Ken Robinson talks brilliantly about this in his TED Talk (1) and recent book “The Element.” In many ways, the education system was built off the paradigms of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
Like the Enlightenment, most of our emphasis in schools is on the subjects that can be proven and are logical: science and math. There’s this hierarchy of subjects where science and math are at the top…the classes you take everyday. I have not yet encountered a school where humanities and music or art are daily required courses. When you think about the topics that help people discover their creative selves, it’s strange that we put this much emphasis on math and science.
Like the Industrial Revolution, we’ve created school to be a factory. The curriculum of schools is divided into installments of history, English, science, much like Henry Ford’s model of the product line. The day is organized into units of time signified by the ringing of a bell much like the bells of break and work time in a factory. And lastly we have batched people by their year, which has little connection to their level of intelligence, experience, or interest. In fact, this is similar to valuing the students based on the date they were manufactured.
As we look at education through this lense, it makes me wonder. Are we valuing creativity or conformity? It seems to me that if we really want the coming generations to be happy that we should focus diversity.
(1) http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
No comments:
Post a Comment