In his very famous talk at the TED2006 conference, Sir Ken Robinson talked about education and creativity and the need for them to not only co-exist but to also be intertwined.

So much of what Dr. Robinson says in his talk is aligned with Montessori theory. Here are some highlights:

Children have extraordinary capacities for innovation.
Dr. Robinson says, “In fact, creativity – which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value – more often comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.”  Montessorians believe that, left to explore tasks at their own pace and according to their own interests, children will inherently make amazing progress in all sorts of academic and cultural fields.

Children are not scared of being wrong.
Dr. Robinson says, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”  But in traditional education, “We stigmatize mistakes.  And we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.  And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities.”  In The Absorbent Mind, Dr. Montessori parallels this sentiment when she writes, “All the crosses made by the teacher on the child’s written work, all her scoldings, only have a lowering effect on his energies and interests.”  As teachers, Montessori says that we should, “cultivate a friendly feeling towards error, to treat it as a companion inseparable from our lives, as something having a purpose, which it truly has” (The Absorbent Mind).

From birth, errors are a part of life and slowly work themselves out; just think about the child learning to walk, unsteady at first and falling easily but then later learning to walk effortlessly.  Many Montessori materials have a built in “control of error” that helps the child see, hear or feel if he or she has made a mistake without interference from an adult.  In the Montessori classroom, the teacher is an observer after she has given a lesson to a child; these observations help the teacher decide if a re-presentation of the lesson is needed.  This model of re-presentation is used instead of calling attention to a mistake and correcting the child immediately.  Often, these negative practices can make a child lose interest in something with which he or she once loved working.

As a teacher, I am far from perfect, and I emphasize that fact in the classroom everyday.  My role as a teacher and guide in the classroom is to model the behavior that is expected from the children, so when I make a mistake, whether it is in giving a lesson or talking with a group of children, I recognize it and try again.  Isn’t that the type of example that we want to set with our children?

Creative people may think that they are not intelligent.
In his TED talk, Dr. Robinson says, “Many highly-talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized.”  Dr. Montessori used the phrase, “Their intelligence is hopelessly buried under barriers which cannot now be removed” (To Educate the Human Potential).  In Montessori schools, we follow each child’s individual ability, pace and interests.  In order to introduce certain concepts, Montessorians draw upon the child’s interests to start a conversation that will lead to a lesson in something more “academic.”

Our goal is to educate the whole child.
Dr. Montessori added upon this concept that we should not only educate the whole child but also implement “Education for Life” in The Absorbent Mind.  Bringing together the academic, the cultural and the social aspects of education is part of what lays the foundation for future success.  Here is one of my favorite passages from a book by Dr. Montessori.  In To Educate the Human Potential, she wrote in 1948, “The secret of good teaching is to regard the child’s intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination.  Our aim therefore is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his inmost core.  We do not want complacent pupils, but eager ones; we seek to sow life in the child rather than theories, to help him in his growth, mental and emotional as well as physical…”

For further reading by Dr. Ken Robinson on this topic, pick up a copy of Creative Schools:  The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education.