Ken Robinson

There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why?

Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.

When my son, James, was doing homework for school, he would have five or six windows open on his computer, Instant Messenger was flashing continuously, his cell phone was constantly ringing, and he was downloading music and watching the TV over his shoulder. I don’t know if he was doing any homework, but he was running an empire as far as I could see, so I didn’t really care.

Creativity is the greatest gift of human intelligence.

Teaching for creativity aims to encourage self-confidence, independence of mind, and the capacity to think for oneself.

Helping people to connect with their personal creative capacities is the surest way to release the best they have to offer.

Creativity involves putting your imagination to work. In a sense, creativity is applied imagination.

Human intelligence is richer and more dynamic than we have been led to believe by formal academic education.

It is difficult to feel accomplished when you're not accomplishing something that matters to you. Doing something 'for your own good' is rarely for your own good if it causes you to be less than who you really are.

We live in worlds that we have forged and composed. It's much more true than any of the species that you see. I mean, it seems to me that one of the most distinctive features of human intelligence is the capacity to imagine, to project out of our own immediate circumstances and to bring to mind things that aren't present here and now.

The real role of leadership in education ... is not and should not be command and control. The real role of leadership is climate control, creating a climate of possibility.

There is no system in the world or any school in the country that is better than its teachers. Teachers are the lifeblood of the success of schools.

The arts especially address the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak; when you’re present in the current moment; when you’re resonating with the excitement of this thing that you’re experiencing; when you are fully alive.

Governments decide they know best and they're going to tell you what to do. The trouble is that education doesn't go on in the committee rooms of our legislative buildings. It happens in classrooms and schools, and the people who do it are the teachers and the students. And if you remove their discretion, it stops working.

To realize our true creative potential - in our organizations, in our schools and in our communities - we need to think differently about ourselves and towards each other. We must learn to be creative.

We need to eliminate the existing hierarchy of subjects. Elevating some disciplines over others only reinforces outmoded assumptions of industrialism and offends the principle of diversity. The arts, sciences, humanities, physical education, languages and maths all have equal and central contributions to make to a student's education.

We think about the world in all ways we experience it ; we think visually, we think in sign, we think kinesthetically, we think in abstract term, we think in movement. Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.

Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture.

The arts, sciences, humanities, physical education, languages and maths all have equal and central contributions to make to a student's education.

Education doesn't need to be reformed- it needs to be transformed.

All children start their school careers with sparkling imaginations, fertile minds, and a willingness to take risks with what they think.