TED talk #5

Sir Ken Robinson at a TED Conference makes an argument that creativity is as important as education and that it should be treated with the same status of importance as education. He goes on to give a few examples of how kids are not afraid of taking chances even if they are wrong. He says "if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never be able to come up with anything original." By the time kids become adults, they lose that capacity. This is something that's bred in the corporate world and now taking form in educational systems. Robinson uses a quote from Picasso who once said "All children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up" which is to say kids do not grow into creativity, but grow out of it, or rather educated out of it. He speaks with great conviction and doesn't stutter or pause like many I've watched; he uses humor to enhance his lecture. It made me wonder about many things.Perhaps it’s become in some ways I feel I became a victim of this (and most of us probably are). He states that if you are afraid of being wrong you will never come up with something original. He tells us that we have been told, or directed away from things that we liked because you'll never get a job in that; you can't be a musician, an artist, a dancer. Personally, this applies to me because I have a passion for music, and I use to aspire to be a musician, go to Julliard, deal with my student loans and small salary with benign happiness. As my school career has gone on I have been directed towards science and math, be a lawyer, or an engineer, a doctor, a mathematician; you want to be a writer? A musician? An actor? Do you desire a life of poverty and hardship, small budgets, and no health insurance? You're mad. Though I say maybe I'll be a pediatrician, I don't find real passion in that. Sir Ken Robinson though showed me that maybe, I can do that instead, even if I am "wrong". As for education we should stop treating the creative as a crazy alternative to the steady job. Allow kids to be "wrong" sometimes without the persecution of their peers. Though required courses make us be well rounded and explore new possibilities, they can be limiting, taking credits of things we actually enjoy could make students like school again. Allow people do be creative with the chance to be wrong, and creativity can burst all over the world.