Richness of Human Capacity

         The idea of children being sacred in terms of their pure innocence and wild imagination and adults being deprived of these qualities is widely accepted among people. In fact, the theme of children losing their innocence and creativity as they grow up appears continuously in works such as Jim Barry’s Peter Pan, P. L. Travers’s Mary Poppins, and Jay D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Ken Robinson, in his speech reiterates this commonly known process of audacious and imaginative children becoming closed and conventional adults and pinpoints the current education system as the culprit…without suggesting a specific solution.

           Ken Robinson focuses on the current situation of the education system and how it suppresses children’s creativity, and although I agree with a large portion of what he says, just stating what is does not do anything to change the world. He briefly mentions near the end of the speech that humans should “reconstitute their conception of the richness of human capacity,” but this seems too vague to address the whole of the education system. From my experience, the most fundamental building blocks of creativity and intelligence is reading. Yes, as un-brilliant as it seems, I really believe that an education system that encourages reading fosters and maintains creativity.

           I remember in kindergarten when there was story time and the teacher went over to the rocking chair and we all sat around in a circle on an alphabet-inscribed rug. The teacher would open up a different picture book everyday and read to us, showing us the pictures after reading each page. I used to love these story times, and my passion for reading sprouted from an early age. I lived in my dreams, being a princess in a magical world I created. I continued to read as I got older, and I went on adventures with a friend named Tom, I traveled around the world in 80 days, I became a dragon-rider and ruled the sky, and I fought the Dark Lord with a flick of my wand. As a result, I was inspired to keep on dreaming and take risks like my favorite characters in the books. Schools could schedule a trip to the school library once a week, a time in which the librarians introduce new books worth reading or give out lists of recommended books. Classes could hold a contest like “the Battle of the Books” where students are given a list of books to read and the team who answers the most questions about the books wins. There are numerous possibilities.

           Ken Robinson defined creativity as the process of having an original idea that has value. This requires out-of-the-box thinking and with the current education providing the knowledge and with books providing inspiration, we just might be able to see the richness of human capacity in its full bloom.