Do Schools Kill Creativity?

A mother of a friend of mine sent me this. I agree with his first point, that creativity should be as important in schools at literacy. Moreover, I think that arts (music, visual, performing) should be as prevalent in education as math and sciences. If you look into history, in Greek society music was considered just as important or more important than science. They valued that music taught people a unique form of problem solving and approaching material as well as found it a new way to teach the less educated class.
His next point is that you will never get anywhere without failing. He goes on to talk about how the current American education system looks down upon students that find unique answers to problems instead of applauding their unique approaches and correcting their conceptual mistakes (his idea, my words). Theresa Amabele touched on this in one of her earlier articles, as have other people in academia, but no one has made such a point as he has. He goes on to say that we are all born artist, born creative, and then educated out of creativity. I do think the structure of American society turns its nose up at creative approaches to things, especially when these approaches result in failure. In the business atmosphere, one is fired and demoted for failure instead of realizing what doesn't work and growing with what does.
In discussion, we talked about certain people who thought that physical stimulation would result in more intelligence. He also touches on the idea that dance isn't a valued art, and people are trained from an early age "from the waist up, then directly to the head."
I find it extremely interesting how he discusses that our education system began at the turn of the Industrial revolution. This was something mentioned in class, that the beginning of education started when people could not take materials home so it was about learning the concepts, it was about memorization.
He divides education into three categories: diverse, dynamic, and interactive. He later defines creativity as process of original, valueable ideas that comes about from different ways of seeing things. This is the first definition of creativity that I have fully agreed with. I think he is a person who is a great public speaker that connects with his audience and conveys his point in a unique way that I can't find myself arguing with. He also talks about people having a certain part of the brain that deals with creativity that is thicker in women. This is probably why women are better at multitasking, he states. I, again, agree completely.
All of his propositions about changing the values of intelligence and education are really great ideas, but attempting to change the ways of America is extremely difficult. Though he explains the needs of the people he never gives an answer to how to fix things except to change our way of thinking. Overall, this is a very informative speech, I just don't think his conclusion and plans for the future are valid. One needs to outline a structure for change before suggesting a proposal in the way of the world.

Kate Lawrence