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After a recent arts conference in Brisbane I read  Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Sir Ken Robinson. The book was published in 2001 so is a bit dated when it talks about technology but other than that it is an excellent read and I think should be read by anyone involved in teaching. Here are, in my opinion, the best bits.

… children are being examined more than ever before. This [is] rather like continually pulling up a plant to see how well it is growing. (p51)

By assuming that academic success is the be-all and end-all of life, we are not teaching people how to deal with the fact that they may not reach aspiration. We don’t teach people how to deal with failure and this is a fundamental oversight. (p52)

The assumption is that science should be compulsory in all schools so that all children will understand science and many more will become scientists when they grow up… After ten years of a compulsory core curriculum in science in the UK there is no evidence at all that there has been a net increase in the number of students taking science courses in universities… The academic worldview assumes that the correlation must exist, so planning proceeds as if it does…

Thinking of education as a preparation for something that happens later can overlook the fact that the first 16 or 18 years of a person’s life are not a rehearsal. Young people are living their lives now. What they become and what they do later depends on the attitudes and abilities they develop as they are growing up. Linear assumptions about supply and demand can and do cut off many potentially valuable and formative experiences on the ground of utility.

… for most people there never has been a direct, linear progression from education to a planned career. (p86)

My two cents: At school I had no contact at all with computers, and left Uni with a degree in Graphic Design thinking maybe I should learn how to write “HMTL” (the correct acronym is HTML). How then was I able, just a year later, to land a job as webdesigner/programmer, and, four years after that, build a linux-based computer network for a rural school? Where’s the linear correlation there?

The great surge in rock music in Britain in the 1960s and 70s owed little if anything to music education in schools or colleges… Some of the most notable figures in rock music… did not go to music schools. They went to art college. (p87)

Creativity… is often thought of as problem solving… but… creativity can be as much a process of finding problems as solving them. (p114)

… my definition of creativity is this: imaginative processes with outcomes that are original and of value. (p118)

Academic education, important though it is, gives priority to ideas that can be best expressed in words and numbers. But some of our most important ideas can’t be expressed in these ways and some of our creative abilities do not prosper in these modes at all. Think of the differences between a sentence and a picture. In verbal language, one word follows another in sequences that are governed by conventions of syntax. This works well with ideas that can be laid out sequentially… Pictures give the whole pattern of ideas simultaneously. In these forms we can express thoughts that do not fit the structures of words. (p122)

The meaning of a work of art is only available in the particular form in which it is expressed… The composer Gustav Mahler was sitting in his studio completing a new piano piece. As he was playing, one of his students [asked him] “What is it about?” Mahler turned to him and said,”It’s about this.” And he played it again. If the ideas in music could be expressed in words, there’d be no need to write the music in the first place. (p124)

The creative process is… finding the right medium for your creative strengths; being able to control the medium; and freedom to experiment and take risks. (p128)

‘Being good at something isn’t a good enough reason to spend your life doing it.’ … When people find their medium, they discover their real creative strengths and come into their own. (p130)

Many people have problems with mathematics… [because they] don’t speak mathematics… Trying to appreciate equations if you don’t speak mathematics is like trying to appreciate a musical score if you don’t read music. Non-musicians see a puzzle: musicians hear a symphony. Those who speak mathematics look through equations to the beauty and complexity of the ideas they express. They hear the music…

I really relate to this. I’m not a mathematitian but I relate to the idea of ’speaking’ in a medium other than English.  I especially relate to the phrase “they hear the music”. Sometimes the only words I have to describe a painting’s effect on me is to say – “it’s singing”.

Like learning to write, learning to draw is a technical and cultural achievement not a biological one. The things need to be learnt and, if they’re not, the creative possibilities of drawing are limited… Without good teaching, [children's] drawing reaches a plateau usually at about the age of 12 or 13… Many people give up drawing altogether at this point, often through frustration. They reach a stage where their creative ambitions have outrun their technical abilities. This is hardly surprising. Children don’t develop these abilities just by getting older, any more than they wake up on their 16th birthday to discover they can drive a car. (p132)

Facilitating creative development is a sophisticated process that must balance learning skills with stimulating the imagination to explore new ideas. (p132)

Creative activity involves playing with ideas and trying out possibilities. But creative achievement… often comes from working within formal constraints. (p133)

Robinson goes on to exlpain the importance of making judgements in the creative process, that… there are likely to be dead ends: ideas and designs that do not work. (p134)

… stages in creative thought: preparation, incubation, illumination, verification. (p135)

In most situations, trying to produce a finished version in one move is impossible. Not understanding this can make people think that they are not creative at all. (p136)

In the creative state… we may experience an absolute absorbtion in the task at hand and a resulting change in our sense of time… we are taken out of ourselves. (p154)

Any material, any tool in the hands of an artist, can result in a work of art. (p172)

It is not the material that makes art, but what artists do with it. (p173)

Creative environments give people time to experiment, to fail, to try again, to ask questions, to discover, to play, to make connections… (p195)