'Creativity is just as important as literacy and numeracy'
Tell that to the Ministry of Education and the Government.
Share with other creative schools or teachers and Board of Trustee members
First TED talk - over 9 million downloads
Second TED Talk
Talk with graphics - excellent
The Government is right in believing schools should do a lot better. No
student should leave school feeling a failure. The trouble is their approach is
wrong, and ironically, with its desire for all students to be assessed against
National Standards, is creating ‘winners and losers’ environment and in the
process narrowing the curriculum and encourages teaching to the tests.
Sir Ken Robinson call this standardisation a fast food approach;
an approach that has its genesis in the
past industrial age.
As thoughts are returning to beginning a new term it is
worthwhile taking the time to listen to the wise, and often entertaining, ideas
of Sir Ken. It would also be a good idea
to pass the links on to other teachers to Board of Trustee members.
Sir Ken, in his second TED Talk,
says we are facing crisis as worrying as the climate change crisis – the crisis
of not realising the talents of all students. Developing the unique talents of
all students is an urgent challenge.
Most teachers are aware of Sir
Ken’s comment that ‘creativity is as important as literacy and numeracy’.
Creativity is all about developing people who love what they do –students who
have not lost through formal school their innate desire to learn.
The problem, according to Sir
Ken, is that education disconnects students from their talents and , worse still, assesses students only in
literacy and numeracy – made even more destructive by the publishing of league
tables.
What is required, Sir Ken believes, is not evolution but a real educational revolution –‘we need to transform current education into something else.’We need ‘educational transformation’.
To do this we need to challenge
things we take for granted- things people think can’t be done in any other way.
For me the blind spot in education is the clinging on to the idea of ability
grouping, sorting, setting and streaming
issues tackled by the book ‘Learning Without Limits'. Literacy and
numeracy targets and league tables will result in the problem of either poor
or inflated self-images.
Sir Ken quotes Abraham Lincoln (1862)
who said, ‘the dogmas of the past are inadequate to the stormy present… we must
rise to the occasion. As our case in new we must think anew and act anew, we
must disenthrall ourselves of ideas we take for granted. The way things are.
Ideas that may have suited a previous century ‘but our minds are still
hypnotised by them and we have to disenthrall ourselves of some of them.’
‘The trouble is, Sir Ken
continues, ‘it is difficult to know what you take for granted because we take
them for granted’. This applies to my thoughts about the use of ability
grouping that determines forever how students see themselves.
Sir Ken believes we are
enthralled by (take for granted) linearity – that learning must go through
predetermined tracks (think National Standards). Education, he believes, ought
to be seen as more organic- rather like visiting an exhibition at an art
gallery than learning from a book from start to finish.
Sir Ken says, ‘we create our
lives symbiotically as we explore our circumstances through our talents’. We
need, he says, to reconstitute ability through our diverse talents
The other big issues we fail to
appreciate is conformity (once again think of National Standards). School
system he says are being increasingly designed as fast food organisations for
the mind. Everything is increasingly being standardised, predictable,
fragmented.
I would add secondary school
have long feature linearity of learning and conformity of students. Now it is being
pushed on primary schools.
What we need instead, says Sir
Ken,’ is for schools to customise Learning to the individual circumstances of
individual students. We have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education
and it is impoverishing our spiritual capacity just as fast food depletes our
physical bodes.’
‘School have to recognise human
identity is extremely diverse – children have a range of potential aptitudes’
to identify and amplify. ‘All learning is about passion - what excites our
energy- about doing something you love – that you are good at.’
The reason why so many students
opt out of education is because education doesn’t feed their spirit – it
doesn’t feed the energy of their passion’. The current focus on numeracy and
literacy, no matter how well intentioned, will not solve school failure.
Sir Ken believes we have to
change our metaphors. We have to go from an industrial model to an agricultural
one. From a manufacturing model based on linearity, conformity and ‘batching’
people (one again with ability grouping) to a model based on agriculture.
‘We have to recognise’, Sir Ken
continues,’ that humans flourish not in a mechanistic process but rather in an
organic one. It is impossible to predict the outcomes of human development – all
we can do, as with a framer, is to create the conditions under which all students
will flourish’.
‘Education can never be about
cloning’ ( by I would add through imposed
best practices, targets and National Standards) ‘it is about customisation and
about personalisation; education to suit the circumstances of your students’.
‘This is the answer to the
future. We need to develop a new system with appropriate support’ ( in New
Zealand the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum’) ‘to help all schools develop
appropriate systems based on a personalised curriculum taking advantage of thecreativity of teachers’.
We have an opportunity to
revolutionize education but to achieve this we will have to change from an
industrial model ( I would add also add to escape from the current corporateefficiency model) to an agricultural model where each school can flourish.
Sir Ken concluded his talk with
a quote from a W B Yeats poem about a lover only able to offer not great
cloaks but only ‘my dreams .I have spread my dreams at your feet. Tread
softly because you tread on my dreams.’
‘Every day in every way our
students spread their dreams at our feet and we too should tread softly’.
