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March 07, 2008
From the Director 3-7-2008
Creativity
by Brian Thomas, Director
Last week Adra, Lisa J., and I attended the National Conference for the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) in New York City from February 27 – March 2. One of the featured speakers was Sir Kenneth Robinson; I had heard him speak when I worked at the Agassi School in Las Vegas, Nevada, and I was captivated all over again by Sir Kenneth’s engaging oratorical witticisms, which were Monty Python meets George Carlin with a dash of Jon Stewart.
Indeed, Sir Kenneth’s thesis promotes creativity as a transformative element in our society today, particularly in schools and in business—much like Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, last year’s summer reading book. So much of what Robinson said resonated with the NAIS audience at Radio City Music Hall as we listened intently to his overall premise, which is: NAIS member schools have a moral obligation to shift the national conversation away from our new (national) obsession with tests and towards a more sane and rational focus on creativity. Independent Schools—schools that have their own Boards, missions, accept no money from the government, and are not connected to religious or other institutions—represent less than 1% of our nation’s schools. Robinson’s book, Out of Our Minds, tells us that the only thing that can save us from ourselves as a society is to develop divergent thinking (in our students and in ourselves as educators) and offer solutions that have more than one answer.
Sir Kenneth argues that in the United States, No Child Left Behind is a scourge on our national landscape with testing being at the center of public education. This obsession is backwards looking, according to Robinson, with its focus on the memorization of facts, which leaves many children behind, or “what we do in the future is what we did well in the past.”
Sir Kenneth goes on to say that any high-stakes tests such as the ones that most states promote under No Child Left Behind, or even the SATs, which most students take in order to get into college (or the SSATs, which many students take in order to get into private schools) have a narrow focus and are poor indicators of future success according to most studies about K-12 testing. Sir Kenneth piqued the interest of the Independent School audience by saying SATs are actually only 24% successful in predicting success later in life.
Sir Kenneth is not completely against testing. To illustrate, he gave two examples of testing—one negative and one positive. In the first example, Robinson says that the fast food industry has made standardization the norm in its industry to no real gains in terms of society. He argues that if you go into a McDonalds anywhere in the word (Paris, Texas or Paris France) the Big Mac will pretty much be the same: bad. The McDonaldlization of the world (hamburgers, coffee, etc.) is one form of standardization that, according to Sir Kenneth, adds no real value to our living on the planet. Yet, he gives a positive example of the Zagat Guide where readers independently rate restaurants. In other words, you know what restaurants are good because of people who eat at restaurants. He says this independent rating is quite useful in determining an eating establishment’s standards because the criterion is clear and easy to understand, thereby adding value to our world.
Sir Kenneth’s last line about schooling and creativity stuck with me because it is what all educators should live by when they are thinking about educating children. He said, “The problem in education is not that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and succeed.”
Words to live by to be sure.
Namasté,
Brian
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