Have you heard of her? Some have. She's a choreographer, and everybody knows her work. She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera. I used to be on the board of The Royal Ballet, as you can see. Gillian and I had lunch one day. I said, "How did you get to be a dancer? When she was at school, she was really hopeless. And the school, in the '30s, wrote to her parents and said, "We think Gillian has a learning disorder. I think now they'd say she had ADHD.
Wouldn't you? But this was the s, and ADHD hadn't been invented at this point. It wasn't an available condition. Anyway, she went to see this specialist. So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her mother, and she was led and sat on this chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes, while this man talked to her mother about all the problems Gillian was having at school, because she was disturbing people, her homework was always late, and so on.
Little kid of eight. In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian and said, "I've listened to all these things your mother's told me. I need to speak to her privately. Wait here. We'll be back. We won't be very long," and they went and left her. But as they went out of the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk.
And when they got out of the room, he said to her mother, "Just stand and watch her. And they watched for a few minutes, and he turned to her mother and said, "Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick. She's a dancer. Take her to a dance school. I said, "What happened? I can't tell you how wonderful it was. We walked in this room, and it was full of people like me — people who couldn't sit still, people who had to move to think.
They did ballet, they did tap, jazz; they did modern; they did contemporary. She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School. She became a soloist; she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet. She's been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history, she's given pleasure to millions, and she's a multimillionaire.
Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down. What I think it comes to is this: Al Gore spoke the other night about ecology and the revolution that was triggered by Rachel Carson.
I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.
Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won't serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children. There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said, "If all the insects were to disappear from the Earth, within 50 years, all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years, all forms of life would flourish.
What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination. We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely, and that we avert some of the scenarios that we've talked about. And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are and seeing our children for the hope that they are.
And our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future. By the way — we may not see this future, but they will. And our job is to help them make something of it. You have JavaScript disabled. Menu Main menu. Watch TED Talks. Sir Ken Robinson. Details About the talk.
Good morning. How are you? If you work in education, you're not asked. That was it, by the way. Thank you very much. How annoying would that be? The example cited by Robinson is thought-provoking, but it doesn't, in itself, address creativity. Dance is no more creative than writing. It is a medium of expression and as such gives tools to be creative. When the girl in the example found herself at dance school I have no doubt she would have been subjected to rigourous, disciplined training to perfect her plies, her jettes and her pirouettes.
Once she had mastered them, I expect she had much more scope to creatively interpret the dances or the music, or to choreograph a new piece. The arts are no more inherently creative than the sciences. We just think of the arts as creative endeavours but creativity is not confined to them.
I find this a strange piece. I'll confine my comments to the opening sentences citing Tom Leuning's arguments:. Fair enough, but not the whole story - and one which could go hand in hand with Robinson's arguments - no need to set up these versions of creativity in opposition to each other. Is all knowledge "based on literacy"?
Do the illiterate have no knowledge? Some contemporary English schools do indeed help some children develop the kinds of literacy skills which enable them to become enthusiastic readers and writers, collecting, explaining and pursuing knowledge.
Other schools do not - and there are many reasons why some schools do and others do not. Does "all further learning" really depend on literacy? Breakthrough ideas - a form of creativity - often emerge from those who have no 'knowledge'. I'm sure I'm not the only person who learned literacy at home before starting school, and many widely-acknowledged 'creative people' say they started learning when they left school!
I recall going to the inaugural lecture at 'RSA North' at Dean Clough when Sir Ernest Hall uplifted the audience, with lines like "one moment of inspiration is worth a thousand qualifications". I wish The RSA would invest in participative platforms for these kinds of debates rather than relying on channels like the website where an article is written and promoted in the newsletter months after it's published?!
More about The Big Idea Editor. Ready to Reopen? Expert advice on how independent arts practitioners and small creative businesses can overcome their pressure points and focus on what they love about their mahi. Get some timely advice from creative mentoring service Toipoto's guest speaker Ramon Narayan on how to lighten your load in these heavy times. The Big Idea speaks to leading arts career mentors to get a gauge on what the creative community is crying out for during these raised alert levels.
Lessons for Lockdown. You must have JavaScript enabled to use this form. Top Reads. Letters to an Emerging Creative: Getting Started. Funding Controversy and Premature Curtain Calls. To read more, Click Here. As evidence of how schools kill creativity, Robinson cites the example of a young girl called Gillian Lynne who, at the age of eight, was already viewed as a problem student with a probable learning difficulty due her inability to sit still and concentrate. We at, OpenGrowth , are continually looking for trending startups in the ecosystem.
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