Thoughts on Creativity

Last week my friends, knowing how much I enjoy Ted Talks, pointed me in the direction of this clip. Ken Robinson, an expert on cultural education, talks about how schools kill creativity in children. I think he is making a lot of sense in that in many countries (especially European ones) we educate people to be academics. Primary schools prepare us for high schools and these in turn prepare us for universities. There is very little to no, practical skills taught.

But what I think is the best part of the talk, is when Sir Ken says that to be creative, you have to be ready to make mistakes. You have to be ready to be wrong. And isn't it your experience that at school, you were laughed at whenever you made a mistake? That when writing a paper, you stuck to the safe ground, because if you tried to use your imagination (or even longer words), the effort didn't matter and you got penalized for spelling mistakes? How terrible is it that in our culture "artist" is not a real job?