Ken Robinson on the Real, Literal, Non-Figurative Revolution

Posted on | June 2, 2008 | 2 Comments

If you have not seen it yet, follow the links from Jenny Luca or Jim Henderson to view Sir Ken’s talk in San Francisco to a bunch of school superintendents from around the world. He talks about the real revolution, global in character, not a figurative revolution in any way, and one that we, as educators, cannot choose to sidestep.

Interestingly, and absolutely correctly, he also acknowledges the criticality of education to the economy of any country but, at the same time, demolishes the notion of a hierarchy of subject disciplines, in which mathematics, language and science are deemed to be at the top of the tree because of their supposed central importance to the economy.

As Jim writes:

“The gist of his argument is that what children have in common is that they will take a chance. They”re not frightened of being wrong. This does not mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. But if you”re not prepared to be wrong, you”ll never come up with anything original. By the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. He argues that businesses and companies are run like this. We stigmatize mistakes. And now we”re 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.”

Technorati Tags: education, creativity, imagination, revolution

Category: business, children, creativity, education

Comments

2 Responses to “Ken Robinson on the Real, Literal, Non-Figurative Revolution”

Joe Wilson
June 2nd, 2008 @ 9:35 pm

I am just going to agree.
I watched Anniesland College students dancing at the Tramway on Friday night – the end of year show.
Absolutely – brilliant – courageous – creative – fun and utterly professional and in the middle a video interlude with HND students explaining where their careers were taking them too next.

If their hearts weren’t set on dancing I’d have hired them all in a minute for their enthusiasm and positive outlook with a little lateral thought it was easy to see they would add value to many organisations.

But while Ken catches headlines – dance was hook – those HN students need literacy and numeracy to work out their routines
Jenny Luca
June 2nd, 2008 @ 10:56 pm

If there’s anyone that can move you to think differently about education it’s Ken Robinson. He speaks from a common sense perspective. Why is it that school’s don’t operate from the same perspective?? Is it just too hard to change a model that is firmly entrenched?