On the plane out to San Diego I got the chance to watch Sir Ken Robinson’s great presentation at the TED conference (Technology Entertainment and Design). It’s a pretty powerful call to “radically rethink our view on intelligence” and “rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children” to move toward a much more nurturing educational environment for the arts and for creativity. The money quote is
Creativity, now, is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.
Why? Becuase, as he points out, the kids who start school today will be retiring in the year 2065, and yet we know as little about what the world will look like then as we do five years from now. We can give them all the content we want, but in this age, in won’t make much difference if we don’t teach them how to learn first. And they do that not by spitting back at us what they “know.” They do it by being creative, by trying and failing, by succeeding and reflecting. It echoes Daniel Pink’s book all over.
George Siemens points to an interesting read in a similar vein in “How Failure Breeds Success” and says “learning is not a process of performance, it is a process of becoming.” And if we are lifelong learners, we are always becoming.
A couple of more notches in the school is irrelevant belt.
Will:
You’ve hit the nail on the head. We are trying to teach the same way we did 10, 20 years ago to a generation that is not the same the generation 10, 20 years ago. I’ve just read the first chapter of “Millienials Rising” and it points out just how different this generation is going to be. They are going to diverge from the status quo. If we are going to help them succeed beyond our walls, we have to teach them in a different way. They are going to be facing a whole new world and in order to compete, we have to teach them in a different way. I’ve read Pink’s book and it is extrememly enlightening. If anyone hasn’t read it, it is a must! Truly fascinating!
Will,
Glad you enjoyed Ken’s talk. I heard him speak at SETT in Scotland last year. He’s a great speaker with a powerful message.
Given the myriad ways technology can be utilized in the classroom (provided resources are available)what is being done about addressing the issue of creating exciting science curriculum –specifically creating electronic learning communities to cultivate engineers and scientists? Afterall, the U.S. has fallen behind other industrialized nations in math & science and the outlook for the future is not good. The last I read, U.S. universities were turning out about 60,000 engineers in 2000 versus 85,000 a decade earlier. Science ed in U.S. high schools is typically insipid. How can educators change this using technology, weblogs, etc?
I like your George Siemens quote. Not only is this true for our students, it is also true for our teachers and administrators. We need to teach them how to become part of the Web 2.0 environment so that they can help students learn within it. I ramble on about this more at http://pargonet.wordpress.com/2006/07/11/digital-immigrants-20/
It’s an interesting discussion you are having. I’ve read Pink’s book and summarized it. I’m not familiar with Sir Ken Robinson but this issue of moving to the concept or creative stage of our development is of great significance. I’ve written several books for students in school from Jr. High through University, even one for adults returning to college (a set of books per school level including home school) and I’ve tried to incorporate some of these ideas as well as some of the present learning and study skills I have been able to find. We won’t know how to teach children today for what they will need to do in 25 years since we don’t know what it will look like but we can start changing focus while continuing our basic ways. Technology changes what we can do and need to do. Using a computer used to be entering exact addressed to do many things, now we have icons which we click. Publishing and graphics were the domanin of professionals and now there are programs to let anyone publish and create graphics good enough to use professionally. Bill Gates was once asked if he was not concerned that the Chinese engineers wers taught in a strict way, more old school structure. Wasn’t he concerned that the old rigid way would get in the way of creativity? He answered that he would take those taught in this way if they were well proficient and then let them start to be creative as they worked. (Gates is not Jobs but no matter what you think of Microsoft, they are in the game) We will have to change how we teach chilren but certain attitudes in schools today have to change. My storefront that has my books is at http://www.slssystem.com – I used Pink’s vision of human development from hunter gatherer thrugh information age and concept age in the books I have written to help students see where we are and what they need to prepare for. In 10 – 15 years it may change again but all we can do is prepare as well as we can and notice the trends and change our approaches to what is needed.