183 of 193 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Keep it short, Sir Ken, November 28, 2006
This review is from: Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative (Paperback)
After reading the book, I had a hard time remembering why I had thought it would be great, so I looked again at Sir Ken Robinson's recent and popular lecture at [search "Sir Ken Robinson on TED Talks"]. Now I remember -- he's an entertaining speaker, with some pretty good points about the genius of children and how we school it out of them. But the book, well, it's subtitled "Learning to Be Creative" but that really only comes in the last chapter, and his recommendations seem very conservative. He spends much too much time before that--building up his case--and that case is watered down by being second-hand. If you want to know about what schooling is doing and why, read Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society. If you're really interested in the physiological basis of non-academic intelligence, read Goleman's Emotional Intelligence (which Sir Ken quotes, but better the original). In short, the book, though it's just 200 pages, is simply too long.
I did find one memorable point: that many people miss the chance for creativity because they're not trying in the field that's natural to them. The idea that, in order to be creative, find your medium, whether it be in the "traditional" arts such as painting or dance, or in any other occupation. Whatever is closest to your heart.
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49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Intellectually Challenging & Humorous, June 19, 2001
This review is from: Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative (Paperback)
There are certain books that manage to be authoritative, entertaining and thought-provoking and are also well-written and richly exemplified. Few authors are able to fashion this attractive mixture. Alvin Toffler and Charles Handy can craft it, and in education, David Hargreaves has the knack. I shall add Ken Robinson's absorbing account of creativity to my personal list of gems.
Creativity is one of those topics that excites some and enrages others. In the wrong hands it can be twee, syrupy, smug, territorial, giving the impression that you have to belong to a special club, with its own argot and conventions. For Ken Robinson it is none of these, but rather a universal talent that people have, often without realising it. Society in general, and education in particular, can squash the imagination and rock children's self-confidence.
What I like about this book is the breadth of its scope ... and the fascinating little stories that illustrate the points being made, tales from history, social and economic background factors, test items, incidents from school life. The book is peppered with these vividly recounted vignettes about thinking and learning, or lack of it ... Many of the illustrations and anecdotes are personal to the author, about people he has met inside and outside the university world, organisations he knows, stories he has been told.
Robinson's line of argument is carefully constructed through the seven chapters ... Because imagination and invention do not progress in straight lines, or along predictable routes, whole organisations must create and sustain a culture that promotes creativity, rather than stifles it. On the surface, relatively little of this book is directly about education, for many of the chapters describe society generally, human functioning, the arts, and the imagination. But you could also argue that all of it is about education. ... I was sorry to reach the end of the text, as it had maintained its momentum throughout. The reading may finish, but the thinking goes on, just as you would expect from a book on this intriguing subject.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, October 30, 2001
This review is from: Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative (Paperback)
Sometimes a writer has an uncanny kknack of sharply focusing something which up until then you had not seen in all its simplicity and brilliance. This book does that but at the next moment it makes connections never before imagained. Even the most obstinately prosaic and safe thinkers will be tempted out of their box by Ken Robinson's ideas, theories and speculations. What's more, he writes as he speaks, in a way that, magnetically and compulsively, is simply irresistible.
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