I’m reading Sir Ken Robinson’s book ‘The Element‘ just now. He was in the process of writing it when he did his first TED Talk – ‘Do schools kill creativity?‘ In this talk he speaks of the two things the hierarchy of our education system is based around: 1) most useful subjects for work and 2) academic ability.

The consequence is that 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 stigmatised.

Sadly, this has been the experience for far too many people. When I was thinking about what to do after high school I was told by my careers advisor not to bother studying music. I was told to choose options like science or engineering because they were accepting a lot of girls into these subjects at that time. I left that interview not knowing what to do, and so my first application to university included courses ranging from statistics to travel and tourism. Thank goodness I realised soon enough that my passion lay in music – I filled in another application form and got a late place to study music.

Study and practice what interests you. The rest will come.

Creativity – do schools kill it?
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