Teaching for Creativity

Ken Robinson asks educators to treat creativity as a central educational capacity. His starting point is uncertainty: schools prepare learners for a future nobody can describe with confidence. Children often approach unfamiliar tasks with a willingness to try. When mistakes bring embarrassment or punishment, that willingness can shrink and original responses become less likely.

He then examines the structure of schooling. Across systems, he sees mathematics and languages receiving the highest status, with arts and embodied forms such as dance receiving less time and prestige. University admission and a narrow idea of academic ability shape this hierarchy. Learners whose strongest capacities appear through movement, sound, visual thinking or other forms may conclude that they lack ability.

Robinson describes intelligence as diverse, dynamic and interactive. He defines creativity as the production of original ideas that have value, often through contact between different ways of seeing a problem. The story of choreographer Gillian Lynne illustrates how a school difficulty can coexist with an extraordinary strength. It remains one anecdote and provides no basis for diagnosing attention or learning conditions.

A teacher can turn the talk into concrete design choices: allow low-stakes idea generation before evaluation; invite written, visual, oral and embodied responses where they serve the learning outcome; make originality and usefulness visible in criteria; model revision; and respond to unsuccessful attempts with specific feedback. Disciplinary knowledge still matters because students need material to question, combine and transform. The linked research gives a firmer basis for designing and assessing these practices.