Wednesday, 19 July 2017

Do Schools Kill Creativity ?





Who I'm to remove the clothes of this society, which itself is naked. I don't even try to cover it because it's not my job.

SADAAT HASSAN MANTO, guys!

 I always wanted to know what made him pass such heavy statement in the world where everyone's trying to play their role to make it a happy content place, what he saw back then before the world? What flaws of the world Manto saw before everyone else? That lunatic fellow had gone through what circumstances or he had witnessed what unbearable incidences?

I consider Manto to be alive in each and every one of us by his thoughts, his poetry because by every passing day we're just praising that lunatic fellow, well that's how human being are we never admire things at that right time instead wait for them to die and then that admiring session starts!!

The root problem that I found is our Education system,  yes you read it right our education system!
and I got some valid reasons for that too, I realized one thing like if you work in the field of Education you're seldom asked for hangouts (saying it after witnessing some cases) people consider you a bore/dull fellow, why's that so? because no one among us never ever took the right interest level while going through our educational career so we keep on avoiding such people, such gatherings.

Even the younger class of our society who's still school going even they avoid such gatherings having their teachers too, In family gatherings they always told their parents NOT to invite the teachers, Do you know why, because due to current educational scheme teachers are unable to build that relationship and harmony with their students and that's an alarming situation without any dubiety.

 But that doesn't mean people are lacking interest in education, they surely do have because they know that it's education that takes us to the future that we can't grasp, the word education has just turned into a synonym of grind like if you think children starting school this year will be retiring in 2060 or near!! and ain't anybody got a clue for that  ? NO, a big no! despite all the expertise that's been on parade, what the world would look like in next five years and we're meant to be educating them for it. So the unpredictability I think is extraordinary. Although we all agreed nonetheless, on the really extraordinary capacities children have, their capacities for innovations( that we're in need of the most)

Serena Walliams, an exceptional player spend her whole childhood being an ordinary child and never considered as exceptional in her whole of childhood, what you have is a person's extraordinary dedication to his talent and my contention is all kids have tremendous talents. And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly. My point here is creativity now is as important in education as literacy, we should treat it with the same status.

I have an interesting story to share here that I read somewhere, There was this girl who was scolded by her teacher every day due to her poor homework and dull attitude in class, her parents were called and she was referred to the consultant for expert advice, That consultant after listening the whole case from her mother ask her mother to come with him and made the girl to sit in that room all alone, after leaving the room he switched on the radio and a minute or two both consultant and the mother witnessed the moving steps of that girl and she dances pretty terrifically, the consultant told the mother your daughter is not mad she's a dancer :)

The thing we're lacking today is that kids don't take chance and if they don't take any how will they have a go, but the point is for taking a chance there must be some space in the educational strategies for that. Kids need  not to be frightened of being wrong and obviously I don't mean saying that being wrong is being creative and what we do know is if you're not prepared to be wrong you will never come with something original.

As Jack Ma often say," Make mistakes, it's what we're in need of the most".

if they are not prepared to be wrong and by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong, and we run  such companies  as well that stigmatize to mistake and we are running such educational systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make and the result is we're educating people out of their creative capacities,
Picasso once said, " all children are born artists the problem is to remain as  an artist as we grows up"

I believe this passionately we don't grow into creativity but we grow out of creativity or rather we get education out of it, so why is this?
Yes, you get it right it's our education system! 

It's because science subjects are given more importance then the arts one, if a kid wants to be a writer, painter, musician etc he's simply demotivated by the system!
There isn't any education system on this planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics!!
why ? like why not ? maths is important and so is dance!

I think what happen is that when children grows up, we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads, if you were to visit education as an alien and say " what is for, public education?" so the brownie points we get for public education are to get University Professors, isn't it ?

They're the people who come out the top and having all the water marks of the human achievements, although it's just a form of life, but they are rather curious and I say this out of affection for them, There's something curious about professors in my experience, not all of them but typically they live in their heads, yes they live up there. They are disembodied you know, in a literal way. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their head, don't they ?

Our education system is all revolving around our academic abilities and there's a reason that whole system was invented around the world, there were no public systems of education before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is rooted on the two ideas
1)  the most useful subjects for work are the top, so were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked on a ground you would never get a job doing that, right ?
Don't write randomly, you're not going to be a writer
Don't do arts, you're not going to be  an artist

Benign advice.....now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in revolution.

2) The academic ability, which dominates our view of intelligence because universities designed system in their image, if you think of the system around the world is a protracted process of university entrance and the consequence is that many highly  talented creative people think, they're not! because the thing they were good at school wasn't valued or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can't afford to go that way!!

According to UNESCO more people will be graduating world wide in coming 30 years through education than since beginning of history,  but unfortunately aimless graduates!
Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything, isn't that true ? Because thousands of jobless degree holders are out there balancing themselves between freshly graduate with 10 years experience,yes you read that right, only condition on jobs now  a days (:

In the end I believe our only hope for future is to adopt the new conception of human ecology. in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human mind capacity because our education system has mined our minds in a way that we strip-mine the earth : for the particular commodity and for the future it WON'T serve us !

We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we our educating our generation, quoting the wonderful quote of Jonas Salk, who said " If all the insects were to disappear from the earth within 50 years, all life would come to an end but if all human being disappeared from earth within 50 years, all forms of life would flourish" and he's so right!

let's make our future secure by improving our present (:

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