Every now and again I rewatch one of my favorite TED talks, and one of the most popular TED talks of all time.
And like every favorite thing that you watch over and over again, the talk keeps changing as I age. A new little thing that I might have missed before, or simply forgotten, sticks out as super relevant.
In today’s rewatch, this stuck out:
“I say this out of affection for them: there’s something curious about professors. In my experience — not all of them, but typically — they live in their heads. They live up there and slightly to one side. They’re disembodied, you know, in a kind of literal way. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads.”
A quote from Ken Robinson’s super popular TED talk, “Do schools kill creativity?”
So many of you, who follow this blog, have graduate degrees.
I do too. A masters in sociology. This was my ticket into a social science research and program evaluation career.
My selfish reason for loving Ken Robinson’s talk is not a fear for my daughter’s education. It’s that it feels so true to my own evolution as a professional.
I was a kid who loved to draw. I went everywhere with a pad of paper and pencils. I wasn’t that good, never creating the kind of work that makes people say, “that kid is talented.” As art classes continued through middle school into high school, they become more and more about technique and analysis. I did not excel in these courses.
But I was good at math. I was in the gifted classes and told by teachers with the best of intentions, that one day I would become an engineer.
So the math part was encouraged, and the drawing part…not so much. I went to college as an engineering major.
And during my freshman year, I almost failed out.
A switch to social science kept me going forward. It wasn’t about creativity, but it was about critical thinking. And that was enough to keep me interested and moving forward.
Educated out of creativity.
With only a couple of exceptions, I was educated out of creativity.
High school gave me barely any creative training, my BA degree next to nothing, and my MA degree even less.
My master’s thesis and the one and only published paper I have written, are probably a couple of the least creative things I have ever produced.
Luckily, I was able to eventually revive my creativity.
My comics have made a bigger impact on my chosen field of program evaluation than I anything I could have published in a journal. My personal blog and newsletter have made a bigger impact on the professional lives of researchers and evaluators than the work I contributed to as part of my professional research career.
The way we teach design is flawed.
The biggest barrier keeping program evaluators, researchers, and academics from truly meeting the rising creative expectations isn’t technical.
If you have a lot of education, you were likely educated out of your creativity like I was. (I’m sure there are plenty of exceptions, but if my story resonates with you I would love to hear about it in the comments).
And the ONLY WAY to get it back, is to actually create stuff. Not read more blog posts. Not watch more tutorial videos. Not learn new software tools.
You need to just CREATE STUFF.
Before you can move forward, you need to stop living in your head.
This is why I believe the way we tend to teach design is flawed. We talk a lot about design process, thinking about your audience, and picking the right methods, charts, or software.
Almost every design process starts with a whole lot of in your head stuff.
But the real way forward is to get out of your head and just CREATE STUFF.
Want an eBook that uses 50 pages to tell you the same thing I just told you in two words.
Here it is, I wrote it last week. There are lots of pictures, an official looking colorful model, an alliterative 5 word method, and 20 example data designs for you to try to recreate.
Let me know what you think!
Federico Moreno says
Hi there! I agree that most conventional schools do kill creativity. And the reasons for that are pretty well understood, the education system was modelled after a factory production line! My experience however was vastly different as I attended University of Technology, Sydney and completed the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation (see link). Its foundations are in “unlearning”, “creative practice” and “complex problem solving”. It reignited my creativity! Would suggest you check them out 🙂
https://www.uts.edu.au/study/transdisciplinary-innovation/undergraduate-courses/creative-intelligence-and-innovation
Chris Lysy says
Sounds like an interesting program Federico 🙂
Although I wish it wasn’t a requirement to get a degree in creativity or design to get any training in creativity or design.