Sir Ken Robinson is one of the leading authorities in Education Reform. His TED talk about how schools kill creativity has been seen more than 30 million times becoming the most -viewed speaker on TED.com. His previous books are also best sellers and though provoking.
In Creative Schools, he makes a thorough diagnosis of the Education Crisis in the world and builds from success stories a proposal for School reform.
Beginning with the needs of the world as the Industrial Revolution spanned attracting unskilled workers from the countryside to fulfill the jobs, to governments taking control all over the world, centrally planned educational systems are the norm today.
Wherever you look, education is high on the agenda of governments around the globe.
These days, governments scrutinize each other's education systems as earnestly as their defense policies.
On-going efforts to improve the system have failed again and again because they are more of the same without addressing the core of the problem. According to Robinson one of these key premises is that education is more than a linear system with simple causal relationships.
The principle of linearity works well for manufacturing; it doesn't for people.
I said that education is best seen not as an industrial system but as an organic one. More specifically. it is what is know as a "complex, adaptive system"
The importance of education is indisputable yet Sir Ken Robinson makes it explicit to support his opinion about curriculum, assessment (evaluation), teachers and schools, kids and families.
The aims of education are to enable students to understand the world around them and the talents within them so that they can become fulfilled individuals and active compassionate citizens.
The four basic purposes of education: economic, cultural, social and personal
A Hayekian explanation to how the system actually works builds on multiple success stories. Diverse cases that go from his own experience, to Sergio Juárez Correa in Mexico, to Eric Mazur in Harvard, to Salman Khan and Khan Academy, to Sugata Mitra and the School in the Cloud, to Logan LaPlante and homeschooling, to cases in New Zealand, Argentina, and more, give hope to the feasibility of change.
All living systems have a tendency to develop new characteristics in response to changing circumstances. They may have "emergent features," through "the interaction of small elements forming together to make a larger one. In education, there's an abundance of emergent features right now that are changing the context in which schools work and the cultures within them.
Robinson believes in local solutions; the subtitle of the book is The grassroots revolution that's transforming Education, Nonetheless he equals private initiatives with market solutions (commercial ventures are just one kind, many are non-profit or small local projects) and still hopes that policymakers will be able to lead the revolution.
In some respects, mass education is, and always was, a process of social engineering. Sometimes the political intentions have been benign and sometimes not.
Yet his invitation is to take a leading role in changing the status quo. We need multiple projects not just a substitute. Trying different alternatives may offer multiple solutions to the diverse needs of the people while helping future generations thrive in their live.
The revolution I'm advocating is based on different principles from those of the standard movement. It is based on a belief in the value of the individual, the right to self-determination, our potential to evolve and live a fulfilled life, and the importance of civic responsibility and respect for others.
Politicians and bureaucrats are interest groups who will not surrender power easily. Robinson's proposal is more pragmatic involving them in the solution and may be closer to achieve something than more radical solutions. I'm skeptical of anything that has government behind its name but hope that with Sir Ken Robinson's influence some changes will start to occur.
My rating 4 stars.
