EDITOR
Practitioners travel the world to hear Sir Ken Robinson, ever since his TED talks went viral. Until recently, the closest he’d been to our part of the world was Singapore, when hundreds of New Zealand and Australian academics, teachers and school principals, eager to share in his philosophy of learning, flew the long-haul trip to soak up some of the great man’s wisdom. News of his visit to Auckland this year, unsurprisingly created a flurry of excitement and it took little effort to fill the Sky City’s auditorium with enthusiastic New Zealand educators. He’s been espousing the virtues of creativity for more than twenty years, but many have only recently begun to take Robinson’s ideas on board. As he puts it, public education systems world-wide espouse conformity and have the same hierarchy of subjects. The ultimate success is to produce a university professor. Top of the order are those who excel in mathematics and languages, followed by the humanities with arts at the bottom, and even then, drama and dance fall below music and fine arts. ‘Creativity,’ he says, ‘is as important as literacy and we should treat it with the same status.’ He goes on to explain that ‘creative’ is not just a descriptor for exotic or weird people, it is one of the few distinguishing characteristics of humanity. Life is unpredictable, so every life is unique – no-one else has lived your life, he told his audience, and for the most part it’s chance that we are here at all. Life is composed of moments, he said, and it’s all about what you do with those moments. That’s how life operates. For a long time, Robinson has been calling for a radical rethink of what counts as education. In his view every public education system is based on the industrial model, and the values and definition of education evolve from the university way of thinking. The whole notion of intelligence, according to Robinson, is based on what counts in the academic world and ignores everything else. ‘We learn through our senses,’ says Robinson, ‘and that includes sight, hearing, kinesthetic experiences and movement.’ Education, he said, is a process by which you open kids’ minds and find out what’s inside them. Our education systems are not responsive to this. ‘I’ve been critical of the focus placed on academic work because it’s not the only measure of success.’ He is also critical of standardised approaches adopted world-
wide for education systems saying that reforms are based on wrong ideas. ‘They are based on conformity whereas life is based on the opposite,’ he said. ‘Conformity is focused on academic ability and we confuse academic ability with intelligence,’ he said. In schools, said Robinson, we marginalize ‘other’. There are many smart children but not in academic ways, so they learn to be good at nothing. ‘I meet people all the time who think they have no talent and do work they don’t like. They are functionally disengaged and have lost commitment and enthusiasm. And then there are those who love doing what they do. When you meet them, they are the happy ones and they say, well, this is who I am.’ To illustrate, he told the story of meeting a fireman at a book signing. He asked the man how long he had wanted to be a fireman. ‘Since Primary School,’ was the reply. ‘I love my job because I put out fires and save lives,’ said the fireman, enthusiastically. The fireman continued his story saying that when he successfully graduated in his senior year, his teacher said, ‘Are you still going on about the Fire Service? You could do so much better than being a fireman!’ But the fireman had the last word. ‘Six months ago,’ he said, ‘our unit was called to an accident on the freeway and I saved that teacher’s life!’ The problem is, we have an expectation that if you get through school successfully, you should go on to university. ‘That is the
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attitude of conformity,’ said Robinson. There is a divide between the academic and the technical. It is assumed that universities are higher than polytechnics so those who are not academics feel like failures. If the balance can be restored between the different kinds of learning, then you have changed the system that creates the imbalance. In answer to a question from the audience on how you assess ‘dance’, Robinson launched into a comparison with mathematics. ‘How would you assess a PhD in mathematics?’ he asked. There are two criteria he told the audience. The first is making an original contribution to the field. The second is aesthetic. Mathematicians believe that the world is beautiful, so the solution must also be beautiful. There isn’t really a linguistic issue because mathematicians don’t ‘talk’ in mathematics. They hear a symphony. Humans are embodied creatures and dance is a highly disciplined process, just like mathematics. Both express exuberance at being alive. Dance, therefore is as important as mathematics. He quickly added that when you offer dance in school many other problems go away. Research has shown that your students’ mathematics achievement is more likely to go up, Robinson told his audience. One of the problems of education throughout the world, he said, is standardisation or trying to squeeze kids into standard shapes. ‘We have to think differently,’ he said because the next stage of standardisation is compliance. ‘If you conform, then you comply,’ he said, ‘and with that comes the testing mentality, where teachers become ‘service workers’ for the testing industry.’ ‘We are materially better off than any other generation by far, and yet we have never seen such a stressed, depressed and
traumatised generation,’ he said. ‘I blame testing!’ Testing is high stakes and therefore lends itself to cheating. The higher the stakes, the more incentive to cheat. With the testing culture also comes drilling and rote learning ‘the correct answer’. Stress comes with fear of getting the answer wrong, which completely works against creativity. Robinson says that creativity is not defined by getting things wrong, but if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original. When asked about national standards in New Zealand schools, Robinson was emphatic. Educators confuse raising standards with standardisation. Standardisation is the lowest common denominator, he said. It narrows the curriculum, is reductionist and creates targets. It is teaching that makes the difference for learners and the only way to improve learning is to increase investment in teaching. A broad curriculum, collaboration in classrooms, increased parental engagement and nonstandardised systems were Robinson’s four recommendations for a successful education system. ‘You can turn it around here in New Zealand!’ he challenged his audience. ‘You are the system, not something else,’ he said. ‘Education is about lives, not league tables. It’s about people, not data,’ he said. A further contradiction is that education systems are predicated on competition, yet human life is based on collaboration. Our obsession with data, quantifying outcomes, and league tables, both domestic and international, are barriers to learning, he explained. He distinguished between learning, education and schooling. ‘Think of learning to talk,’ he said. ‘It is through osmosis. It’s a cultural acquisition. Schooling is something else. It is a
community of learners and some kids don’t get on at school. They need special conditions for learning. That is why ‘how we learn’ should be central to all learning.’ The most important resources for learning are the talents of the teachers, the kids and the parents, according to Robinson. ‘Mostly the system fails the kids, not the other way around.’ What is needed, he says, is personalised education. The aim of education is first to enable students to understand the world around them, then the talents within them so that they can become fulfilled, active, compassionate citizens. ‘We experience the world around us from the world within us,’ he said. Learning means children must be encouraged to take risks, said Robinson and education has hampered that. He explained that if learning is personalised, teachers know when the time is right to encourage risk taking, to move the learner to the next level. They know what makes this learner tick and use the talent within to build on the child’s learning. Robinson’s address, peppered with his natural wit and timely stories, proved a tonic for his audience at Auckland’s Sky Tower. As New Zealand schools embrace their new context, without national standards, participants will feel buoyed by their freedom to think about applying Robinson’s ideas in their own schools. It’s about creating a culture of learning, rather than conformity, he concluded. After twenty years of espousing personalised learning and creativity, perhaps the time is right for a worldwide revolution. New Zealand right now would be well placed to lead it.
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