Organization Ken Robinson Says Schools

Organization

Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBVQ1HP941Q

How did the speaker gain the attention of the audience?

Jokes with the audience about leaving at the beginning of the speech, then jokes about the isolation of people who are interested in education, not asked to dinner parties ect2. How did the speaker relate the topic to the audience? Again jokes when he is about half through that this was all he had to say.

Speaker notes that those present are examples of the vast range of human creativity. Jokes about everyone having an interest in education and being isolated because of it, because people find it boring and tedious. . Gives examples of children who were present at the conference and (Serena) tells them that she was extraordinary but also serves as a good example of the possibility of the fact that most children are extraordinary in similar ways to the children who were highlighted.

What was the thesis statement of the speech (or the main purpose)

The main thesis of the speech is that we are educating our children by stifling creativity paying more attention to literacy than creativity and that education should instead feed the spirit of children's natural innovative creativity as they are more willing than adults to take risks, "If they don't know they will have a go." When we allow for this creativity we are feeding innovation and helping to reestablish creativity to solve the problems of the present and the future. Children are not afraid to be wrong and if we do not prepare our children to be wrong and to continue to not be afraid of being wrong then they will lose their creative innovative spirit. The current forms of education are instead teaching children a fear of being wrong through emphasizing the fact that being wrong, even in a creative way is still wrong and then penalizing them for it. This is not to say that the speaker believes that simply being wrong is creativity but that there must be a balance between that which demands a right answer and that which is achieved through creativity and innovation. Hierarchy of education is the same all over the world in order Mathematics, Languages, Humanities and at the bottom are the Arts…hierarchy in arts drawing and music then drama and dance. "There is not an education system in the world where we teach dance with the same emphasis as Math" and the speaker asks "Why not?" As children grow up we educate them from the waist up, then we focus on their heads and slightly to one side. The whole education system is designed to teach university professors. People who live in their heads. Their body is a form of transport for their heads. Education systems developed during the beginning of the 19th century to prepare people for work, therefore the most useful subjects for work are at the top. Creativity is stifled on the predicate that "you would never get a job, doing that." Therefore millions of people all over the world who do not believe they are brilliant because were never given the message that what they were good at was valuable, i.e. creativity the arts and in fact those aptitudes were stigmatized. The whole world is in a revolution. Yet, education is still an elongated form of university admission.