Sir Ken Robinson review blog

Sir Ken Robinson starts off by talking about how important creativity is, and how much of any appreciation he has in education.  The reason in which he thinks education is so important is because it is education that is meant to take us into the future that we cannot grasp.  Even though he views education as extremely important, he also thinks that schools are killing creativity.  Kids have such brilliant minds, and are capable of so many things, however, he thinks that schools are not doing enough to help in ways that they should be.

I agree with Robinson when he says that creativity is as important in education as literacy is.  A great point that he makes is that if we are not prepared to be wrong, we will never be creative.  What this means is that if we only follow what we know to be true, then how are we going to ever be creative?  Every child is born creative, however we are educated out of it.  This is because we grow up in a society where the worst thing you can do is make a mistake.  With everyone being frightened of making a mistake, everyone will only be following what they know to be true, thus, no one will be creative by the time that they are an adult.

The kids that grow up thinking that they are bad at school, are just bad at the things that are so profoundly professed and may actually be good that the things that are over looked and that are just as important.  And Robinson thinks that we cannot afford to go on that way.

We need to radically re-think our view of intelligence.  We know three things about intelligence, and they are: intelligence is diverse, intelligence is dynamic, and intelligence is distinct.  Just because someone isn't great at a particular part of learning doesn't mean that they cant be good at another.  A perfect example that he gives is of the girl who was thought to have a learning disorder, because she couldn't sit still in class.  The teacher even talked to her parents saying that she needs to see a specialist.  So her parents took her to see a specialist and they observed her.  What the specialist said was that there was nothing wrong with her, just that she was a dancer.  People now are so easy to say someone has a learning disorder, instead of looking for what they are really good at within another type of learning.

Overall i agree with Robinson that learning is very important, however, a different type of learning may need to be observed.  Not just the mathematics and sciences and things of that nature, but also the arts because they are just as important.  The only way in which we can change our future is to change the ecology of human nature, and to re-think the way we are fundamentally educating our kids.