At BMIE, we’re big fans of TED talks and huge fans of Sir Ken Robinson, a leading thinker on transforming education. He argues that the education system should focus less on standardized testing and more on developing an environment where students can realize their potential – not just through STEM curriculum but also through imagination and creativity. We recently challenged ourselves to select the Ken Robinson quotes about creativity that have inspired us the most, and we landed on these twelve.
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
“We are educating people out of their creative capacities.”
“Many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not — because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized.”
– Schools Kill Creativity (TED Talk 2/2006)
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“The real role of leadership in education…is not and should not be command and control. The real role of leadership is climate control – creating a climate of possibility. If you do that, people will rise to it and achieve things that you completely did not anticipate and couldn’t have expected.”
“Curiosity is the engine of achievement.”
– How to Escape Education’s Death Valley (TED Talk 4/2013)
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“Education and training are the keys to the future. A key can be turned in two directions. Turn it one way and you lock resources away; turn it other way and you realize resources and give people back to themselves.”
“Creativity involves putting your imagination to work. In a sense, creativity is applied imagination.”
“Life is not linear. When you follow your own true north you create new opportunities, meet different people, have different experiences and create a different life.”
– Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative
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“We have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education, and it’s impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.”
“Very many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of.”
– Bring on the Learning Revolution (TED Talk 2/2010)
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“The arts especially address the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak; when you’re present in the current moment; when you’re resonating with the excitement of this thing that you’re experiencing; when you are fully alive.”
– Changing Education Paradigms (The RSA 2/2010)
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“Every single one of the 100 billion lives who have walked the face of this earth is unique and unrepeatable. To be born at all is a miracle, so what are you going to do with your life?”
– Sir Ken Robinson Live at CUE 2013
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“The economic imperative for teaching creativity systematically in schools has never been greater. And that requires a transformation in the way the schools work, because they weren’t designed to do it, so they have to be redesinged if they are to do it.”
– Why is Creativity Important in Education? (Adobe Education 12/2010)
