Do Schools kill Creativity?

If any of you have been reading my blogs over the years, you will know that education is, and has been, a pretty emotive topic for me. More so because very often I have found myself to be on the fringes of generally held opinions. As an outlier, I have touched on it in various blogs trying to be as objective as I can be, considering that I have two children in the system. 

I think all of us are touched by education, either through our own experiences or our children's on-going tribulations. Almost every second person that I meet talks about it, and views can be as polarised as any item of discussion can ever be. For people in the Eastern hemisphere this is a highly charged issue, and as their children reach a stage where admissions for Universities are imminent, their voices become more shrill and anxious. Admissions into good colleges are extremely difficult, and to get a combination of a good college within the vicinity, even more challenging.

When I was in Bombay last month I read in the Times of India, of a college in Delhi which had announced their required percentage cut-off for admissions, at a 100%. A 100% !!!!! That is ridiculous by any standard, and even the Education Minister of India made a comment on it. During that trip every person I met, spoke about schooling, tuitions and education. It has permeated Indian society like no other issue has, and is definitely, by orders of magnitude, more of an issue than when we were growing up. 

In the West it is slightly less of a concern, as the curriculums seem to be more flexible and the overall supply of good colleges meets the demand (I guess). Their entire system seems to be graded, and starts ratcheting up steeply in the more advanced classes. Their belief is that a six year old in not half a twelve year old, and the system reflects that philosophy somewhat.   

However, in all of this brouhaha of education no one seems to question the foundations of that system. Nobody asks whether it is capable of preparing our children for a world that they will enter in the next few years, into an environment that even the brightest minds cannot predict or envisage. 

Anyway enough of me - the purpose of this blog was to get you to view the attached talk by Sir Ken Robinson on YouTube. He questions "Do Schools kill Creativity?", and though it is for a duration of twenty minutes, the delivery, humour and insight makes it seem just too short.

I would strongly recommend this to all parents. If you have already seen this, see it again!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Holiday travails

Either the world is going mad or I have become too soft. Everywhere I turn, the fad amongst people planning a break is to go on adventure holidays. These involve travelling to hard-to-reach destinations, living in camps and indulging in other assorted outdoorsy activities. Just recently I was chatting with a few friends in Bombay, talking about prospective vacations and trips, and most of them were planning to go into the jungles to see tigers, or trek through Nepal, or drive (if you can call fighting a car over potholed bullock cart tracks that) to Leh and Ladakh. Now these may sound exotic, but most of these places are in the most infra-structure challenged regions of the sub-continent. One cannot reach these places by air. You need to use multiple modes of travel, quite often including horses, camels and carts to get there. The views and scenery, once you reach your destination can be quite good, that is if your body and brain can appreciate it through the pummeling and jarring that they have endured. 

A few of my friends are soon embarking on a motorcycle trip to Northern India, on low technology Royal Enfield bikes. They will traverse the worst roads (if one can call them that) imaginable, over harsh terrain, in terrible weather, on a contraption that should have been abolished a century ago. The machine is uncomfortable on the best of roads; to actually pay good money to ride it for a week in those conditions is the height of masochism. For the pleasure of doing this, they will pay top dollar, risk physical injury, probably suffer from dysentery, live in scruffy hotels and come back with photographs of mountainous scenery that could have been taken from any European town.

Most of these places will not have electricity, or cut it off once it gets dark - basically when you need it most! (Seems quite a convenient way to save costs and charge your customers for it.) Food would also be extremely basic, and very often served when there is no chance that you would feel hungry. Pre-dawn breakfast and post-dark dinner without lights, are not conducive to eating well. Basically the concept is that you pay five star rates to enjoy negative star amenities, and you get bragging rights for the rest of your life as part of the package.

I have had endured hardship and “roughing it out” as a kid. Being brought up in a lower middle class family in a developing country, provided me with enough perspective and first-hand experience about the harder aspects of life, to seek those any longer. We travelled to nearby hill stations on shoe string budgets, with three meals a day as optional. We used to grace establishments, where to call the conditions coarse would be an understatement, but we accepted them as we accepted a lot of other inconveniences. And this was when one travelled as a family - I would not even like to comment on our trips with friends. We had not seen better, and to be away from the madding crowd for a few days, even if it was to an undeveloped part of an under-developed country, was a luxury beyond compare. The quality of the air itself was worth the hardships, coming as we did from the smog-ridden polluted mega-city. To get brief glimpses of vistas with no signs of humans loitering, littering or defecating was priceless.

Now I favor staying in modern hotels, to colonial era buildings that provide you with an experience of life in the Eighteenth Century. I am definitely not at ease with tents, using leaves to wipe oneself, and the absence of electricity and running water. I also prefer to travel to places that are easily accessible to middle aged and slightly fussy tourists. Smooth roads and air-conditioned cars are a necessity, and direct air travel is the more preferred modes of conveyance. I seek comfort, over experience and being one with nature. If there is a good view, it has to come with Twenty First Century amenities. If there are animals to be seen, I would prefer to see them from within air-conditioned comfort, with a tall glass of a refreshing drink in my hand, and canapé’s within easy reach. If that is not possible, then watching National Geographic on a wide screen television will suffice. The only hardship I would ‘choose’ to endure now is a rain shower - in the comfort of a hotel bathroom!

As a wit put it – The road less travelled, is less travelled for a reason.