Sir Ken Robinson: "Bring on the learning revolution!" @ TED2010

Four or five years ago, English author, speaker and international advisor on education Sir Ken Robinson (@SirKenRobinson) delivered a TED Talk in which he criticized the linear, factory model of education.  In such a system, Robinson explained, educators/​schools employ static curricula to lead students to a pre-determined "output" or skills base.  He went onto to assert that the world needs a supportive, agricultural framework of education that supports children as they organically formulate answers to their own questions using a personalized curriculum.

We have moved closer to Robinson's conception over the past five years.  BUT...have we enacted the revolution that he demands?

But, you see, there are things we're enthralled to in education. Let me give you a couple of examples. One of them is the idea of linearity: that it starts here and you go through a track and if you do everything right, you will end up set for the rest of your life. Everybody who's spoken at TED has told us implicitly, or sometimes explicitly, a different story: that life is not linear; it's organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they help to create for us. But, you know, we have become obsessed with this linear narrative. And probably the pinnacle for education is getting you to college. I think we are obsessed with getting people to college. Certain sorts of college. I don't mean you shouldn't go to college, but not everybody needs to go and not everybody needs to go now. Maybe they go later, not right away.

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There's been a lot of talk about dreams over the course of this few days. And I wanted to just very quickly ... I was very struck by Natalie Merchant's songs last night, recovering old poems. I wanted to read you a quick, very short poem from W. B. Yeats, who some of you may know. He wrote this to his love, Maud Gonne, and he was bewailing the fact that he couldn't really give her what he thought she wanted from him. And he says, 'I've got something else, but it may not be for you.' He says this: 'Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with gold and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.' And every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams beneath our feet. And we should tread softly.

For a post discussing Robinson's "RSA Animate:  Changing Education Paradigms," please click here.

For a post discussing Robinson's "How schools kill creativity," please click here. 

For a post discussing Robinson's "How to escape education's death valley," please click here.