The Killer of Creativity

     Recently, I've been watching TED Talks which are global conferences based on the principle of ideas worth spreading.  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design and the conferences cover a wide range of subjects.  I've been able to relate to all of the non technical presentations  that I've seen so far, not because of a wide assortment of experiences that I've have but the talks I've seen deal with the basic human experience, in one way or another.  They may not seem that way at first, but they all eventually conclude on a few points that every being has probably dealt or struggled with in one way or another.
      I saw my first TED Talk last year about how schools kill creativity by Sir Ken Robinson.  The particular video I saw was not necessarily the one where he's presenting in front of an audience but the audio was used with someone drawing the actions described.  I bring up Ken because he made a great point that many of us who have taken the education route have felt at least once before, but he supported it with data.  Most of the time in schools, we are learning what someone else has done and solving problems similar to what we've studied, but maybe in new ways.  Even in design courses I've taken in college, the classes were structured around known designs and the situations where these designs can be used.  Now, I believe this is very useful, because it would be asinine to reinvent the wheel, but what if we are faced with a situation that requires true out of the box thinking where we can't simply fall back on how things were done in the past?  I think this what if question isn't so much a what if question, but rather a reality of life.  We are all faced with new situations that require us to react in novel ways and if we simply try to recreate the past we will fail.

     Sir Robinson makes many other points and I would like to say something more about other things he mentioned, but I said I would always keep my post short so they wouldn't be a chore to read.  You can see the Youtube video here.