Public Education is Killing the Creativity - Essay Example

Public Education is Killing the Creativity Public education was initially meant equipping learners with a technical know-how as opposed to nurturing skill and talent that was needed during the industrial revolution. Thus, the main objective of developing an education system was not to nurture the talent and skills in people but rather to equip them with certain skills that would help bring up a pool of knowledgeable personnel to act as the labor force in the industries that were booming at the time. This ideology did not change even when the industrial era was over; since education kept on being passed like a culture and the old ideologies became perpetual through the time to the present as the same principles can be seen applicable to date (Robinson, 2011). Therefore, the idea of people being different with variable skills was not taken into consideration as a whole, because the educational idea focused only on developing academicians and not artists. It is from this juncture that interpersonal skills and talents that are embedded in various personalities were killed and buried as the educational system had no place for them. In essence, if one was not doing well in formal education he/she was readily regarded as a good for nothing as they would not provide any material good to the skilled workforce that was in need at the time (Robinson, 2011). However, these principles have slightly changed over time to incorporate co-curriculum activities among the courses offered in the formal education syllabus but the art related subjects have little or no significance when it comes to the overall grading of the students. For instance, a students who are good in subjects like mathematics and the sciences but poor in art and music are regarded brilliant and intelligent as opposed to those who are good in arts but weak in core subjects hence often regarding them as academic failures. Therefore, the ideal of over-emphasizing certain subjects over the others kills the morale of those that are good in the areas that are not strongly emphasized in the academic programme (Robinson, 2011). Since people are gifted differently, there are those students that are born with technical minds thus, they are quick to comprehend mathematics and other technical disciplines readily; while there is another group that may be well conversant with humanities not forgetting another group of individuals who are not good at any of the formal disciplines but very excellent when it comes to arts, music, drama and other curriculum disciplines. Thus, since the formal subjects are emphasized more by the current education system, those that are not good informal subjects but excel in the arts will view their talents and creativity as useless as they do not find any meaning within the educational system because the system perceives them as academic failures (Robinson, 2011). Therefore, this mentality kills the creative minds, which would have been natured to come up with the greatest artists the world has ever seen. But, unfortunately, due to the unfair system of prioritizing certain disciplines this system of education drains off these impressive talents to waste due to lack of encouragement and emphasis (Robinson, 2011). Creativity is usually an element that is in-born within an individual that needs to be nurture by the surrounding in which that particular persona lives in order to enable it grow to prowess status. Thus, it should be spotted at a tender age and given priority so that it can be nurtured to grow appropriately (Robinson, 2011). However, the public education system is not indeed focused on implementing this since all it does is to discourage and kill creativity at its best. For instance a teacher in a fourth grade elementary class was teaching and there was this child that was always not paying attention, but whenever the teacher walked to the child’s desk, he always drifted the child’s attention and noticed that she was always making sketch drawings on her book (Robinson, 2011). Thus, the teacher vehemently dismissed the child of being lazy thus not ready to learn. In the real sense, this was a clear sign of a child who was depicting her artistic creativity. It would have been right if the child was taken to the school of art to nurture her creativity since that was where she belonged. Contrary to the expectation the child was ambushed and tortured psychologically by being termed as an academic failure that is not ready to learn. From this context, it is evident that over-emphasis on some subjects at the expense of the others will only produce half-baked students who are not what the papers they hold purport them to be (Robinson, 2011). Therefore, having that in mind, it is evident that academic intelligence has always been assumed to be only associated with excellence in subjects such as; mathematics, sciences and humanities while excluding the likes of music, arts and other technical subjects, which are often degraded in the curriculum. Thus, regardless of one excelling very well in certain areas that are not related to the core subjects, such an individual is not be regarded as being academically intelligent. This has led to case where students undergo the complete system of education only to stay back at home as they do not like whatever they have specialized in because of lack of passion, preference and skills. Thus, it will be indeed a total waste of time and resources to enroll a child in education not to benefit him/her in the long run as all the knowledge and skills that he/she acquires are of no good for him/her (Robinson, 2011). That notwithstanding, once a person has grown up and the inborn talents, or creativity that he/she possess were not identified and nurtured in the earlier stages, it will be very difficult to relocate them and make a good use of them as the education system would have washed them off long ago and instead replaced them with a lot of rhetorical knowledge. Education has been turned into an object that is mining the brains of the learners for a certain specific commodity, which is academic excellence (Robinson, 2011). This monopolizes the whole idea of a comprehensive education system to a mere discipline that emphasizes on implementing a technical based style of learning instead of an all-round approach that seeks to unleash the hidden potential in learners to enable them be the best they can whenever they are granted an opportunity. Therefore, it is only through the all-round approach to education that the skills, talents, creativity and other hidden gems can be exploited to help nurture variable skills and talents within the precipice of education so as to add value to each and every learner that is enrolled into the system. Further, all subjects that are officially authorized to be incorporated in the educational curriculum ought to be regarded with equal emphasis to ensure none of the learners feels forsaken due to his/her subject of choice being of least significance within the curriculum (Robinson, 2011). Ultimately, the main objective of developing an education system should thus be nurturing the talent and skills in people but rather equipping them with superficial skills that fades with time because of lack of passion and preference for such skills or forced skilled. The system should rather help individuals exploit their full potential. Works Cited Robinson, Ken. Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative. Hoboken N.J: Capstone, 2011.Web. Available at http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity/transcript?language=en [Accessed 26 Sep. 2014] Read More