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11/9/11 11:50 AMAre colleges killing creativity? | Deseret News
Page 1 of 2http://www.deseretnews.com/article/print/700195449/Are-colleges-killing-creativity.html
Are colleges killing creativity?
By sarah gamblesDeseret NewsPublished: Monday, Nov. 7, 2011 11:14 a.m. MST
SALT LAKE CITY — While most 19-year-olds in America are spending their first or second year atcollege just figuring out how to study for exams and deal with roommates and teachers, DaleStephens, a college dropout, is trying to figure out where he will speak next for more than $7,000 pergig.
Stephens is the CEO of a million-dollar corporation called Uncollege, a social movement promotingsuccessful pathways other than enrolling in college.
"I found college students were more interested in getting a degree than actually learning," he said.
More and more scholars have begun arguing that college does not necessarily equate success.
Sometimes it can mean just the opposite.
An IBM poll of CEOs last May found that the leaders rated creativity as the No. 1 most importantquality for leadership for a future enterprise to be successful.
Stephens, among others, argues that schooling, especially college, can kill creativity.
"Schools promote more conformity than theory," Stephens said. "Not because professors want it to bethat way. It's how the system works."
More than 68 percent of high school graduates were enrolled in colleges or universities in 2010,according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Having so many students obtaining their degrees can cause academic inflation, which means potentialemployers can require a college degree for the job but with so many people with the samequalifications, the employers have a more difficult time differentiating potential employees.
USA Today recently interviewed Charles Murray, author of "Real Education: Four Simple Truths forBringing America's Schools Back to Reality."
"You have colleges watering down courses, inflating grades, pretending kids are doing college-levelwork when they're not. By making a degree something everyone is supposed to want, we punishpeople who do not get one," Murray told USA Today.
In the book "Breakpoint and Beyond," the authors wrote about a study done on 1,500 kindergartenersthrough a divergent thinking test. The test applied questions like "How many ways could you use thispaperclip?" or "How many ways could you improve this firetruck?" They found that 98 percent of thestudents tested at genius level when asked the non-illicit right or wrong answers. By fourth grade, only50 percent of the students tested at genius level through the same test. The study explored how thesystematic nature of school grading systems can sometimes discourage students from divergentthinking or thinking creatively.
11/9/11 11:50 AMAre colleges killing creativity? | Deseret News
Page 2 of 2http://www.deseretnews.com/article/print/700195449/Are-colleges-killing-creativity.html
One of the world's leading speakers on creativity and innovation, Ken Robinson spoke at a prestigiousTED conference and argued that schools need to rank creativity in the highest category of learningimperatives.
"All kids have tremendous talents," Robinson said. "And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status."
He said that discouraging creativity in schools and forcing a mold onto students is the worst mistakethe educational system could make.
"We stigmatize mistakes," he said. "And we're now running national education systems wheremistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of theircreative capacities."
Stephens said that for many students, they have lived their whole lives just preparing for the next level.He said their lives have been sequential, and he doesn't believe they have to live that way.
"They need to go with the flow in the sense of the choices they make," Stephens said. "Everythingthey've done has been getting into the next step of life. It doesn't stop at college. In the end, you haveto ask yourself, what kind of life are you going to lead? All your knowledge, informal and formal, hasled you to there."
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