Sir Ken Robinson

Oct 14^th 2010

In EdPsych earlier today, the class watched a video of Sir Ken Robinson speaking on ted.com. Sir Ken Robinson is a highly respected scholar in the field of education, specializing in the arts and creativity in education. In the video we watched in class, Robinson’s main focus is encouraging creativity in education and he had a few points on general education as well. I’d like to discuss a few thoughts he had that I believe are very relevant in today’s schools and will be in the future as well.

The first point I’d like to discuss is when Robinson said that no one has a clue about the future, yet we educate children for the future. I found this point very interesting because it is so true! No one every thinks about the fact that the things we are teaching children may not be relevant at all by the time they get out of school. Especially the things we are teaching them in the early elementary years; these students will be in school for another ten to fifteen years! I realize that most of the things we are teaching children in early elementary are fundamental building blocks that will be relevant no matter what in the coming years, but then again, no one can know for sure what the future will bring. So how can we properly educate these children if we don’t know what they will need to know when they are adults? I thought that this was a very interesting point to ponder; something I’ve never considered before.

Sir Ken Robinson holds creativity and the arts at a very high position, he makes the point several times throughout his speech that the creativity is as important as literacy, and that the hierarchy of subjects puts the arts at the bottom. He says that we should treat creativity with the same status as literacy, which strangely, I don’t quite agree with. I mean, I do agree with that idea to a certain extent but I don’t think that we should quite equate it with literacy. People need to be able to read, write and speak for virtually every single occupation. Creativity, while important, is not a necessary skill for most jobs. If someone can’t read or write, they can communicate at the most basic level and nothing more. Now don’t get me wrong, I do think that creativity is immensely important, but I don’t think that it is as important as literacy.

The idea of children being more creative than adults is brought up as well; which I think is one of the more important arguments he makes. He says that kids will take chances, and that they’re not afraid to be wrong. In comparison, adults have had years upon years of being told that they’re doing something wrong just because they’re trying something new; therefore, this mentality of trying new things and taking chances is essentially bred out of them. Robinson says that we should retrain ourselves to try new things! He says that if we’re not prepared to be wrong, we will never come up with anything original. I thought that this was a very intriguing way to put this! Just think about it, it’s so true! If you’re going to be cautious and never try anything new, and you’re afraid of being wrong, nothing will ever be created from your mind that hasn’t been thought of before. Try to be wrong! This is how we come up with new ideas! If every innovator in history had been afraid of making mistakes, our world would be really boring!

In summary, I think that Sir Ken Robinson had a lot of great points, he’s a very intelligent man, and his speech was actually really funny too!