Transcript

Creativity and Education | ASHISH KULKARNI | TEDxKids@NMS

[Music] a very very good morning to all of you I didn't know from books we are going to go to Mars before I get to speak and I would like to welcome all of you back from mass to earth so that we can actually start the creative thinking you know the the word creativity for me actually plays on every single day and now I see myself in the in the creative industry I start thinking how it got into me and why it got into me when I went to the dictionary and found trying to find the meaning of creativity it had little to do with art and performing arts it had to do with everyday life and the way we do things differently and why we do things differently and that's why it kind of enthused me to really think and I went into some of the statistics that I got into this industry and looked at creativity and education and creativity and education has got so much of correlation but whether we have it and if we don't have it what needs to be done to actually be creative while we are getting educated so I looked at statistics from 2001 to 2005 the number of people who went to school in India if 10 people or 10 kids went to school in the first grade by the time they reached the 10th grade only one reached the 10th grade nine of them dropped out the situation has tremendously changed the policies have tremendously changed between 2005 to 2015 the total number of kids who went to school in this country six times more number of kids are going to go between 2016 to 2025 to the schools the reason being then now that we have toilets in the schools the girl students are going the retention is better and what does it have to do with creativity and I always used to think that why are kids in the race and why when we were in in the school we were always in the race to become engineers doctors chartered accountants or the lawyers white we couldn't think of anything else and the reason was that the race was designed for us and just imagine that if we continued to be in the race and when our education system put maths English botany zoology physics chemistry history biology geography or sorry geography and civics has stopped in subjects and we forgot about forgot about creativity performing arts and sports as a mainstream curriculum and somebody puts it into the extracurricular activities then what would happen we always would create a me-too generation and when I say me to generation I would like to clarify what me too means before I want to give you one point that in such a huge country of such a huge population if we only depend on literacy and we build our curriculums on literacy alone it's not going to be enough because in such a huge country being literate and been creative at the same time is very very important because if you're not a creative engineer if you're not the creative writer if you're not a creative doctor if you're not a creative Chartered Accountant you will have to still struggle for your livelihood and that's one of the reasons that the creativity is something that needs to be imbibed into the education and how does that actually come and I realized that I was lucky to stay in the joint family when I was growing up and when we were staying in a joint family my grandparents used to tell me stories every single day and we used to switch off the lights in the night at nine o'clock and there used to be a storytelling session and I could lie down with all my brothers sisters and cousins and look at a dark sky and imagine those stories in 3d visualization and that something got us creative and that's when we went to the playground that's when we went and walked to the school that's when we actually did something into the school we started applying and that's what your imagination and somebody had said and talked about the importance of daydreaming and that was a practice that was built in for the daydreaming for us and we as kids if we don't daydream you will not be able to be creative at all you need to understand and dream and see yourselves in the different situation I'll tell you what happens once upon a time do you all want to listen to some stories okay so once upon a time there was this kid who was of your age about 10 or 11 and his father was a farmer and the father used to have 30 35 acres of land and every single day father took a basket and went around the farm of 30 35 acres and collected all the eggs laid by the chicken the son started walking with his father from the age of 7 when he became 11 he told his father that I I've been going with you for last 4 years and I know exactly what you do why don't you give this job to me I'll do it and dad asked several times the kid are you sure you want to take this responsibility and the son said yes so son got this responsibility he started going to the farm he did some mistakes some of the eggs got broken but father was happy that he was doing it one fine day he suddenly found the egg which was grayish in color little bigger in size he ran with that egg to his father and said father see this is something different it's not like a normal egg and I can't place this with all the other eggs and father said see you took this job from me now you figure it out what it is and the Sun got dejected but he just went and when he went and kept it for hatching all the eggs hatched but this dint but some days later this egg also hatched but a little black color different kind of bird came out which was not looking like a chicken he ran with that bird to his father and said father see I told you there's something different this is not the same bird like all the chicken and his father said seed son I told you you took this job so you figure it out so he left this chicken along with all the hit this bird along with all the chicken they are all playing into a big field one fine day all this chicken while they were playing in the ground they saw an eagle flying in high in the air and they all wanted to fly that high they all jumped till one feet one and half feet some of the chicken ran to their mothers and said mother see that bird flying so high how can I fly that so high and the mothers told him your chickens you're not only supposed to fly that high you're just supposed to be on the ground and if you can probably jump for one feet one and half feet this bird also stride to do the same thing it was actually an eagle but it was born like a chicken it lived like a chicken it was living like a chicken and who knows probably it died like a chicken so it's exactly about the creativity that you identify that you have a thinking ability you have an ability to transform something you have to an ability to think something different you are an eagle no sooner you've identified you are an eagle you are destined to fly that high and you're not likely to become a chicken and live like a chicken and die like a chicken and that's one of the reasons that I industries and our curriculums need to be more creative it's very rightly said that how does it work does it work only for individuals or it works E for the groups and let me give you another story there was a river you know what is the river yeah and there used to be civilizations on the borders of the river so on the bank of one side of the river was one civilization and Bank of other side was another civilization and there used to be always a competition between them and they fought so much that one day they went to the king and they said that we are more generous than those people and they said no we are more generous than this people the King thought it's a very weird population and why do they have to fight all this time so he said ok I call you all separately and I'll figure out and he told his ministers so they laid a huge table and they laid wonderful delicious food on the table and they first got one of the civilizations and said that I'm going to throw a big party to you there's a huge table like this and there's a wonderful food and we are going to party today all the people in the civilizations was made to stand along the table on both the sides but they were sticks tied to their hands like this and they couldn't fold their hands and they were said now you need to eat all this food and they tried and tried for 5-6 hours and they couldn't the second villages were called the same thing was done to them they tried to figure it out figure it out for some time but they figured out and they started lifting the food and feeding the opposite guy and opposite guy started feeding this guy they were more generous so the creativity can be done in the group level also at the same time I would like to give you my life time experience I was a CEO of one of the studios and my CEO used to be sorry my I was a chief operating officer and my you used to be from us and he was a software guy once I was driving him from the airport to the studio and the travel was about Goodwin r1 and Hafez and when I was driving he was sitting next to me I suddenly got a call from the studio boss please come fast the technical director and the animation director is fighting the next signal I got another call please come fast they are fighting they're holding collars I said please call the security the security guy called me and said this is a panic situation the whole studio is down here and they are fighting they're holding collars and we can't separate them I said get me the HR guy and I told him please separate them out and keep in two separate rooms I'm on my way I'm coming there and my CEO was wondering what's happening and he said that this is how you operate your Studios I said no it normally doesn't happen but it is just happened I don't know we will go so as soon as I reach the studio the situation was very tensed and he said that I would like to sit in your room and figure out what was happening so I get the HR guy and said please call the technical guy and the technical guy guy came in and it says see I am a technical director of the studio these all creative guys don't understand anything they keep the caps lock on and say this machine is not working they don't know how to save their work and they keep shouting at me if I'm not there the studio cannot function they cannot survive and I said yes you're right and I convinced him an event and this guy was very happy my CEO because he was from the software industry then came my creative director and the animation director and they said what the hell this technical guys think they get a job because we are there in the studio if we don't create they will starve and they don't know how to act and behave with our artists and I said yes you're right but you need to work with each other and I pacified them and they also went so my CEO tells me Ashish something is wrong here I've been into managing software for the last 40 years I can't see this happening how can you say that the first guy was also right and the second guy was also right and I told my boss boss you are also right and that's how the creativity works if the camera is here it looks different if the camera is there it looks different it captures different things and the same object and that's the creativity whether you try to capture it against the light might not look good but when the light is here and the camera is there it might look good the camera is here it might look very very very different the same way I would like to take you through a very small analogy when we were civilizations ten thousand years ago we lived in the caves and so did the lines and tigers and chimpanzees and everybody lived in the cave but what happened we were completely nowhere where were we nowhere but there was something that we had here and there was something that was creative instinct in us where we started grouping and staying in small huts we built hurts we started cooking the food and we started eating cooked food and we became friends and we became a community and from nowhere we got somewhere where we did where did we go from no they do so when we went somewhere we nourished ourselves we started wearing clothes we started wearing things and we started discovering things because we were creative and we discovered something called as a wheel you know a wheel it's a man-made thing and from somewhere we wanted to be everywhere where we wanted to go so we wanted to go everywhere so we had a wheel we started going from one city to another city we started flying now we started having breakfast in one city lunch in another city dinner in another city and we were everywhere from nowhere - no no way - and from somewhere - so when we went everywhere we realized that we were elsewhere where were we some of our friends sitting here are elsewhere you know some of the people who are with their mobile phones there when you're sitting with your parents having dinner you are correct correct so the challenge of creativity and the storytelling is to bring you now here is to bring you from nowhere to nowhere to somewhere to elsewhere - no from nowhere - somewhere somewhere - everywhere from everywhere - and your job is to bring them so that's the power of creativity if you tell the most creative stories in the world they will be the most creative stories ever beyond your existence also Ghandi she told many creative stories Nelson Mandela told very creative stories which are the films that you really enjoy which are the books that you enjoy reading very creatively written so there is a challenge that you actually be not only literate but you be creative and literate at the same time whatever you do in life try to tell the most creative story of your life whatever profession you choose and the most creative stories will be remembered forever even beyond your existence so please my dear friends as you go into your 10th grade 12th grade select the right things do the daydreaming read a lot play a lot imagine a lot and tell the most creative story that you can tell that you have got a life and you have to tell a story tell the most creative story that would be remembered even beyond your existence wishing you all the best thank you very much [Applause]