

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? - pk
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/66

======
mooders
To a large degree I believe they do. But I think this is mainly because they
are at the bottom of a very large heap.

At the top, is industry. They need a way to filter the 'hands dirty' workers
from the management, and the management from the Executive. So the 'old boys
clubs' traditionally get the Executive, the Universities churn out the
management and the high school system produces the blue collar workers.

So in order to meet this demand, the focus of schooling has to be those skills
which are most likely to be of use to industry - English, Maths, Science.
Followed by history, geography and foreign languages. Last, seen as necessary
for a 'rounded' individual are the arts - music, art, drama and dance in that
order (as Sir Ken points out).

Is this good, or right? Don't know. Is it likely to change? Probably not.
After all, are you going to be the parent to turn your child's back on the
traditional model of schooling to provide an alternative education, knowing
this will probably make them a 'better' (define that how you will) person but
possibly less employable as a result?

I know there is a lot of babble these days about the breakdown of the
workplace but even the most avant-garde employer would prefer their employees
to be literate, numerate and deeply knowledgeable in a given topic.

Sir Ken's central point, though, about educating the whole person is spot on.
I do believe greater emphasis ought to be given to the softer subjects, such
as the arts. However, there are only so many hours in the day and unless the
very large majority of parents start reclaiming ownership of their children's
education then little is likely to be demanded to change. By this I mean that
the parents are so busy themselves (working, may be single-parent) that they
have little time and energy to teach their 2 year old how to count and recite
the alphabet and so forth. So the job is delegated to the primary education
system who have to make room to bring the children to a standard of literacy
and numeracy where they can start the 'real' learning.

~~~
pk
I like your summary of the talk. One subtly to his position that made the talk
stand out for me was that he wasn't completely opposed to the top-down model
for determining the weight of subjects in schools based on industry demands.
Rather, his argument was that schools weren't keeping up with the needs of the
industry they educate their students for. He seemed to be making the case that
as an increasing number of the methodical aspects of industry become automated
as technology progresses, problems which require more creativity such as
determining "what" to make rather than "how" to make it become much more
important.

