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Sir Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms

Sir Ken Robinson · TED · 3 HN points · 3 HN comments
HN Theater has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention Sir Ken Robinson's video "Sir Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms".
TED Summary
In this talk from RSA Animate, Sir Ken Robinson lays out the link between 3 troubling trends: rising drop-out rates, schools' dwindling stake in the arts, and ADHD. An important, timely talk for parents and teachers.
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Note that I am a IS staff worker so my perspective is limited but I also have a recent grad from my school in my family with my oldest daughter.

So some of what I speak of is personal and up close.

I work at a liberal arts university and hear this from faculty: "We don't care about skills, we care about the ability to learn". The problem is that today's learners need to be super learners. They need the ability to do divergent thinking, then need to work collaboratively in teams. Working this way is a skill. They need to be able to solve a wide body of problems safely where failure does not impact grades.

https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_pa...

But they don't encourage this sort of learning. And don't even mention the "skill" word which is considered evil. I hear the 500 year old liberal arts model woks just fine.

While our business school quietly is working on these skills and the students are finding great jobs and starting businesses successfully and more all while the liberal arts side is ignoring the future.

ataturk
The biggest problem I see with higher education right now is that they aren't doing any of the above--they talk big about being open to all viewpoints and ideas. In reality, there is only one set of "acceptable" viewpoints, one set of ideas. It's an echo chamber lacking diversity of thought and lacking in self-reflection. Indoctrination is closer to what exists. While I have no hatred for Liberal Arts at all, it's a self-perpetuating system that is perplexing. For one simple example: I constantly run into marketing people who majored in English but who can't write!
As a relatively new parent, I'm wary about this "epidemic" of ADHD. Ken Robinson did a fascinating talk on this: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_par...
I remember poignantly an argument I had with my cousins about education. They themselves are teachers, two elementary and one specializes teaching kids with special needs. All of them are extremely dedicated and very passionate (to the point of tears) about learning and teaching. They love their jobs and the kids they work with.

The argument I had was that it wasn't teachers that were the problem. It was the institution of education that allows the problems we see. Unfortunately for my cousins and I that I was too inarticulate in showing them they weren't the problem.

Ken Robinson did my thoughts far more justice in his TED video about education paradigms [1]. To summarize, why do we educate our children along a yearly conveyor belt with compartmentalized subjects and standardized testing? The whole system mimics the factory assembly lines, complete with specializations and quality assurance.

We allow process to educate children instead of people. We can effectively replace any teacher with another and our expectations and the system itself doesn't change in any meaningful way. We squash the organic and relational learning with rote memorization and rigid structure. We don't foster curiosity or exploration. We value conformity to structure and authority. There isn't any opportunity for kids to "scratch their itch" unless it falls within the existing structure.

I do have hope for the future. Places like Khan and Wikipedia allow for the curious exploration of subjects, and the Internet allows for participation and dialog that weren't available a few decades ago. I believe we are waking up to a different paradigm of learning that has the ability to transform education from it's Industrial Revolution roots. I also believe this will give passionate teachers, like my cousins, the freedom from the rigid structure that allows them to foster the natural interests of their pupils.

If we allow this form of organic learning, then Standardization is effectively impossible. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. This gives more flexibility to tailor the education to the kids' interests. However this means we will have to accept that some people will want to grow their kids in ways that are hard to swallow. Creationism comes to mind. I don't have a good idea how to counter this.

[1]: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_par...

Dec 20, 2010 · 3 points, 0 comments · submitted by nikhilpandit
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