What can we learn from Sir Ken Robinson?
Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms by: Jasmine McCall
Sir Ken Robinson states that every country is reforming public education for two reasons:
- Economic - How do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century, when we don’t know what the economy will look like at the end of the next week.
- Cultural - How do we educate our children so they have a sense of cultural identity, so we can pass on the cultural genes of our communities, while being a part of Globalisation.
Our problem is that we are trying to reach today’s students with what they used in the past, and this approach alienates those students who believe that their is no reason for going to school. Our current system of education was developed for a different age. When we were in school, we were kept there with a story; If you were a hard worker and went to college, you would be a more successful person. 21st century students are not buying into this, because the truth is our economy is unstable, college degrees no longer guarantee jobs.
Sir Robinson also states that we are getting children through education by anaesthetising them. This has happened because many children have been classified as having ADHD, which has led to them being medicated to control their behavior while they are in school. I personally don’t see the point in medicating our children, if they are not sleeping all day, they are basically like zombies. When our children are sleeping during class or walking around like drones, how is the medication beneficial to their learning? It’s not. Rather than putting our students to sleep and killing their natural creativity and curiosity, we should be “waking them up to what is inside themselves.”
Our schools are organized like factories and we educate children in batches, robbing them of their creativity and disabling them from being Divergent Thinkers. Children are born divergent thinkers, they are curious, they are always asking questions and then want to know why that’s the answer. They don’t believe everything they are told and question why they should. As children go through school their capacity to think divergent steadily decreases, because they are continuously taught to think convergent, to believe that their is only one answer and to not question that answer.
What can we learn from Mr. Robinson?
That in order to even attempt to fix this problem we must change the way we approach teaching. We have to wake up ourselves and realize that the methods used in the past belong in the past. As teachers, it is our job to inspire our students to be learners and thinkers. We should enable our students to be divergent thinkers and let them know their are many ways to interpret questions, which can have multiple answers. Rather than stifling our students creativity we should encourage them to explore their creativity and share it with others. Mr. Robinson states that we should realize that the greatest learning happens in groups. When students work together they may be more inclined to share their thoughts and opinions with their peers.
What can we learn from Sir Ken Robinson? by: Edna Montgomery
The first thing I would love to grab from Sir Ken Robinson’s speeches, is his statement of being afraid of making mistakes. This has been a great problem for me. He points out that children are not afraid of mistakes and how this is part of their being. Our education system erases that born ability, he states, which is the reason so many of us are not at our height in life. This has been a blessing for me to hear this dynamic speaker; his speeches have released some of the chains from my thinking.
Also, Sir Ken Robinson has given us the vision we need in helping reform education. All schools need to send a representative to Finland, to take notes, for keeping our students interested in school. Schools, modeling people for the job market, is something I did not think about. The amount of useless degrees in our society is enough evidence to change this practice. The job market and economy are not in step with this practice anymore.
It is time to approach our students with different methods of learning. Sir Ken Robinson has shown us the directions to start.
Jasmine, I enjoyed reading your blog and thought it was well written. However, your sentence, “I personally don’t see the point in medicating our children, if they are not sleeping all day, they are basically like zombies,” is a bit confusing. I am not sure what you mean by this statement, but I assume, you are against medicating school-age kids. However, I believe every child has different issues and some of those issues may actually require medication to both succeed in the classroom and in life. I am sure that we, as a culture, do over medicate many individuals. However, we need to realize these medications have helped many students achieve their goals and be sensitive to the families who have chosen these medications as a means for their child to succeed. Parents need our assistance not our judgment. Nice summary and good luck with the remaining lessons.
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