+ -

30.9.13

A creative education offers no benefit...

Last week I found myself in another bizarre situation preaching about the benefits of a creative education... I mean can you imagine having to persuade people to believe a 'normal/academic' education is beneficial?

To cut a long story short I met a lady on the same short course. In a bid to fill awkward silences she told me that her daughter was really keen to study fashion but that she isn't supportive of this choice and has found herself researching more academic college sixth form open evenings on her daughters behalf. 

I asked why, to which she said that she sees studying fashion or any other 'design' course as having no benefit to her daughters future and would be much more comfortable if she was to study maths or english. 

Wow. What a statement.

Out of curiosity I asked the lady what she does for a living, it turns out she practises as a Chartered Accountant and has done for many years. In my opinion she will have probably experienced as much of an academic education as you can get, which is probably the answer as to why she is so adverse to anything other. Equally she strikes me as a highly intelligent and intellectual individual and it baffles me how she cannot see the bigger picture.

You cannot force someone down a route of algebra or periodic tables if they are just not programmed that way. It was hard for me to not get frustrated while ultimately justifying my whole education to this lady. 

Research over the years has proved that children and adults learn in different ways and stressed the importance that no way is a wrong way. Initially this lady was not aware of my creative background so was not trying to ruffle any feathers with her opinion, I suppose just expressing a personal concern for her daughter. For somebody with such a negative outlook on creative education, I couldn't understand why this lady was enrolled on a fashion short course! To me this is where academics struggle to see the millions of links between a creative education and beneficial skills that are transferrable into everyday life. 

I guess the point I am finding myself struggling to deal with is the challenging brick wall that a creative education has always had to overcome and probably will always have to in the future. This alongside the added frustration that parents try to push their children down a route that they see as being the right route, rather than what makes their child happy.

I think I will always feel responsible to push the positive attributes of a creative education and find ways to relate these positives to each individual situation, without having negative on academic education. This is an important point to make and I must stress that I am in no way saying that a creative education should replace an academic one but that it should be accepted with equal weight, rather than being overlooked and dismissed as the easy way out.

I'd love to see a list of negatives that people feel a creative education has, and equally a list of positives. I wonder which outweighs the other? I bet I can have a good guess. 

5 Fiona Plews: A creative education offers no benefit... Last week I found myself in another bizarre situation preaching about the benefits of a creative education... I mean can you imagine having...

No comments:

Post a Comment

< >