Do schools kill creativity? That’s one of the ideas we’ll explore in a special conversation with Professor Mila Saunders, an internationally recognized expert on creativity and education innovation. Professor Saunders has worked with governments and cultural organizations to make creativity a more integral part of education.
DAVID Peterson: Professor Saunders, welcome and thank you for accepting our invitation.
MILA Saunders: It’s my pleasure to be here, thank you for inviting me!
DAVID: Well, one of the things that we all have in common about going to school is that we have very mixed feelings about our own schooling, really. I mean, some of it was great, but I also spent a lot of time doing things I didn’t really care for all that much. Are your memoires any different? What started your interest in education?
MILA: I guess not, I’m afraid. I recall doing some things simply because I had to. I can’t say I was motivated and this must have remained as part of my school memory. So, I would say my interest in education must be related back to my own schooling experience.
DAVID: After University, you took up a position as a teacher, didn’t you?
MILA: Yes, and as a young teacher I realized that there were pupils whose capacities were derestimated. And there were some bright people who often didn’t think they were very smart. There were smart people who didn’t think they were good enough just because they were never given the chance.
DAVID: What did you do, then?
MILA: I had become involved in theatre at the school, even directing some of the school plays. And it was then I became aware of the potentiality of the students’ skills. I became very interested in theater in education. That was something I enjoyed more than anything. And I eventually did a master in creative education, and eventually became a teacher trainer; that is how it all really started. So that’s how I started being involved in education.
DAVID: In fact, you spent ten years until 2001 as a professor of arts education. Why did you leave that post? You were after all influencing the next generation of teachers so that they could perhaps do a better job than some of the teachers did when you were coming up?
MILA: That might be true, er…Yes, but I’d never planned to be a professor. I mean I never quite had a plan. People think that life is linear, that you can plan it all out. And one of the problems I think is that our educational systems are based on that principle: that everything must be planned.
DAVID: Didn’t you enjoy it as a professor of arts education?
MILA: Oh, Yes, I loved it! But I felt I had come to the end of it. You know, I always feel it’s important to know when the time is right to move on and I just wanted to do things that interested me directly.
DAVID: Can we now move onto motivation? In your book of 2009, The Element, you talk about Gillian Lynn. Gillian is this famous choreographer who did the choreography for Cats and the Phantom of the Opera, besides other musicals.
MILA: Oh, Yes, Gillian. That was a wonderful case. You know, when she was a little girl she was constantly fidgeting at school, looking out of the window and being distracted. No one cared to teach her anything. Her parents were quite desperate. And one day her mother took her for a medical test. Gillian was left alone in the room, while the doctor and the mother were discussing. The minute they were out of the room she was on her feet, circling harmonically to the music all around the room. Then the doctor turned to her mother and said, “Mrs. Lynn, Gillian isn’t sick. She’s a dancer! Take her to a dance school”.
DAVID: And she became an international dancer and choreographer!
MILA: Precisely! Kids are kids. They are restless. They have this energy. This inability to sit still could be channeled into something. Most people don’t seem to know what their real talents are and many doubt
that they have any talents at all.
DAVID:In your book you also talk about educational systems around the globe that are introducing reforms to meet thechallengesof the 21st century. And most of them you say don’t need reform, they need transformation.
MILA: Something that really worries me is that in public education now there is something like a 30 percent dropout rate from between the ninth grade and the twelfth grade. At this point, it is obvious you can’t blame the kids. You can’t say, well this 30 percent of the kids cannot be educated. There’s something wrong in the system. And I am not criticizing teachers or principals; they have a really challenging job to do. The problem is the system. It’s the way it’s organized. They are being driven by this obsession with standardized testing. We have to get everything to the same standards.
DAVID: And yet teachers are teaching to that test.
MILA: They have to!
DAVID: So how or who can encourage the students’ creative capacity?
MILA: It is probably the teachers themselves. Teachers are the people who turn you on or turn you off
. Somebody who realized there was something happening in you (the pupil) that they should encourage. Everybody should bear in mind, you know, that if you invest in people’s natural talents, something good will come of it!
DAVID: Well Professor, thank you so much for sharing your ideas with us today.
MILA:It’s been my pleasure!