When Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity, we find that to be « cool » and we all say yes to that because everything that goes against school in a cool way easily gets into our attention… especially those who desperately try to find a way to explain, justify and (never) accept the fact that some mates who left school way earlier are now richer or more popular!

But can someone really choose between Creativity and School?

Creativity has to be seen as a layer that comes over another layer that schools provide: the “HOW-TO”. Creativity beautifies the way you do things … because you already know how to do those things actually. So there can’t be creativity without a HOW-TO basis.

Leaving school early, or not going at school at all it’s neither a shame nor a burden as long as we think School as something bigger than a place, between four walls or on a campus, and we find another way to learn a HOW-TO: home, streets, sports, etc.

Some of us will have enough money, or their parents, to spend a lot of years at (classic) school trying to learn the HOW-TO they think they need in life and take it to the top level. Other will need just a few years to embrace the basics and take it to the top level elsewhere than school as we see it: “chair, teacher, board, computer, …”.

So at the end, you don’t chose creativity over how-to but you chose which side you want to make bigger, which side to manage and drive the other! And that’s not an easy question at all. It is all what life is about, isn’t it?

Those who choose to seek creativity tend to be happier in their (work) life than those who choose to “follow de book”.

Creativity magnifies the “yes, you can” part of you while schools and how-to always remind you the “you have to” not so glamour part.

I guess it’s more like a bad-cop good-cop game!