Do you remember the Supertramp Logical song?
When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh, it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily
Oh, joyfully, oh, playfully watching me
But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh, responsible, practical
Then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
Oh, clinical, oh, intellectual, cynical
My experience of education was that it was great fun until I was about seven years old when I had to put a tie on and learn to write, read and do math’s. There was something constricting and constraining in the classroom that I could feel in my body and hadn’t experienced as a child. I remember distinctly the distinction of being outside in the summer holidays, playing, riding bikes, making dens, and living life, in comparison to the constrained positioning of being in school. It certainly killed my creativity!
At this point in most of our western education system we become disembodied, our bodies are used to get our heads around and that’s the interpretation that we have for the way the world is. This is where the Descartes “I think therefore I am” springs into action!
It strikes me that we have an education system hierarchically based on the academic abilities that will get you into the job and the system rewards those jobs. That’s the bind that we (almost all) fall into.
My daughter is dyslexic (as am I (although never diagnosed)), and although she achieved academically, she was never totally happy in school. She went to a dance and drama college at 16 and then away to Barcelona to do to do a musical theatre degree where she could be the fullest version of herself.
Her experience has led her to become a drama therapist offering support to young children under the age of 11. Helping them to articulate through drama and art their situations. This for me, shows she’s a living embodiment of why we need to support all ways of being creative.
Ken Robinson said in his TedTalk, “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with something original”. The system of education, and indeed the world of work stigmatises mistakes, which means that we can’t be creative and use other resources such as nature, arts, theatre, drama, music, poetry, as ways of supporting humankind.
For me, in an unpredictable world that we have right now, facing into artificial intelligence, huge amounts of conflict, and a great environmental climate challenge. We need the richness of human capacity to be creative more than ever. We also need to look at all human beings as my daughter’s story says, that one size does not fit all.
