Last night I watched Sir Ken Robinson's brief address about creativity in education (or more accurately the LACK of it!) on TED.  I listened along with those around me, our heads nodding in agreement with his ideas. He expressed his dismay at how terribly faulty our educational philosophy is.  Its concept of how to prepare today's 5 year olds for a future we can't possibly comprehend.  We offer them an antiquated system of education that won't possibly prepare them for their lives in the unknown world of the future.

Everything he said about the relevance of creativity made me think of my own education and how contrary it was to my natural inclinations; activities I excelled at, ways in which I learned best were all left un-utilized.  Too, my children's education left their strengths largely untapped.  How can we recover the confidence of childhood to follow natural inclinations?

Picasso's famous comment about how all children are artists the problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up, rings particularly true in light of this view of education.

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