Changing Paradigms

RSA Animate – Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson, the world’s leading authority on creativity, is still questioning the methods born out of the industrial revolution that we continue to use to educate our children.

Recently a friend sent me the video below! Hallelujah! Sir Ken speaks AND I am given visuals! I could ask for no more…

I am a teacher with 30 years of experience teaching and my speciality is Visual Arts. While I appreciate a good artwork and quite enjoy hanging a few, I believe this subject teaches far more:

1. The choices children make about which tool to use, what line to draw, what shape to cut and onto what surface to apply… gives them the confidence to make choices at other times in other subjects and out of school.

2. When they began to understand that the idea that started in their mind doesn’t always transfer easily to a material or surface then they adapt their approach, change the tool, experiment with new techniques, observe mistakes, restart and sometimes even try something new … and they learn from each seesawing step… this develops their thinking skills and sometimes they even do that laterally. How creative!

As a student myself, I knew I learned things a little differently to many other children. I never thought of myself as academically clever and indeed often felt the things I enjoyed and did well were not important. Often I could see several possible answers and wondered why I was limited to only one as the ‘right’ one. I also needed to visualise ideas and see how they fitted together. For this I needed to ask questions and the more I asked then the more information I could visualise. However, I soon learned that if I asked too many then it was assumed that I didn’t understand a concept and this resulted in being given more work or a poor report card. I soon learned to parrot back the expected  ‘right’ answer so I could get on with enjoying other things in which I was really interested. How many other children do this? How soon do they learn to ‘play’ school correctly? How soon do they get bored with the game with dire consequence?

Listen, watch and think for 11 minutes! Thank you RSA! Thank you Sir Ken!

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