December 5, 2007
Public education: engine or footwear?
Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk “Do schools kill creativity” has been instrumental in the formation of my opinions on this subject, so I though I’d ought to include it. Here it is, reposted using my handy dandy Firefox addon:
Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.ted.com posted with vodpod
That was a worthwhile nineteen minutes and twenty – nine seconds, wasn’t it?
Note: If the embedded video isn’t working, go to: TED | Talks | Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?.
Most people reading this are products of education systems much like the ones described in the video (if you aren’t, please leave a comment describing your education – I’m sure it should be interesting to compare it to the standard), and should be somewhat familiar with their basic workings. The American and Canadian education systems are very much like what he describes: factories designed to produce university professors. This would be a good thing if only everyone ended up as a professor.
The problem is that very few people have the desire or capacity to become one. Despite this, most people have the impression (rightly so) that they absolutely must go on to university in order to be successful in life. It is true that a mere High School diploma is not worth much to a potential employer, and university attendance rates reflect this.
Humanities courses are becoming increasingly popular among students who simply need to have a degree in something . What I wonder is this: what good is a degree in “Political Science” if the holder ends up flipping burgers at McDonalds?
Different school systems have different different goals worded in different ways, but whether your stated goal is to “provide students with sufficient education to maintain an income of median value”, or “inform students of the nature of the Supreme Leader, Allah, and the wonderful Koran”, graduates should be able to live with a reasonable level of happiness (or simply survive at the very least), and be contributing members of society.
What is a contribution? If we use the simple definition “to add to something”, it is clear that anything which can be added to society – art, maths, science, music, or drama (Hollywood not included out of spite). As with investment, education needs diversity. No, I don’t mean allowing seven year old girls to wear veils. That’s fucking stupid. What I do mean is that graduating students should have the greatest possible ability to succeed and contribute (this is the goal of education, after all).
Students with natural talents in certain areas will tend to do better than others without talents in those areas, assuming a “peak” is not reached at which point improvement is impossible. Nurturing these talents should help a student go farther than they would if shunted toward other fields. A person who loved math as a child is just as able to grow up to be a brilliant mathematician as a person who loved art is to grow up to be a brilliant artist.
If natural talents and student interests are taken into account, I believe the education systems would be greatly improved. A system which allows students to choose “majors” at a much younger age (high school level) might lead to increased student success, and may prevent some of the failures associated with the standard “student learns all things equally” approach. People usually need some sort of motivation to learn, but hopefully students would be able to motivate themselves.
Whatever the answer is, it isn’t rote memorization, and it isn’t cramming.
Bunnymuffins.
Thrawn 