Assignment 2: What are schools for?

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Han Jong Hyun, 한종현

           Ken Robinson argued in his video that schools kill creativity. He mentioned in his speech that children go to school, replacing their creativity with “education” such as mathematics, history and so on. From my perspective as a student, I believe that what Ken Robinson said is an undeniable truth, and schools do “assassinate” the students’ creativity and the students do not even realize it.

           Firstly, by enforcing a law on students regarding the dress code, students lose creativity of expressing themselves with different clothes. There is a quote that says clothes are an effective way of expressing yourself, and when judging others, clothes they are wearing play a major role. However at schools, students ought to wear the same uniform with the same hairstyle. This conformity restricts them to sheer education, and one is unable to see any thoughts of their own flowing. Therefore, they lose a right to show themselves, resulting in destroyed creativity. For example, our school, Korean Minjok Leadership Academy requires students to wear hanbok, which are the Korean traditional clothes. If one forgets to wear it, he gets demerit points, which can get him expelled if accumulated. However in an international school I previously attended to called Overseas Family School, a uniform is not a necessity. Students are free to wear whatever they want unless they are not too flamboyant. I am sure that a dress code has nothing to do with education, and students should be given freedom to choose what they want to wear.

           In addition, examinations held at schools get rid of students’ creativity. All the students study and learn the same content, and take exams that are from what they have learnt. Also, some teachers have the same format of setting the questions, which means the students have to only study according to that format. The ostensible main purpose of these examinations is to test how much the students understood. However, what the students aim is to get all the questions correct so that they can score high for their GPA. As students only focus on getting a high grade rather than focusing on understanding what they have learnt and develop their own thoughts from the lectures given, they are slowly turning into robots memorizing textbooks. If examinations testing content of textbooks continue, the least creativity remaining in the students will soon be annihilated. Instead, schools should focus more on assessments that require the students’ own thoughts such as setting up experiments of their own.

           Some might argue that students learn and revise the given content, and from that rudimental knowledge, they learn the skill to develop their own creative thinking. However, you have to understand that this so-called main purpose of schools is constantly changing its form. Now, most students memorize what they are given blindly rather than trying to grasp and comprehend what the lecturer has mentioned. Therefore, these students are unable to apply what they have memorized in real-life situations, resulting in failure of creativity.

           Let us go back and think about what schools are built for. Are schools built for conformation in the society? I do not think so. How about creativity? Maybe yes. Schools were originally built to raise the potential minds of people to the highest level so that our world can advance and change into a better place to live in. If we do not go back to our fundamental purpose of schools, our future generation will turn into robots with no genuine thoughts of their own. So let us go back. Let us go back and start from the infrastructure.