Schools of death

Education killing creativity? The rebel fourteen year old in me that didn’t have enough ‘mental health days’ is loving this idea. Oh, for a TARDIS, so that I could go back and use that phrase as an excuse not to go to school.

The first thought of Sir Ken’s (I keep going to write ‘St’ Ken, which is amusing) that struck me was when he said that we are educating kids who are set to retire in 2065. The idea is similar in my mind to that of the medical student, whose learning becomes redundant four years after they commence their training, so fast does technology and science develop. Similarly, with the rapid progression of societies and cultures, especially in the Western World, the educator is hard-pressed to teach innovative, relevant and lasting stuff. That’s a worry.

‘If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original’ – this is one of those statements that everyone knows about, but when you isolate it and just think about it for awhile, it’s quite hard-hitting. Trying for something new is always a risk. And if someone’s taking a risk, then they know that there’s the possibility of failure. I think that there’s such a stigma on failure these days, and we’re all so scared of it, that we’ve forgotten that it’s actually possible to stand back up after falling down. There isn’t a 100% quadriplegic rate after a trip: the same thing can be said for failing. And, bloody hell, it’s normal, nay, even healthy, to fail. How else do we grow and develop and figure things out?

I was just thinking, ‘well, that’s not me. I’m doing an creative course. Ha ha, I missed the right-brain lobotomy, you all wish you were me,’ and then I realised that to get into this very course, I needed an ATAR score of above 90, or something. I can’t remember quite what it was, but a relatively high score was needed to permit entrance to this course. That idea rocked me. This course isn’t really about academics. I am studying media because the world is a beautiful place and I want to learn how best to capture it and communicate it. That’s not something I’m thinking ‘in my head, a little to one side’, as Sir Ken says. But because of my academic score, I got in. And, undoubtedly, there’s someone who applied for this course and was rejected due to their academic ability, but if given the chance could create something infinitely more beautiful and insightful than I can.

And there are a few sobering thoughts for your morbidly sober Monday!


 

One Comment

on “Schools of death
One Comment on “Schools of death
  1. Yep. High schools, VCE and then uni preselect for certain competencies and skill sets, print logic being top of the tree. This means visual thinkers (real ones) won’t even get in the door of this course. and if you’re an associative thinker and can’t do that with words too, then you’re also out. It isn’t that you shouldn’t be here, but it is to realise that for most of us the skills that got us in are just one group of skills, and that there are others, just as important, creative, and smart.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *