on creativity

i watched a fascinating video from TED that discusses creativity in children, and how schools kill creativity. in a class i took this past semester, we spoke on exactly this problem -- that schools, by foregrounding scores and academic performance, and consistently backgrounding creativity and subjects where creativity is crucial, were destroying the creative spark that exists in all children.

of course, the immediate retort, especially if you're talking about educating children from populations that typically don't have good access to educational resources, is that there is a particular system we live in, and if you want kids to be successful, then they need to play the game. if they don't play the game, you risk putting them in a situation later in life where they can't succeed because they haven't developed the skills that the system expects of them. in the TED talk, which i've pasted below, the speaker, ken robinson, a longtime educator, states that he believes creativity is the skill that's worth something in these times.