Making Things Happen

I always admired Ken Robinson since I first heard him talking at the TED Conference a few years ago. I think his understanding of education and its problems are extraordinary thanks to the fact he’s and educator himself.

What Robinson says is basically what I’ve been thinking for years, as a result of my personal school experience (even if he put things in a much more coherent and structured way).

Basically our schools, especially the ones here in Italy, use a top down learning method that implies the teacher and the books to be always right, seeing the students as a bottle to be filled up with contents, no matter what they think and feel.

The idea that also students can teach something to their teachers is absolutely denied and never taken into consideration, as teachers fear to lose control over their classes. Clearly to acknowledge our limits and be open minded is not an easy task. It implies hard work and constant change, a way that many teachers don’t like to go trough, sheltering themselves in the safe grounds of “traditional teaching”.

Another important element, common to the education system of the whole EU, is the secondary role in which arts and creativity in general are located, while science and analytic subjects are considered to be on a higher level.

Math, science, medicine, technology are tremendously important. As a matter of fact I work in the tech field and love technologies, but I recognize that dance, poetry and any other form of art is equally important.

Moreover it has to be remembered that a creative mindset is very useful while working on analytical projects. Having a coder or a mathematician that have a creative approach to his work, means that he gets the best of both worlds, enriching his analytical skills with that touch of irrational and imaginative sight.

Coming back to our schools the main problem to a structural reform is, as usual, money. To create a class of superior teachers, that understand that teaching goes both ways and that creativity is fundamental in the business world, requires a huge work on personnel, which has to be trained and constantly updated.

Ken Robinson interviewed by Riz Khan: