Rethinking Education

Ken Robinson, author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative and a powerful speaker, has some provocative thoughts on the systemic troubles in education. Here are a few excerpts from his recent talk at the TED conference.

--  "All kids have tremendous talents, and we squander them pretty ruthlessly."

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

--  "Kids will take a chance...By the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. [We stigmatize mistakes.] We're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. The result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso once said that all people are born artists, and the probems is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or rather we get educated out of it."

--  "Our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. The whole system was invented around the world to meet the needs of industrialism...So you were steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Isn't that right? Don't do music, you're not going to be a musician. Don't do art, you're not going to be an artist. Benign advice -- now profoundly mistaken."

--  "Academic ability [has] come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of the public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued or was actually stigmatized. We can't afford to go on that way."

--  "We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence...Intelligence is diverse. We think about the world in all the ways we experience it. We think visually, we think in sound, we think aesthetically, we think in abstract terms, we think in movement."

[Thanks to my great voice coach Jocelyn Rasmussen for alerting me to Robinson's work.]

Comments

[erikdaquino]

I think one of the gravest mistakes is how educators do not realize how fragile "academically talented" students are. Nancy Robinson wrote an article focusing on how people often incorrectly believe that a student with strong grades will be "successful" once they reach college. Often times, when these students do not succeed, it can be traced, in part, to the educators and how they inadequately prepared the students for the next step in their education.

Our education system, in my opinion, is partly based on a principle of pigeon-holing students into roles because of what they have preformed well at. If a student is good at chemistry, educators could insist that he should become a chemical engineer. If that same student has an interest in music or English, he may be brow beaten. I believe that the college or university experience can help to inspire that creativity. I have met scores of students that once they arrive for college they drop that "pre-med" track because that was what their parents wanted. While I applaud that, I think it is sad that so much societal pressure is forcing students to put themselves in careers. Most people do not know what they are doing 6 months from now, let alone 25 years down the road, why should we expect 17 or 18 year olds to have that answer. Let their creativity flourish.

Here is the URL for the Robinson Article: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0161-956X%281997%2972%3A3%2F4%3C217%3ATROUAC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

[Chris Yeh]

The unschooling movement, led by the Sudbury Valley School, has done amazing things by letting kids educate themselves.

The school that teaches least, teaches best.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School

[Cassie Weisinger]

I agree with Ken Robinson, teachers are always telling students don't be wrong and that you have to know the facts. Creativity is so important to keep with you as you get older, for one it can help teachers to create lesson plans that interest students for those who go out into the teaching field. Creativity can help in so many professions and add personality. It is important to let students express their creativity and use it to their advantage, so it should not be taken and pushed out of schools. Children need to explore their creative sides.

[pauldwaite]

I'm sure you've seen this already, but just in case:

http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/index1.html

[pauldwaite]

I think schools in the west are far too focused on academic skills, and suggest that if you don't have high academic skills, you're less accomplished.

[Jed Christiansen]

Thank you for posting about this.

His TED talks video is absolutely fascinating. Watching it was an invigorating slap upside the head, realising that our educational system is really focused on such a small part of a holistic person: their academic ability. I still watch it every couple of months for inspiration.

It takes a tremendous speaker to work "naked" (aka, without slides) and get such a powerful message across so successfully. Again, thanks for publicizing this further!