Abu Dhabi Crown Prince's Majlis hosts lecture on creative schools

A global expert on education and creativity said on Wednesday that the opening of Louvre Abu Dhabi this month brings cultural vitality to the emirate and helps to advance the UAE’s drive to build a robust educational system.

Abu Dhabi is "about to open the Louvre, it’s a fantastic initiative that adds cultural vitality to this city," Sir Ken Robinson, Professor Emeritus at Warwick, said in a lecture hosted by the Majlis of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. "If you want to have a vibrant place, you need cultural activities, you need more than scientists."

The lecture was attended by H.H. Sheikh Nahyan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan Charitable and Humanitarian Foundation,as well as a number of senior government officials and diplomats. Also in attendance were education professionals from different UAE universities and schools.

In the lecture entitled "Creative Schools: Revolutionizing Education from the Ground Up", Sir Robinson emphasized on the need to create an education system that celebrates diversity over conformity and collaboration over competition; an education system that fosters creativity and caters to the individual needs and talents of students.

Sir Robinson, who had led a national commission on creativity, education and the economy for the British government and wrote and number of books on the subject, said it was the innate human passion for learning and inclination towards creativeimagination that transformed, over the course of a few decades,a city like Abu Dhabi from a small community into the global metropolis that it is today.

He argued that a problem schools from around the world are facing today was that their curriculums are designed in a standardized manner in a similar way that factories have beenset up since the Industrial Revolution – that is, schools are focusing on delivering a certain set of facts and values to a mass body of students irrespective of their individual needs. This, he said, made little room for creativity and imagination.

He said, in support of his view, that Albert Einstein, the 20thcentury’s most celebrated scientist, had extensively relied on, and praised, imagination and attributed some of his scientific abilities to his musical training. "Creativity is for the whole curriculum, including science," he said, adding that: "We have to personalize education."

Sir Robinson said it was imperative for governments to focus on training high-quality teachers. "The wise thing always is to invest in the quality of teachers," he said. He also stressed on the need to improve dialogue between school managements and parents in order to improve children’s experience at schools. "There has to be a better dialogue between schools and parents," he said. "The better the relationship between parents and schools, the better the outcome."

The author of the New York Times best seller "The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything", said that there were two challenges that faced the education system globally, the unpresented advances in technology, including artificial intelligence, and the population growth. He said the answer to both problems lies in the effective use of creativity and imagination