Writing sample of an opinion piece from college.

1. Is this current model of schools killing creativity? Sir Ken Robinson argument
Stephanie Kataryna Schneider
COMM 1007
“Children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065, no body has a clue,
despite all the expertise that’s been on parade for the past four days what the world will
look like in five years time and yet were meant to be educating them for it, so the
unpredictability is extraordinary.” Sir Ken Robinson makes an excellent point in speech
during a 2006 TED conference. I completely agree, so why are we putting a phobia in
children that terrors them into thinking they need to be doctors and nurses? Yes, these are
needed professions as the populations grows, I understand that, but then what happens to
all those other skills that we had as children, such as being visual, kinestic, auditory, and
movement? They eventually fade away because they become less practiced. We are
educating children on industrial skills such as math and English because we, as a society,
think these will be most useful in thirty to sixty years, but that is not necessarily the case,
we cannot even fathom what is possible in that time. The hierarchy of our school system
works as math and languages at the top and drama and arts at the bottom, as Sir Ken
Robinson points out in his lecture. Yet, I wonder, without the imagination of children
who is going to think of ways to innovate new ideas for the future, save the damage our
generation has caused, who is going to create entertainment that will keep us entertained,
we see it everyday, things hitting there plateaus and climaxes before declining and then
becoming obsolete.
As the world moves forward and we leave the dated behind, somehow our school
system magically stays the same. The only difference is that we do more testing on
subjects such as math and English. My sister is eleven years younger and has entered the
sixth grade, now doing two EQAO testing this year, formally introduced in 1996. These
“large-scaled” testing, that takes place in Ontario, is for the grades 3, 6, 9, and 10. The
funding for these tests is approximately $33 million in 2009-2010 and further more, $77
million by “Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat designing and mandating programs
designed to improve test scores”, sited from ETFO (Elementary Teachers' Federation of

2. Ontario). This comes as a shock to me, but does anyone on the Ontario school board
realize how many dance classes, or art supplies that is? $77 million dollars our
government is paying people to check test scores, and realize what’s wrong, go back to
the drawing board to come up with a new test, for a new round of sixth graders.
Secondly, I remember partaking in these tests. Since it is not a personal test, it is very
broad; therefore all of Ontario is getting the same test as myself. If your teacher has not
taught you the material you are about to answer you are just as oblivious as the kid next
to you. Furthermore, you are not aloud to ask for help, you cannot use a lifeline, or work
in a group. How is this relevant to any kind of work environment where team building is
so crucial? Does Ontario really need a provincial test system if the teacher, was trying to
figure out the most common learning strategy among children and then enforcing it upon
those who could not conform? All in all, the hierarchy or our school system is off
balance. We see colour everyday and take it for granted because we don’t practice the
simple principles of the colour wheel like we practice calculating taxes. Schools are not
highlighting talents, they are just grading within a dated curriculum. We stick to a past
school curriculum because it works, but what is that to say about the future to come.
Apparently “someone” has a crystal ball for 2012 and that’s about it. The world
ends and that’s as far as we will look into it, we know we have so eco-issues, but we
cannot exactly say when they will take effect. If the world does not come to an end in
2012 though, I will gladly agree with Sir Ken Robinson that our school system will
probably not going to see a change, since it has not changed since it was first invented in
the early 1900s. With all this unpredictability we have in the future we cannot even
foresee, why are we using the same education that basically exes out the arts as children
get further and further into education? Sir Ken Robinson caught my attention when he
said in this present time you need a M.B.A where as before you required a B.A, before
that you just needed some sort of a degree. There is such a wide range of human richness
in the mind, and we limit it with a system that says what is right and wrong. That was
then with the requirement of a degree, this is now, imagine what my little sister will
experience. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything
original.” Robinson emphasized on this, because in art and dance classes, children find

3. ways to move hands and make things because they are not afraid to fail or feel judgment.
They enjoy the paint through their fingers and seeing a new colour form, or the dizzy
feeling they get from spinning. The other side of the brain they keep so active while
young, the curious imaginative side, which springs new ideas, becomes so handicapped
by education systems because it constantly being told you will not become a dancer, so
do not dance, you will not become the next Picasso, so do not paint. Perhaps we are
threatened by how much a child has the potential to learn at such a young age, maybe
there is the next literary genius such as Shakespeare, or art-master like Picasso, Warhol,
or Da Vinci, upon our lifetime, but they’re currently stuck in math class, flunking
because that is not their forte nor talent.
Three things about intelligence that Robinson made coherent were that it is
diverse, dynamic, and distinct. Therefore having a school system that solely based on one
way of learning, with hierarchy of subjects doesn’t make much sense. Especially when
there is various ways people learn, especially children. Diversity ranges from auditory,
kinestic, visual learners, with those three man categories, can be broken down further;
this is where the right brains separate from the left-brains. So is it possible to create a
hierarchy on that alone? Would a school system of children put in classrooms nourish
their natural learning skills? Furthermore, could $77 million dollars be saved because
Ontario’s government is doing a thorough learning test to decipher what kind of learning
program a child requires in order to learn the way that best suits them?
Robinson spoke of a woman Gillian Lynne, who could not sit still and was
presumably on her way to being diagnose with some sort of issue until her doctor
reassured her mother that she was a dancer. Immediately Gillian mother enrolled her in
dance school, currently Gillian Lynne, choreographer for Cats, and the current longest
Broadway show, Phantom of the Opera. This woman is so successful because of her
talents through movement was emphasized as a child, not because she does by the book
formulas, but because she invented, produces, directs, new movements that entertain
audiences around the world through her creativity and imagination. Is it pleasing to us to
see her work because our own creativity is so tamed from education or our jobs? Perhaps.

4. But this is what could be beautiful about the future or a disaster. If we changed the school
system to highlight talents we could let children’s mind grow and run wild, but learn in a
way to them seems effortless and still be creative, if it was in their form of learning skills;
that being auditory, visual, movements, abstract, and kinetically.
In conclusion, I do believe school systems are killing children’s creativity. The
curriculum within a system is discouraging children out of imagination and risking
getting things wrong, because if it is wrong it is automatically a failure. With the
hierarchy of math and English, children are being slowly motivated out of any art-like
programs, or career paths because they’re being for warned they need to stay within an
industrialized program because that is what makes money and receives rewarding careers.
Although this is not the case, as the world continues to revolutionize imagination and
creativity is what going to keep this world afloat. A child can think of a million
whimsical ways to do something, which an adult can only think of few ways. This
amazes me, because that being said, we’re going to need any and all ideas to save the
environment to which we have abused, or create new ideas for entertainment so we are
not just recycling old Monty Python moments and hoping no one recognizes. Sometimes
I feel like I am losing my creativity, and I hate to admit it, but I have used my eleven-
year-old sister’s jokes before. That being admitted, I hope to whatever god that they fix
this education system of ours, so I never have to openly admit that again. My creativity is
slowly committing suicide with all the times I have been told I am not doing something
right. Those monsters or elaborate thoughts I could dream up as a kid are slowly fading;
part of my imagination shuts down because it is not being praised for the creativity it is
worth.

5. CRITICAL REFLECTION/NARRATIVE ESSAY
MICHELLE PEREIRA
COMM 1007
STEPHANIE KATARYNA SCHNEIDER

6. CRITICAL REFLECTION/NARRATIVE ESSAY
MICHELLE PEREIRA
COMM 1007
STEPHANIE KATARYNA SCHNEIDER