I watched Sir Ken Robinson's video presentation: Creativity and Schools. A classmate had already seen it and highly recommended a viewing. Now that I've watched the video, I am thankful for the recommendation. Sir Robinson makes several excellent points about the learning process of children, and the skewed path of education. His main point is how the essential element of processing data, the element of creativity, has been squeezed out of curriculum.
Sir Robinson noted how public education standards were inspired by the Industrial Revolution. The top two fields of study in education hierarchy are math and humanities, because those are the subjects most needed to obtain jobs.
There are two major problems with education hierarchy. The arts are at the bottom of the list in the order of art, music, drama, and dance. We cannot fit all children neatly into the top two subjects in the current order of education hierarchy. Many children lose the opportunity to advance their strengths in the arts due to their failure to keep up to standards in other subjects. Also, the children who do struggle through and pass the top subjects are then challenged to keep up with "academic inflation." Jobs that used to require a BA, now require an MA. Jobs that used to require an MA, now require a PhD.
I firmly believe that the education of a whole being, including creativity, produces a well-rounded person. And a well-rounded person can most certainly find happiness in his/her work and become a solid contributor to his/her community.
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