Ken Robinson:
Every country on earth at the moment is
reforming public education. There are two
reasons for this. The first of them is economic.
People are trying to work out how do we
educate our children to take their place in the
economies of the 21st century. How do we
do that given that we can't anticipate what
the economy will look like at the end of next
week, as the recent turmoil is demonstrated.
How do we do that?
The second is cultural. Every country on earth
is trying to figure out how do we educate
our children so they have a sense of cultural
identity so that we can pass on the cultural
genes of our communities while being part
of the process of globalisation? How do we
square that circle?
The problem is they're trying to meet the
future by doing what they did in the past.
And on the way they're alienating millions
of kids who don't see any purpose in going to
school. When we went to school we were kept
there with a story which is if you work hard
and did well and got a college degree you
would have a job. Our kids don't believe that.
And they're right not to, by the way. You're
better having a degree than not but it's not
a guarantee anymore. And particularly not if
the route to it marginalises most of the things
that you think are important about yourself.
So people say we have to raise standards
if this is a breakthrough, you know, really,
yes we should; why would you lower them?
I haven't come across an argument that
persuades me of lowering them.
But raising them of course we should raise
them. The problem is that the current
system of education was designed and
conceived and structured for a different age.
It was conceived in the intellectual, culture
of the enlightenment; and in the economic
circumstances of the industrial revolution.
Before the middle of the 19th century there were
no systems of public education, not really.
I mean you could get educated by Jesuits
if you had the money.
But public education paid for from taxation,
compulsory to everybody and free at the
point of delivery — that was a revolutionary
idea. And many people objected to it — they
said it's not possible for many street kids and
working class children to benefit from public
education, they're incapable of learning to
read and write and why are we spending time
on this? So there's also built into it a whole
series of assumptions about social structure
and capacity.
It was driven by an economic imperative of
the time but running right through it was
an intellectual model of the mind, which
was essentially the enlightenment view of
intelligence; that real intelligence consists in
this capacity for a certain type of deductive
reasoning and a knowledge of the classics
originally, what we come to think of as
academic ability.
And this is deep in the gene pool of public
education; there are only two types of people
- academic and non-academic; smart people
and non smart people. And the consequence
of that is that many brilliant people think
they're not because they've been judged
against this particular view of the mind.
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