Ken Robinson is right, education is one of those topics that "goes deep with people." Public education is such a complicated undertaking and we have industrialized our schools much in the same way we have factories and farming. The end result of this is that students who are not in the middle of the bell curve are often stigmatized - and this takes place for both "gifted" kids and kids who "struggle."
In reality, I believe that all kids are intelligent and talented; the problem comes from a system that won't/can't accomodate different kinds of learning. Temple Grandin takes on the subject of Autistic learners in this great talk. Mentors, unite!
I would love to see some down-home, hands-on experiential learning here in New Brunswick. I think the best thing we can do for our young people is share our knowledge, skills and passion for our work. I wish we were better at that.
4 comments:
Yes to that. The challenge is delivery- the education system has developed a streamlined (but limited)system of delivering mass education.
Homeschooled kids traditionally outperform their public school counterparts. Are they smarter? No, they've just been given more opportunity to hone their individual learning style.
Same for the Adult Education world- how do we best teach one another the way to succeed in arts?
I think mentoring has always been hugely important in the arts - when Beethoven and Mozart learned to compose, they weren't going to public school. They went and took tutorials from established composers. In my view, the arts are very much like the trades, and beginning artists should have a 'master' to observe, question and learn from.
I think another way to succeed in the arts is to give children examples of work they might find interesting, but leave them with unstructured time to experiment. When people get too overscheduled there isn't enough time for creativity to take root.
Some change is a little fishy - this, specifically:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html
I read this article and it really made me mad. That's always the challenge with public school - it reaches a lot of children and some people see it as a way to indoctrinate the next generation of citizens.
If ordinary people become disengaged from the political process, this is the result: extremists basically have free reign. Very glad I'm not teaching in Texas.
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