Ken Robinson, "Schools Kill Creativity."

It's a really old video, but watching it again I still think it's a worthwhile video. Education, in a sense, ought to take on the function of 'new production' rather than 'reproduction,' yet most education systems stop at reproduction. This may be something unavoidable. The uniform, state-centered education system began in France and is adopted by most countries. In medieval European society, the small communities that served the 'school' function—like monastery-affiliated schools or law schools—were quite different from today's schools; whereas today's schools are mostly 'study'-centered, back then it could be said to extend across all of life. Passing on very diverse 'skills' and 'knowledge,' even agricultural and livestock techniques, was the role of the facilities bearing the name 'school' in medieval Europe. In East Asia, however, the 'school' generally functioned as a place for acquiring learning. That learning could be called 'political thought' such as Confucianism and the ethics of daily life—a somewhat different aspect from Europe.

It's already been 7 years since this video came out, and if there's been a change in school education in the meantime, it's that creativity education has come to be valued a little more than before. But still, as the speaker says, I often think that every education system is, in the end, for the sake of college entrance exams. Now as in the past, nowhere in the world has there been an education system, since modern education systems were established, that did not think about college entrance exams. Of course, one could cite the cases of Germany or Northern European countries, where vocational education is well developed, and call them 'exceptional,' but in their education systems too there is bound to exist a part for college entrance exams.

As a student attending a school related to education, agonizing over the 'education system' is, I think, only natural. One regrettable thing is that 'students' are treated as if they were test subjects for professors' research. It's a shame. The world needs to carry out 'education worthy of the name'...