Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson

This guy makes so much sense when he talks about our school system.
He talks about how our schooling system discourages creativity by placing assessment as its priority and this has absolutely been my experience. As head of department I had to create assessment tasks that were uniform across all classes and teachers (they had to be fair), but in so doing I put students in little boxes. They can't go off and explore what is interesting to them, because it does not fit within the assessment rubric. Teachers can't go off on their own interesting tangents, because it might interfere with the fairness of assessment across the year. There must be a way around this. But I fear that while our govt insists on a standardised assessment like the HSC, schools will be forced to teach to an exam, rather than educate their students. Why can't we use an external exam such as the SAT C's in the US?

Sir Ken Robinson also talks about the down grading of creative subjects and the humanities in favour of Maths and Science. He makes the point that schools should be encouraging student's passions and strengths, what ever they are, rather than trying to make them conform and fit into boxes. In that way we will end up with a society of people, who are doing what they love and contributing excellence and passion - what a wonderful vision.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2009/2598512.htm