05 Unlecture: Sir Ken Robinson

“Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status”.

It’s hard to argue with this. From my point of view, having had my experiences, it hits home. I attended a secondary school that heavily valued Maths and Science over the humanities, let alone the Arts.

“Don’t do music, you’re not going to be a musician; don’t do art, you’re not going to be an artist”.

I don’t think these ideas are being explicitly fed to students, but the entire system reflects it. Certain Maths and Science subjects are scaled up because they’re hard. Most art subjects are scaled down, because they’re easy. Yeah, a student who does well in Drama might not ace a Physics exam. I would argue that most physics students would do fairly poorly performing a seven minute, self-written performance that incorporates a broad range of criteria, in front of a panel of assessors. I know it’s simplistic, and so much more goes into it, but the fact is that students see it this way. Some subjects are easy and pointless, some are hard and get you into University.