Schools and Creativity: Sir Ken Robinson

WE NEED A SENSE OF BALANCE

Why is creativity taken out of productivity? Why is innovation taken out of teaching? Why are schools not helping students to make meaning of their skills? If public education is to provide only the 3 Rs - to enable a functioning society - is education providing a hand-break on society?


'Education systems too narrow': Sir Ken Robinson:
ABC 7:30 report video interview

Dot Points
Sir Ken Robinson:

* a number of famous people whose traditional education failed to help them identify their real talents before they went on to brilliant careers.

* our education systems at the moment are still very focused on a certain type of ability, and the result is very many brilliant people are marginalised by the whole process

*a talented and a passion - well that's to say you never work again. And it is true, I think, that our current education systems are simply not designed to help people do that. In fact an awful lot of people go through education and never discover anything they're good at at all.

* some people get through the whole of their education and don't discover themselves at all

* most education systems have this hierarchy - you know, maths and science at the top and languages. And they're very important. And then, the humanities and the arts somewhere near the bottom.

* some of our greatest scientists have been inspired by the arts and some of our best artists work on deeply scientific principles.

* We need to get back to what it is that drives people to learn and achieve in the first place, and that's what we've lost.

* I think the problem often is that politicians think it's like bailing out the auto industry. It's like refining a manufacturing process. And it's not; it's about cultivating individual passions and talents.

* You can't achieve educational improvement for everybody with a standard template.

* in other words, computers effectively will start to think for themselves at some point.

* I always think this: are kids who start school this year in Australia in primary school will be retiring round about 2070. You know, nobody has a clue what the world will look like this time next year, let alone 2070.

* I'm concerned that they get an education which is tailored to these circumstances rather than the ones that obtained 150 years ago.

WE NEED A SENSE OF BALANCE