‘The Element’- science, history, language and literature existed way before your teachers did.
By Samara Straker / Spinebreakers Crew
The Element is a book about finding true talent, not any old book though; it has an element of being kind of like a well-written academic joke book, it’s incredibly witty. I’ve seen Robinson’s talk posted on ‘Ted TV.’ He goes ‘Imagine if they killed Shakespeare’s creativity; (miming a teacher’s tone- ‘And stop speaking like that!’ Trust me, you have to see it!
Also, he says to toddlers taking exams for preppy schools and not getting in (also miming a teacher’s voice) ‘You mean this is it? You’ve been around for almost six months and this is all you’ve learnt? You’ve seemed to have spent the first six months lying around gurgling.’ Other witty comments include ‘Learning happens in the soul of individuals not in the databases of a multiple –choice test. I doubt there are children who leap out of their beds wondering how they can raise the reading score for their state.’ – Genius. All this wittiness, I wonder if that’s down to Ken Robinson or Lou Aronica? My best bet is Robinson –but Aronica helped.
Anyway, are schools really killing creativity? Well personally, (I’m not saying this sarcastically by the way) but I really want the exact definition of a noun, adjective and semantic field to be installed in my sub –conscious mind but the panic of my exam won’t allow me to do this.
School systems are supposed to serve us, not the other way around. This is true because Richard Branson (owns the Virgin Media empire), Gordan Parks (famous black American photographer) and Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons) were all rubbed the wrong way by their schools, proving you don’t have to do good at school to be successful. Anyway, I’m sure science, language, literature, maths and history existed before your teachers –so there!
Reading the book made me really challenge my own beliefs, for example when I read this: ‘If you’re not prepared to be wrong then you’ll never come up with anything original.’ Then I thought this: Is that so? So I must keep being wrong until I come up with something adequate enough to call ‘creative?’ What is creativity anyway and what’s the big deal about it?’ Ken Robinson describes it as a form of intelligence, but my feeling is to say that it’s doing something different. I got a ‘C for my creative piece I wrote at AS level – but how do you mark creativity? Obviously, I wanted an ‘A’ but I felt I knew what I done wrong it’s more of the ‘how’ than the ‘why,’ isn’t it? As the old saying goes ‘there is nothing new under the sun.’
Reading the book also helped me to confirm some of my beliefs. My theory, is that our ancestors thought that knowledge would be better manifested into something solid and physical such as words, science, numbers and stories so it would be better understood. They excluded ‘feeling’ and feelings because I’m sure you’ve heard the o -there’s some things that can’t be explained –these are mainly feelings! The Ancient Egyptians told stories about good and evil as helped to better understand the concept of good and evil and feelings. This idea gradually developed out of control by the time the Greeks got their hands on it. Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Plato wanted to generalise human intelligence, so we could put a finger on it, this is why we rate those who take science and math at a higher intelligence than those who take dance. The way I see it knowledge is everything; physical, emotional, experience, logical in fact anything that can or can’t be conceived by the human experience is knowledge. It all interlinks; science is dance, maths and history. Also, witch doctors and shamen are able to measure the energy fields of people, this can be seen as science to support why you’re happy.
To sum up, society will move forward if everyone and everything is considered. Why do we make things more difficult by not listening to one another? We all smart people we can all read or write –or learn to.