Bigger Dreaming, Bigger Thinking
- Braxton Schieler
- Feb 4, 2019
- 4 min read
If you haven’t listened to the TED talks by Sir Ken Robinson you should try and find some time for that this week on your commute to work or something. Two or three twenty minute talks that have shaped and defined my view on education. He talks about how we educate our children out of creativity by forcing teachers to teach to the test and prioritizing math and writing over science and social studies and science and social studies over PE, PE over music and art. It’s the same hierarchy anywhere in the world and it’s forcing our kids out of their creative capacities. Look at any six-year-old kid in the world and you will be amazed at the creative capacities. He tells the story about a six-year-old girl who is drawing in class.
Teacher: What are you drawing?
Girl: I’m drawing a picture of God.
Teacher: But nobody knows what God looks like.
Girl: They will in a minute.
Not to make a religious statement at all but that’s what six-year-old kids are capable of. I go to a K-8 school and I’m surrounded by little kids who have a creative capacity that is shocking and inspiring to watch. Every once in a while kids stay that way through middle school and high school but almost ubiquitously kids are educated out of their creativity because of a couple things but largely because we teach them that being wrong is the worst thing that you can be. And that is an absolutely horrible education philosophy.
We heard a democratic politician (don’t groan) on the radio recently with some super cool ideas. As far as politics go I’m like eighty percent to the right as is my family but this guy, however liberal had ideas for solutions. He wasn’t a big name guy, I’m not saying you should vote for him, he’s hardly raised a million dollars for his campaign for president. But the two things that struck me about him were that he had legitimate ideas to solve legitimate problems and that he didn’t care who got the credit for it. He said Bernie could take his ideas, he wouldn’t care. I can’t quote the ideas but they weren’t what typical politicians are throwing at you. He was someone who came to the table with real problems and had legit solutions. And they were crazy. He had some idea about giving every American a base salary of a thousand dollars a month, just ideas that you wouldn’t think of, but he had ways they would work and he had stretched the definition of what was possible.
Currently, it doesn’t matter which party you support, you’re supporting a party attacking less important issues with absolutely no focus on solutions other than age-old ideas that they argue about. When progress is made the next president of a different party wipes it out. No one is working and we aren’t going anywhere because we won’t work with people but also because we aren’t being creative.
The future presents my generation with a lot of problems. Nine billion people by 2030. Running out of oil. Obesity that’s off the charts. Abortion, homosexuality and LGBTQ+ How do we tackle those issues as a society? We need solutions. Solutions require creativity, they require thinking bigger then what has previously been defined as possible.
Here’s what I’m trying to express: not only are we an uncreative society, we don’t even know how to imagine what creativity looks like. We can’t wrap our minds around the things that human beings are capable if they will work together in spite of differences and think outside the box. And we legitimately don’t know how to think outside the box because society teaches us conformity and to never be wrong. By this philosophy, society is destroying itself.
We have to think bigger. And by bigger I mean we are challenging the limits of what is humanly possible. Not going beyond the norms, going beyond what has ever been thought of before. We are faced with problems that society has never previously faced and we, therefore, need solutions that have never been thought of before. Bigger thinking. Redefining the word “possible,” because we set the limits way too low and that’s damaging to us and lethal to the next generation.
I realize that this means we have to challenge our creativity daily. We have to train ourselves to be creative more strongly than society trains us out of it. I struggle with this immensely. But there are practical things we can do. Find a hobby. Do some of those adult coloring books once or twice a week. I have books of writing prompts. Spend ten minutes once in a while trying to write some of this ridiculous stuff. Write the prompts yourself. Build something. But force yourself, at least periodically to think creatively in the small things so that in the big things you may do the same. Train yourself into creativity before society trains you out of it.
Below are some links for these wonderful TED talks. You might not have time to sit down and watch them, but just on your commute or during your workout find some time. They put words to this infinitely better than I can.
These are not comprehensive by any means for what he has said, but they are a good start. If you like these keep digging, he has much more.
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