I had a great lunch conversation with a friend and colleague on how schools kill creativity. A little bit of Google search points to several articles where people  have spoken about this topic. I found two interesting links on this subject.

A TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson where he makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. The Paradox of Creativity in Education says in an era of accountability and measurement, it’s more difficult to imagine advocating subjects that can’t be easily measured. And creativity is difficult to measure.

Mass Production Approach

If you have watched your younger ones grow, you will notice it is around grade 3 or so when they start to lose creativity because of “mass production” effect. Current education system makes you do what you are told, over and over, and over again. This mass production approach allows to serve education to large homogeneous market with consistent quality and standardization. It is also an efficient approach.

Building a case for Mass Customization

Henry Ford famously said for his cars – “You can have any colour as long as it is black“. However, the need for today is one that serves specific needs of students. My daughter’s needs are different from other 30 students in her class. The question is how do we move to an approach that is based on customization — where customers can tailor a product’s appearance, features or content to their own specifications?

The paradigm shift to mass customization is mainly driven by three forces:

1) Market demand – There is an ever growing frustration with the current education setup from both parents and educators. Many industry expert believes in the disruption of business models established in the 20th century impacting education.

2) Market competition – I have not done extensive research about the competitive landscape but from what I know education is extremely fragmented with many players in a huge market. A different model may allow an existing player or a new entrant to dominate the market.

3) Technological revolutions – This is an area with most potential but perhaps undeserved. There are companies like mytwinn.com making customized dolls or tastebook.com providing customized recipes and differentiating themselves. And technology can play a big role bringing customization with new innovations. There are opportunities to co-innovate, co-configure and co-produce with the customers, namely parents and educators. And in some cases with the students themselves.

This is what will bring an era of Education 2.0 – private & personal classes for students that are delivered at a massive scale of efficiency. And may we remember famous song Another Brick in the Wall from Pink Floyd just for the music!