31304627 Ryota Kurosawa

My Opinion of “School kills creativity”

I’m impressed by Ken Robinson’s talk. Especially, I like his word that no mistakes make us creative. I think so too.

Japanese education tends to bring up sense of cooperation. That sometimes means it is bad to make differences from others. So, we are afraid of this proverb, “stand out from the crowd and you just invite trouble for yourself”. I heard that Japanese students were too negative against saying their opinion. Actually I don’t like that too. It is because I afraid of making mistakes. As he said, national education system taught us mistake is worst. So we can’t discuss freely. And the system has another harmful effect. It is that all creative mistakes are denied either. There are useful mistakes for the future in it, but the system regard it as evils.

In this talk, he introduce about Gillian Lynne who is a director of “the Phantom of the Opera”. He said she was regarded as learning disability, but she could flourish in other stage that it is not necessary for studying, because one doctor discovered her talent for dance.

In this way, prejudiced thinking focused on study may deprive many possibilities. It is not always good that we think educational background is the most important. Today, Japan is society that places emphasis on academic records, so if some people can’t study math, language and so on, they are turned adrift. This trend has a bad influence of talented children. In addition, almost people think educational background is important due to Japanese education system. So, even if the system is changed, the trend will be not changed soon. We must know there are more important things than study.

After I listened this talk, I thought about “a success of life”. Death is equal for all people, so it is important how they live in finite times. Well, what is a success? I think it is to earn much money. I can’t say whitewash. Some people say money can’t buy happiness, but there is nothing that it can’t buy. I think the success can’t be quantified with the exception of money. For convenience, we assume that earning much money is success of their life. So, we can say that to be a soccer player, artist, or famous director is success. So, only study is not the right way. We must acknowledge this reality and change our views which study is justice.