I should have waited a bit before blogging my earlier entry, until I’d seen this TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson (a fellow Brit I’d never heard of). Makes a similar point to Michael Rosen but with a lot more power and in less than half the time (20 minutes). (See Ken’s Wikipedia entry and his official website.)
I came across a link to this video via a post on Garr Reynold’s blog, Presentation Zen, for the first time on Friday, and it’s really got me thinking. Back when I was first pondering a career in education, I remember wondering what it would take for the masses to adopt a new approach to learning and schools. Well, until I saw this video, I was generally of the opinion that the most important issue was money. In other words, I believed that any sustainable reform would have to include a major shift in how education is funded. I’m not so sure anymore.
Advances in technology and an ever-evolving job market have left our school curricula looking pretty behind the times to say the least. Sometimes, just when you think you understand all the parameters and where the good fight must be fought, the world goes and changes on you, and you’re left with an exciting new set of challenges. Actually, I love it!
Incidentally, this idea that we educators are too far removed from the world we are preparing our students for is one that has been popping up as a theme at several of the EFL lectures I’ve attended recently–Jun Liu’s Thai TESOL plenary for one. I like this trend of thought because it admits that top-down education is incredibly limiting, and simultaneously illustrates why autonomous learning is so important in our era.