Fertile minds need feeding

From the Guardian, Sir Ken Robinson ponders.

‘Now Sats have gone, what do they expect us to teach?” a teacher asked in an internet chatroom the day the national tests for 14-year-olds were scrapped. She was not alone. While staffrooms across the country cracked open the bubbly on 14 October last year, several teachers confessed that they were lost for what to do with their year 9s – short of going through practice exam papers.

Sir Ken Robinson isn’t surprised. A government-commissioned inquiry he chaired in 1998 found that a prescriptive education system was stifling the creativity of teachers and their pupils.

Eleven years on and things have only got worse, the former professor of arts education at the University of Warwick argues in his new book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. Our approaches to education are “stifling some of the most important capacities that young people now need to make their way in the increasingly demanding world of the 21st century – the powers of creative thinking”, he says.

Now, I know that this article is mainly about promoting a book, but I’m not against promoting a book every once in a while 😉 I think this one looks interesting, and I also think that Ken Robinson is the kind of person we need on our side, discussing the positive aspects and strengths of any type of learning that is different to the current culturally accepted norm. I might even try to drop him an email, asking whether he knows anything about home education in this country and what his opinions on it are.