Hey Hey SuperForest
Back in 2008 SuperForester Jackson posted a video by the marvelous Sir Ken Robinson on the subject of education and creativity that is so much worth a watch that, if you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend you do now – it is not only inspiring and thought-provoking, but Sir Ken is one of those extremely funny, naturally entertaining public speakers that it’s a pleasure to watch. Please do!
“my contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy“
Now, I come from a family filled with teachers and I believe passionately in the power of education – that education can shape lives – remember that one teacher who believed in you? that opened up a whole world of confidence and possibilities? – that education can open your eyes to who you are and what you are capable of. But I speak from a position of privilege. I know the system doesn’t always work. Many students feel disinterested, unmotivated, disenfranchised.
I think there are many reasons for this, but one point Sir Ken makes is that “every education system on earth has the same heirarchy of subjects … At the top are mathematics and the languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts … There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think math is very important, but so is dance.” And he explains this as borne from a historical context I had, to my chagrin, never even considered:
Now our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there’s a reason. The whole system was invented — around the world, there were no public systems of education, really, before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don’t do music, you’re not going to be a musician; don’t do art, you won’t be an artist. Benign advice — now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in a revolution. And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can’t afford to go on that way.
The system should value other talents as well as the hard skills that so much seems to be predicated on the basis of . We are all unique individuals and school-smarts is just one facet of the human gift that we express (emphatically not to devalue academic skills – as the lady says, we can all be awesome without having to prove we are more awesome than each other).
Well, Sir Ken has recently given a follow up talk, expanding on this – “the real challenge is to transform education from a 19th century industrial model into a 21st century process based on different principles”:
There’s so much idea-y goodness in there that I wouldn’t purport to summarise (watch it!), but a couple of things stuck in my mind in particular: At one point Sir Ken shares an Abraham Lincoln quote and his thoughts on it:
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.” I love that. Not rise to it, rise with it. “As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”
I love that word, “disenthrall.” You know what it means? That there are ideas that all of us are enthralled to, which we simply take for granted as the natural order of things, the way things are. And many of our ideas have been formed, not to meet the circumstances of this century, but to cope with the circumstances of previous centuries.
And:
I think we have to recognize a couple of things here. One is that human talent is tremendously diverse. People have very different aptitudes …
But it’s not only about that. It’s about passion. Often, people are good at things they don’t really care for. It’s about passion, and what excites our spirit and our energy. And if you’re doing the thing that you love to do, that you’re good at, time takes a different course entirely. My wife’s just finished writing a novel, and I think it’s a great book, but she disappears for hours on end. You know this, if you’re doing something you love, an hour feels like five minutes. If you’re doing something that doesn’t resonate with your spirit, five minutes feels like an hour.
Undeniably true! And Sir Ken’s suggestion?
We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development; all you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.
The unlimited capacity of children, of humans, and our opportunity to nurture this. Gift husbandry? SuperForesty.
I couldn’t post on this without mentioning the ever awesome 4fives – have you checked out their blog?? DO. For real, these kids (and their teacher Miss Bee Ladd) are super cool. As SuperForester Graham says – Teach Your Children Well:
In terms of educational reform I don’t know what the solutions are… SuperForester Julius started a great discussion on this and there are some interesting models (do any of you have experience of Freinet pedagogy schools? it sounds really interesting). But as SuperForester Jordan has counseled: “follow your bliss” – and I think the world, and all of us in it, is probably best served not just when we do our best to try and follow our own, but when we create an educational environment that encourages children to follow theirs.
Love to Teachers,
Love to You
P
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