Reflection on Changing the Education Paradigm

Reflections on Changing the Education Paradigm

Changing the Education Paradigm
Sir Ken Robinson claims that current education systems are, “alienating kids from school (through) marginalization of self in order to reach new goals.” I suppose this is a fair statement, likely the reason people are pushing for individualized education. The next powerful statement he makes talks about the differences between beliefs and realities in current generations; “If you work hard and did well and got a college degree you would get a job.” He goes on to describe the current economic status and how kids today aren’t guaranteed a job right after college.

 I liked the concept Robinson brought up, the Intellectual model of the mind (an enlightenment view of the mind). Essentially this was a black and white view of intelligence and skill (the academic and the nonacademic person. I believe it could apply to the plasticity that Carr discussed in his book. Perhaps now that we know the mind is not set then we should not try to set the qualities it present either ergo the institutions we have created that are founded on this idea (such as the education system, much of psychology, and government/ politics).

Plague of ADHD

Robinson talks about the interesting new cultural phenomenon perhaps a physical manifestation of our intellectual “now” era, the medication of children (putting kids on medication) when they show too much attention to stimuli outside the chosen stimulus.  Robinson also points out the trend of ADHA rising with the rate of standardized testing. Hmm, I wonder if we should draw that these two are connected or there is some other variable that we are not really seeing.

“The Art especially address the idea of aesthetic experience… not anesthetic or deadening yourself” becoming aware and alive in the present moment

The image of schools being like factory lines (age group= batches, running by bells, separate facilities= different subjects) creating a standard member of society, was shared. This was slightly reminiscent of a speech given to me by an Honors Director (Phame) along with the song “Hey, Teacher leave them kids alone” by Pink Floyd. Very dark views of education aren’t they?

Robinson also talked about how divergent thinking was not creative thinking. Creative thinking was the process of having original ideas that have value (an example was how many uses can you come up with for a paperclip). Score above a certain level means you are a genius at divergent thinking (kindergarten children actually had decreased scores as they went through the education system). Divergent thinking was necessary for creative thinking and creative thinking was necessary for progression in society, according to Robinson.

*Note decreasing in test score is not inherently bad is it? Just like pink is not inherently a girls color?

Robinson then introduced the concept of collaboration vs cheating and other ideas in the gene pool of education. He really raises questions about why we have the system we do. Also I like how he throws around the idea of an education gene pool. Most great ideas happen in groups, the human is a naturally social animal and we’re trying to train people to function in another type of environment Robinson claims.

In another TED talk Sir Ken Robinson talked about how creativity should be treated with the same respect that literacy is treated with. He tells the anecdotal story about a little girl who hardly ever pays attention but did one day during a drawing lesson. Curious the teacher went over and asked what the little girl was drawing. She replied that she was drawing God. The teacher said that nobody knew what God looked like… the little girl responded with “they will in a minute.” He then went on to tell a story about his son and a nativity performance. The moral of both stories was that the children were willing to take a chance, they didn’t see that they would be wrong only that at that point they were trying.

The line Ken Robinson uses over and over in his different speeches is, “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.” Truth.

Robinson claims that no education system on the planet teaches art and dance like they do mathematics and science. “We start to educate people from the waste up and then to their heads, and then to one side.” Why? Does the education system produce ultimately professors and are professors “disembodied” as Robinson claims? Why is this a bad thing? OK disembodied sounds scary but if that’s what happens for people to get the results they desire and people chose it is it bad?

Academic ability, all education systems came into being to meet the needs of industrialization. Academic ability has come to dominate our concept of intelligence. Consequently “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. And I think we can’t afford to go on that way.” The video presented that creativity comes from the interaction between subjects. Thus in trying to create a system where people are judge alone, you are taking them out of their natural environment.

Thoughts for Thought…

The concept that ADHD hadn’t been invented “back then”… so what did people do about it (it surely must have existed)

-Are we medicating things that we don’t understand just to cover them up, slip them under the rug in the hope somebody else will fix it? (In this I’m not questioning the morality of the drug creators but rather the physicians and parents who allow it… so many things in our world could be handle simply by altering the way we react to them, and the way we treat people)

-How can we alter our education system to allow for people to become who they are supposed to be? And what implications does this have for our society? (Firstly how do we know what people are supposed to be? In Anthropology the post-modernist thought is we can never have a truth because of our personal bias, so is it “fair” to say that we could never know the true person because part of the true person is that they are changed by those around them.

Robinson leaves us with the mission: Educate [childrens] whole being, to prepare them for the future.

3 myths of creativity:

·         only certain people are creative

·         you can only be creative about certain things

·         if you’re not there’s nothing you can do about it