The creative is within us?

"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
Pablo Picasso

Do we destroy the creative capacity of our children?
Our education system was designed for the Industrial revolution and was built on a foundational structure of  a pryamid  progression within education. With primary and secondary education providing 'blue collar' workforce and the level of your education determined what level you would work in. The top levels being lawyers, MP's, govenors and other high ranking positions within the economy.  But now 70 years on we still have the same structure for educating our children. Graduates are leaving university with a BA to go home where the job now needs a MA  and a PhD where the previous job needed a MA.

So why with such an influx of students are we still thinking that the education is working? The same system can be seen across the globe, yet we do nothing to progress the education system to taylor the needs of the individuals. In the UK and the US money spent on educating a child has risen 60% in the last 20 years, yet the levels of standards across the board have not risen at all. Why is this?

Does picasso's quote have any relevance to the state of our education as it stands now?
The Paperclip Experiment
The Paperclip experiment was conducted using 50 children from the age of 3-5 and then using the same children to conduct the experiment every 5 years to test their level of creativity and imagination through their education.
The participents were told to think of ways in which you could use a paper clip and write them down. Once all of the results were taken the number of uses that they could find for a paperclip was compared to all other responses across allage ranges and would give a percentage of how creative they were. The higher percentage indicates a 'genious' level of creativity and imagination. Try and predict what will happen.

    3-5year olds                        98%
    8-10year olds                     32%
    13-15year olds                  10%
    25+                                        2%

More to come .....

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[mae collins]

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