Human genius and creativity have no limitations and people have created different norms, codes and systems to assess, grade and classify one’s abilities, knowledge and skills. Parents grow their children planning their future career without taking young people’s personal perspectives, vocation and desires into consideration. It has become the worst mistake of the modern society – to underestimate and depreciate one’s capacity and possibilities. Mike Rose in his article Blue-Collar Brilliance and Ken Robinson in his TED talk Do schools kill creativity raise this issue and make one start thinking about this mistake.
The article by Mike Rose explains on the examples of his personal life how intelligence is now closely tightened with the formal education and all people are divided into classes of white-, blue- and pink collars due to the level of physical and intellectual input at work. Most of people who work as waiters, shop-assistants, nurses, librarians, receptionists do not even imagine that their mind is able to work with larger portions of information more effectively, than that of white-collar workers at the office. It does not criticize white-collar job, but Rose (2009) encourages not to devalue the full range of everyday cognition, because this can result in the limited educational opportunities for all people and finally, social separation will be reinforced. Robinson (2014) develops this idea and brings a bright example how a talented choreographer Gillian Lynne has discovered her talent and become famous all over the world. If parents start being afraid of their children’s abnormal and irregular behavior, they do not start analyzing their kids’ inclinations, but turn to doctors to make their children suit the society, get only good marks at school, correct education and of course, an excellent and much appreciated job. However, such indifference and ignorance of individuality and creativity result in a significant loss of talent in the world. People isolate themselves in artificial systems and try to get comfortable and well-appointed positions in these cages. I fully agree with Robinson that creativity is equally and I would say even more important then literacy nowadays, because it helps one to escape and do incredible things in our life.
References
Robinson, K. (2014 August 26). Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc9D-Im68mw.
Rose, M. (2009 June 1). “Blue-Collar Brilliance”. The American Scholar. Retrieved from
https://theamericanscholar.org/blue-collar-brilliance/#.V67qU2N6GRs
