Are schools destroying creativity

A friend sent me a link to a TED talk this week by Sir Ken Robinson about how not only our education system, but many systems around the world are potentially destroying the creativity of the next generation. He talks about the increase of ADHD using a story about Gillian Lynne the amazing dancer who choreographed Cats and many other shows to warn us of the danger in expecting all our children to  learn the same way and if they can't we often look to labeling them with medical reasons as to why they cannot sit still and then medicating them to fit in with how society expects them to behave. He shares his concerns of how society looks at academia being the most important part of educating our children, with the more creative subjects such as art, music, drama and dance being seen as second class. In fact in one of his clips there is a picture of children on a conveyer belt being fed into a factory style school when they emerge they either head towards a large money box entitled GDP or the arts and a dustbin.
http://new.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity

Throughout our adoption training, the speakers talked about how different adopted children are from birth children, how, because of their backgrounds they will need different parenting and different support throughout their formative years and potentially beyond. I don't think that this means we should be labelling these children in any way, they should be seen as children, just like my birth children. Yes they may have different behavioural issues and require different help at home and school but they need to have the same encouragement and expectations to be successful in what they choose to do.

 As a family we have a creative streak, our children all seem to gravitate to the stage, be it drama, dance, music or gymnastics. We encourage them to be who they want to be, to study what makes them happy, to enjoy what they do. I believe that it is their creativity that will help them find happiness throughout their lives, it may not earn them millions but life is not about money it's about living!