Out Of Our Minds

About a year ago I heard a podcast of Ken Robinson's brilliant TED Talk on creativity. Robinson makes the observation that education systems worldwide are based on academic subjects such as history, math, science etc. But suppose you were to base a curriculum on art? Not just studying art but doing art, dance, music etc. as the basis of learning. How would that change society? It's an interesting concept and Robinson never suggests that we should actually do that but he does make good arguments that art should be a bigger part of education. Unless they show immediate talent when they are young most people's art education stops when they are in middle school. Many people have to take art requirements in college but those are fulfilled reading and writing about art in such subjects as art history without producing anything artistic. That's sort of how my art education went until I discovered water colors as an adult and found a previously unknown joy in being creative. I still don't have much talent in painting but I have learned a lot about the value of creativity. So I was really excited to read Robinson's book expounding on the themes in his TED Talk.

Unfortunately I was disappointed in this book. As a speaker Robinson in extremely entertaining but as a writer he's rather dull. Early on in the book he writes about how businesses are suffering from a dearth of creative talent. Creativity is essential to developing new ideas,solving problems and adapting to today's ever changing workplace. I was disappointed that Robinson did not develop this idea of creativity in the workplace further or give suggestions of how to introduce creativity as a value in the organization. One of my favorite employees was someone who was maybe not the best worker but boy did he have loads of ideas for making the company better. Even if we could only use one of one hundred of his ideas it was so refreshing as a manager to have someone come in and offer up suggestions for new ways of doing things.

Although the book is titled Out of Our Minds:Learning to be Creative, it doesn't offer much in the way of suggestions for becoming more creative. It does interesting ideas and make good arguments for the importance of practicing art whether it be drama, music, painting, drawing etc. So it's a book I'm glad I read I just had hoped for a little bit more.