Anderton 1

Lucas Anderton

Mrs. Laura Pettay

ENG 111/112, 2A

26 January 2017

Death by Algebra

My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, Ken

Robinson, author, speaker, and international education advocate, stated in his TEDTalk, Do

schools kill creativity? Sir Ken Robinson has spent his entire career, over three decades, in

education, advocating for the betterment and modernization of the entire system. He was

knighted for his efforts and service. He uses this TEDTalk as a medium to describe how our

archaic education system is killing creativity, and that we don't grow into creativity, we grow

out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it. Sir Ken Robinson explains that our education

system embraces a one-size-fits-all model, with emphasis in a set of core subjects, and no room

for unique creativity.

Sir Robinson describes Shakespeares childhood -- yes, at one point, Shakespeare was a

child -- and how he fought to hold onto his creativity. At some point, someone had to embrace

Shakespeares passion just enough to make him truly love writing plays. Shakespeare did not

magically become the most creative, esteemed playwright in human history at age 25; he was

born that way. He had to fight as hard as he could to not be molded into an unimaginative,

English schoolboy. He had to fight as hard as he could to follow his passion and to become a

playwright that would be a cornerstone of history forever.

 Anderton 2

Although Shakespeare was a phenomenon, I see a lot of the same creativity and

conviction in my brother, Dylan. Dylan went through a hard-fought birth and would face an

array of disorders for the rest of his life. When Dylan was ten, he got a computer from Santa, for

Christmas. He quickly became a genius on this machine and found his passion. He seemed like a

professional videogamer and could work a computer like Bill Gates. Never once was Dylan

embraced for these skills or his passion at school. He was forced to spend hundreds of hours in

English class, but only got to spend a few hours per week in an extracurricular computer club.

They questioned his ability to learn, but the actual challenge was that he was struggling to learn

about things he did not care about. The education system was on a mission to make him care

more for algebra than computers; to care more for Oliver Twist than coding; and, to care more

for chemical reactions than his passions. Education was killing his creativity and I had to watch

him struggle.

Humans are naturally the most creative, complex species on earth, but its a constant war

of attrition to retain that creativity. Its the education system versus the creative genius -- in a

battle to see who can last longer. Like Sir Robinson said, intelligence is diverse, distinct, and

dynamic. Our current system of education is neglecting intelligence and mining our minds in

the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity, but there are so many other

rare commodities that we neglect. My brother is a genius. He might hate reading, never have any

interest in learning a foreign language, or want to do practice math problems for hours, but he is

distinctly, diversely, and dynamically ingenious. For us to continue to succeed, we have to learn

to embrace the gift of the human imagination, and stop discouraging, even killing, creativity.

The world needs artists, the world needs playwrights, and the world needs computer geeks.