Blog Post #10

The question is: What can we learn from Sir Ken Robinson?

In Sir Ken Robinson's video, Bring on the Learning Revolution, he talks about our education system. Education is currently reforming. He states that reform is bad in this case. Reforming means that we are just improving a broken model. We are trying to fix something that already does not work properly. We do not need evolution, but a revolution in our education systems. Through a revolution, we can transform the education system into something else, that is more effective.

I learned from Sir Ken Robinson, that education can often take away from people's natural talents. Most people have talents and do not even know it. If they do know their talents, they often times don't use them. Talent is so diverse in this world, and education needs to foster that talent. For this reason, he believes that students don't always need to go to college right away. They can go later, once they know their talents and wants in life. He then talked about a man that wanted to be a fireman all of his life. His teacher didn't take him seriously, and called him out in front of the class. The teacher told him that he was wasting potential, and that he should go to college and actually do something good with his life. The man was embarrassed and in shock. After the man lived out his dreams and became a fireman, he ended up saving his teacher's life in a car accident. He gave him CPR and also ended up saving his wife. Everyone has different talents, and we need to understand that as teachers.

Another thing that we can learn from Sir Ken Robinson is that our education is becoming like the fast food industry. It is very standardized. The food from the fast food industries is depleting to our physical bodies, just like education is depleting students passions and talents. Education no longer feeds passion. He explains that his wife recently wrote a book, and would disappear for hours on end. She felt as if she was gone for no time at all. Whenever you have passion, and love what you are doing, time flies by so quickly. Everything is so standard in education now, that it does not help students flourish. We cannot predict the outcome of human development, but we can foster the conditions of the students, so that hopefully, they will flourish. As a teacher in the making, this video really helped me put things into perspective. I will always need to remember that everyone is different and has different talents. Being different is not a bad thing, and I need to help those talents flourish.