Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity

I thoroughly enjoyed this video. I feel that Ken Robinson had some wonderful things to say about creativity in the classroom. Do we value it like we should? Judging from recent years, no. The arts are the first thing to get cut when we feel like our tax dollars aren't going to stretch far enough. We (or should I say those people in education making the decisions with our tax dollars) don't see the value in the arts. I think we are doing our children such a disservice by cutting these programs.

Having recently made my classroom schedule for my 2nd grade classroom, I can attest that the State of Alabama is right in line with the thinking of the rest of the world. We are required to give 2.5 hours a day to Language Arts, 60 minutes to Math, 30 minutes each to Social Studies and Science. They also throw in some minutes for character education, P.E., technology, and a whopping 10 minutes for Health. I don't remember seeing any requirements for music, art, and foreign language. I consider myself lucky to be teaching in a private school where they do value "all" the subjects to some degree. Our budget is somewhat limited too at times. My co-teacher came from a Mobile County public school where she felt that she would be in trouble if an administrator walked in her room and "caught" her teaching a science experiment! They weren't even furnished with texts or materials to even teach Science and Social Studies. All of their time was to be devoted to Reading and Writing. Those things are very important, but they aren't going to take care of the whole child.

We have to be careful as educators not to try to put all children in a box. Sure the kid that sits in his seat and does everything that we tell him to do is "easy" for us to deal with. We love that kind of kid in general. In fact, if someone doesn't fit in that mold, we push drugs on them at times and try to mold them into that perfect student role. We all have to remember that we are there to teach all types of children, not just the easy ones. It may be that the ones that challenge us the most, get the most from us. These might not be things that we can see at the time either, it may take years before we see the impact we have on these children. There are many lessons to be learned by us all, hopefully before we have completely ruined our education system.