Education, creativity and sustainablity

Time for another TED talk! This one is from Sir Ken Robinson. Its about schools, creativity, and sustainability.

After watching this talk I thought back on my own public school experience and realize that I most likely had a better situation then most.  I took photography, worked in our aquarium and had interesting and engaging conversations in an honors English classes throughout high school. In elementary school my parents were told that I may have ADHD because I would talk, draw, and cause a ruckus. The thing was, I didn't have ADHD, I was just bored. Elementary and much of middle school didn't engage me properly and I was not a good student. This all changed in high school.

In high school I had a number of caring teachers that pushed me and gave me more projects after I finished my class work. I also had an excellent photography class that I was lucky enough to be able to take my junior and senior year. I also was a head curator at our school aquarium, where I was constantly challenged with problems that needed creative solutions.

What I am trying to get at here is, I was on one hand challenged and on the other hand given the facilities to be creative. These are skills that have been extremely valuable as Ive gone through college and into the working world.

In essence I am living proof that what Sir Ken Robinson says is true. If my creativity was stifled I would have lashed out and most likely would not have gone to college. But since I was curious I had to go and learn about a variety of different subjects form oceanography, to philosophy, to digital art, to advertising. Now I have a knowledge-base that allows me to be creative and flexible.

Unfortunately most people don't have the luck of getting an excellent education as I have. This is where this relates to sustainability  and green branding. We need people to be creative and be accepting of new creative ideas. Much of our world's problems were caused (and are continually caused) by people who are inflexible in the ways they think. Being open-minded is our best tool for being sustainable.

As advertisers we want to do things smarter, more creative, and more sustainable but we have to have an audience that these things resonate with in order to do these things. We need a society where people are creative and thankfully I see our society shifting in a way that favors the more creative.

So if Sir Ken Robinson is correct if school is basically pre-job training, shouldn't we be teaching kids to be creative so they have a place in a society that is increasingly media and content driven? We have so many new problems that are not being solved by the institutions we have previously relied on, Shouldn't we be teaching kids to solve problems in innovative and unique ways. In essence letting their creativity and special skills shine.