Out of our minds: Learning to be creative This book is writen by Sir Ken Robinson. From a quick perspective, I can say that the reading has been alright, for some time difficult to follow with, but with deep and rewarding notions inside. It provides plenty of historical references about the matters discussed. He affirms that the systems of education have been built based on some economic and intellectual assumptions originated in another time and for other purposes. Education is developed in the general assumption that subjects have to be mainly taught from the deductive, mathematical, objective point of view. In his opinion, this results in a lot of knowledge generated but in only limited ways of thinking. On this basis, “the person who writes about the arts may be thought to be intellectually superior to the person who produces the work. A Picasso scholar - but not Picasso himself — may be given a PhD.� Sir Ken Robinson maintains that all issues and questions should not only be considered from the academic point of view, but from others too. Knowledge can be yielded in many ways other than in words and numbers. Therefore a more practical approach is necessary. He calls for an education criterion which values different modes of intelligence and sees relationships between disciplines. The author considers that in the present times universities are not proportioning all the requirements for the society and economy. If the education enhanced other areas within the rationalist-deductive framework, the model would be more appropiate. Our developed economy is in demand for creative individuals, which schools and universities are not contributing to form. My point of view is quite similar to that of the author. I think that the present education system in universities and schools is antique, it was established in other times to serve other needs. This system focuses too much in the academic ability, which consists in acquiring information and memorising it to then be evaluated in a writen exam. The source of learning is essentially theorical, which is important but not the only one that our society nowadays demands. For example this system doesn't nurture the practical side of the work we aim to develop. We could argue a long time for the building of one bed, but if we put the things into practise we find that not everything is going to be as predicted. So this system doesn't allow the students acquire all the learnings that come from the experimentation and trial-and-error actions. Insufficient time is spent on this, in many schools almost nothing. In addition, many of the concepts the students assimilate through memorisation are forgotten back in the time, because are not considered necessary as we don't have to affront these exams anymore.
I think our society does not go in the right way with these education standards. More practical education is needed in order to cope with the society's existing requirements. I ponder that the best model of education is one in which we foment a 50% of practise and 50% of theory. Teachers should foment the experimentation, playing with the ideas and see failure as a part of the process to succes. Beyond this Sir Ken Robinson calls into doubt the general conception that some people are born creative, and others not. He argues that creativity can be taught He also explains that creativity is not an individual process. Creativity should be enhanced not only in the schools but in companies too. This can be stimulated when we foster an atmosphere where the exchange of ideas and experimentation are actively encouraged. Risk should be encouraged, playing with the ideas accepted and failure not punished but seen as a part of the process of success. Weakening the departmental boundaries might be a way to increase the relationships within different disciplines.