Saturday, December 14, 2013

Ken Robinson and why students must think from the heart?

Based on a study of the work of the British educator Sir Ken Robinson (two books, five hours of lectures) here is a blog post on his views on Education and why they matter. It is vital educators, teachers, parents and students around the world get access to this information.

Firstly Three Ways Education can engage the student better according to Sir Ken Robinson
Creativity can be part of everyday Education. Thank you for showing the world so Mr Ken.


  1. Foster Diversity – Encouraging students to customize their learning process and to provide broader curriculums.
  2. Foster Creativity – This can be done through more creative teaching. This will depend on high quality teacher training and development.
  3. Awaken Creativity – Without emphasis on the standardized as an only measure of student performance.

Why we must appreciate different intelligences?

Paul Mcartney was considered a bad student at school. So was Matt Groening the creator of the Simpsons. So was Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. But most of the above names were intelligent in different ways. Just because they were low on one kind of intelligence, it does not mean they are not intelligent at all as mentioned in Sir Ken's books.
Ken Robinson describes three main features of intelligence
1)           Diversity – We can be intelligent in different fields like music, math or spatial intelligence.
2)           Dynamic – We can also be simultaneously intelligent at a multitude of different things
3)           Distinctiveness – “Every person’s intelligence is as unique as a fingerprint” – Ken Robinson
So we must expand our acceptance of intelligences of a variety of different types, “In my experience, most people have a narrow view of intelligence, tending to think of it mainly in terms of academic ability. This is why so many people who are smart in other ways end up thinking that they’re not smart at all. There are myths surrounding creativity as well.” – Ken Robinson

Alfred Binet, Carl. B and the fake promise of the SAT Test.

 Alfred Binet
Alfred Binet who was one of the creators of the IQ Test had actually created the test to identify children with special needs, so that these children could get appropriate form of schooling
As Ken further mentions why Alfred Binet thought the IQ Test could not measure intelligence in the book by stating, “Binet noted that the scale he created “does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.”
Carl Brigham had created the SAT Test for the military, but five years later decided to disown it. However most top colleges in the world still use the student’s SAT Score as a measure of whether they would be accepted or not at the school.
This is wrong because it judges only the logical intelligence of students, and does not judge creative intelligence and ability to work on real life projects.

Questions Parents and Educators must ask

1)          Left to their own devices, what are they drawn to do?
2)          What kinds of activities do they tend to engage in voluntarily?
3)          What sorts of aptitude do they suggest? What absorbs them most?
4)          What sort of questions do they ask, and what type of points do they make?

Question for Student to ask

“If left to my own devices—if I didn’t have to worry about making a living or what others thought of me—what am I most drawn to doing?”
Encourage Natural Curiosity and Interests




All students have their own stories, motivations and circumstances and teachers have to connect with them personally.” – Article on Huffington post, titled ‘Why we need to Reform Education’. Updated 05/03/2013, 8 P.M
Kids are not scared to make mistakes and try new things. They are naturally curious about the world around them. But this curiosity dies out, as these students progress through the education system.
We must encourage young people to work on projects they are naturally interested in. This is a major theme of this book. To guide students to learn from their natural life experiences in fields of their interest.
It is passion that differentiates the people that have made it big in the world, to the people that did not. They could not think about doing anything else. As Ken Robinson mentions about the stories of passionate successful people he has included in his book, “Many of the people you’ll meet in this book didn’t pursue their passions simply because of the promise of a paycheck. They pursued them because they couldn’t imagine doing anything else with their lives.
“Education is the system that’s supposed to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way in the world. Instead, it is stifling the indi- vidual talents and abilities of too many students and killing their motivation to learn. There’s a huge irony in the middle of all of this.” – Ken Robinson

Something is wrong when more is spent on the Prison System than on the Education System
“In 2006, the state of California spent $3.5 billion on the state uni- versity system. It spent $9.9 billion on the state pris- on system.” – Ken Robinson
  

Let Students Follow their bliss

Ken Robinson quotes the creativity analyst Don Lipski in the book as follows, “The main thing is to encourage kids to follow anything they have enthusiasm for. When I got interested in magic, I got great encouragement and support. I devoted myself to magic in the same way that I do artwork now. A kid may have a thing about baseball, not playing it but learning all the statistics of the players and knowing who should be traded to what team. It may seem useless, but maybe that kid will end up being the manager of a baseball team. If a kid is the only one in the class who’s an opera fan, that should be validated and encouraged. Whatever it might be for, enthusiasm is the main thing that needs to be developed.”

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