than the things like
drama and dance.
The whole purpose of education around the
world is to produce university professors.
Something unique about some of these
university professors is that they typically live
in their heads
Our education system is predicated on the
idea of academic ability.
1. The most useful subjects are situated on
top of the pyramid.
The whole structure of education is shifting
beneath our feet. We need to rethink our
views on education and intelligence.
Three things we know about intelligence is
that it’s diverse, it is dynamic, and it’s
distinct.
Our only hope for the future is to adopt a
new idea about human ecology, one in which
we start to reconstitute our conception of the
richness of human capacity.
We have to rethink the fundamental
principles with which we’re using to educate
our children.
He talked about the effects of an education
and how it restricts and a child's imagination.
While these academic achievements were
once very impressive and notable, everyone
now has them, but no one has these creative
achievements because they have been taught
that they are unimportant and useless.

After Watching

1. Does how we define “creativity” matter? Do Robinson and Leunig have the same
definition? Explain.
- I think it does matter because the second guys opinion was just weird and didn’t
really make any sense. All of his examples about creativity weren’t actually
creative and his arguments were weird. They did not have the same opinion.
Robinson argued that school was killing creativity, but that creativity could come
from multiple places. Leunig argued that school fostered creativity, and that
creativity is only possible through knowledge.

2. Do schools kill or foster creativity? With which speaker do you agree/disagree? Explain.
- I think that it’s not schools that necessarily kill creativity, but specific teachers. I
would mostly agree with Robinson, but I don’t completely agree or disagree with
either of the speakers. I think that they both made valid points, but that
Robinson was more correct.

3. Can creativity be taught? If so, how? What responsibility do schools have in the
endeavor?
- I don’t think that creativity can be taught. I think it is a skill that you are born
with, and that can be further learned. But I don’t think that it can be completely
taught.