The other day I came across a TED.com talk that I had listened to over the summer. It is a profound talk on the education system and creativity. If you have not heard it, definitely look up Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity. It has some powerful ideas on our education system. The first time I heard his talk this quote stood out and as I listened to the speech a second time, the same quote rang throughout my mind the rest of the day:

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."

Creativity is dying in our school systems because from the time we're born we are pushed to always be right. School systems are based around the principle of answering questions correctly.

What if school was based around answering the questions wrong? What if school was based around learning from failures and improving our ideas and answers? We are taught to memorize the "correct" answer and regurgitate the answer when asked. Creativity is dying because we need to instead learn how to be wrong. We need to instead learn how to correct. We need to instead learn how to do things differently.

Sir Ken Robinson defines creativity as, "original ideas that have value." A "correct" answer holds no value. An "incorrect" answer holds endless possibilities and value by providing the chance to learn and be a free-thinker.