I’m still thinking about how my shared my work with you in the previous blog post. I wanted to continue the conversation, but give you some context as well, and hopefully inspire you…
If you don’t know, Sir Ken Robinson was a British author, speaker and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, education and arts bodies.
I have always found Sir Ken Robinson a brilliant man. It was his Ted Talk that inspired me to build what I am trying to build now. He challenges the way I think, the way we are educating our children, and as Ted Talk described him, “He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.” There are more of these people out there who have found the crank in the gear and are assisting us for a better tomorrow. These innovating thinkers like Sir Ken Robinson are focused on the world issues that can profoundly affect our existence, such as Education. However is this really radical thinking?? Is this what we are calling innovators now?
I keep asking myself… If we educate a society, in a perfect world would we have the world issues we have today?
Sir Ken Robinson states “Today’s education will not serve us in the future”, was a point that scared me because of its truth. To think that the basic fundamental that we are teaching our children today will not help them as they become adults. We aren’t teaching free thinkers, we are teaching children to be in the industrial revolution. So why are we continuing with this band aide affect? If we know better, shouldn’t we do better? “We have to rethink the fundamental principals and have to educate our children”. I’m asking, why aren’t we doing it? What is stopping us? Doesn’t it make sense to transform the education system now to make a better tomorrow? We all have “human imagination” that needs to be exercised in better creative capacities, and Sir Ken Robinson tells us how to use these tools to better serve us in the future. “Creativity is not a linear process” in which you have to learn all the necessary skills before you get started.” Well, where are our children learning these skills? Are they only expected to adapt them to their jobs once they have graduated? If creative practice isn’t exercised in schools, then why are we expecting our children to know how to be creative and think in an innovate manner? I understand that this is not the easiest solution, however, the answers are in this TED Talk, we need to get the result we need by bringing forth innovation and creative practices into the school system, letting our Government and Ministry understand the importance it is to our future and the answer to all this, is to teach creativity, innovation and imagination in our schools.
Trust me, this won’t be the end of this discussion for us!
Until then,
The Art Teacher