Creative Schools by Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica, book review: Uncritical optimism

Robinson asks whether schools kill creativity but ignores potential problems

Books advocating radical change in schools, sometimes even down to suggesting abolishing them altogether, were common during the 1960s. They are fewer today, which gives this present study a certain nostalgia value. The format over the years has remained basically the same. A stream of anecdotes drawn from divergent sources is used to back up an invariably hyper-positive view of children and their abilities.

Contrary stories questioning any of these assumptions are not mentioned. Children themselves, generally described as innately and endlessly creative, are in this scenario too often held back by the deadening hand of educational orthodoxy – in this book, the current obsession with standardised tests and school rankings. There are descriptions of how some outstanding teachers have still managed to introduce successful progressive values. The inevitable conclusion is that if only more schools could be persuaded to do the same their pupils could then finally take their place in a brave new educational world concentrating particularly on creativity and personalised learning.

Ken Robinson, the principal author of this book, outlined his own ideas in this area in a talk given in California in 2006 entitled "Do schools kill creativity?" It has since been viewed by about 300 million people. As a former teacher, researcher and advisor, he is well qualified to write on such matters, and he has also enlisted the help of Lou Aronica, an American collaborator. But this means that the text constantly veers between examples drawn from American and British schools, however different their cultural contexts. There is also too much uncritical optimism in these pages, for some readers still possibly inspirational but for others uncomfortably close in tone to those relentlessly up-beat self-help manuals so dear to American publishing.

Robinson is right in much that he says. Schools often do not get the best out of pupils and an emphasis on league tables can have the effect of cutting down on creativity and experimentation. The old model of education, concentrating on knowledge acquisition rather than the various different processes through which learning takes place, may indeed no longer suit a world in need of gifted entrepreneurs, designers and managers all capable of thinking outside the box. But the search for an educational nirvana where all this can be put to right is notoriously elusive. Pupils do not always come to school ready for another day of ground-breaking discovery. Teachers with large classes can find it difficult to cater for pupils sometimes with very different needs. Lessons aiming at fostering creativity may still become mechanical as inspiration flags and what seemed like a good idea no longer appears to work.

This book is right in its insistence that schools should never simply fall into a rut and that time should always be made for undertaking new initiatives outside the curriculum. Some such interventions as described here are certainly worth anyone's time and effort. But there are many practical difficulties arising from attempting to introduce significant change in schools staffed by teachers already carrying alarming workloads. By largely ignoring these potential problems, Robinson risks offending those very people in the classroom he has to rely on to put his ideas into practice.