20 million people have watched this Liverpool born educationalist’s “How schools kill creativity” lecture on TED and his advocacy for discovering talents and passions have earned him plaudits galore. Now based in Los Angeles, Robinson once wisely stated: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original”. He believes “curiosity is the engine of achievement”.
Two stories to keep beside you
Chen Si (陳思)
Made famous in the film Angel of Nanjing, Chen Si has saved over 300 lives at the world’s most popular suicide spot, the Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing, China, since 2003. This kindly gent has been described as an “unlikely guardian angel” and wears a coat emblazoned with the caption: “Cherish life everyday”.
Robert Worsley
Termed the “most principled man in Britain”, Robert Worsley turned down a £275 million offer for his farm in 2015.
Readers have their say
8 comments
Sir Kenneth is very ambitious in his comment that the Schools kill creativity. “You can take a horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink” The Liberal society blames the “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” to excuse poor academic performance, unacceptable behaviour and youth offending. There is no chemical tests that prove or disprove the presence of this disorder.
A Large number of different characteristics are placed together in order to make a diagnosis, many of these are symptoms that normal children will display in the different stages of their development.
Lack of discipline kills creativity in schools.
Sir Ken is spot on the problem. He should come back to the UK and set to work.
Sir Ken is all mouth and no action. He ignores the real problems and obstacles educators in Schools are faced with on a daily basis, by pretending they do not exist.
Head Teachers must be empowered to run their Schools any which way they deem fit too, with no external interference from the political correct brigade.
creativity as the final outcome is not good enough, students must demonstrate the ability to think abstractly and process information effectively, be able to obtain sound reasoning skills, and adequate problems solving methods. Creativity is one aspect in the chain of 3. 1.Creative, 2.critical, 3.analytical thinking process.
The School must create a atmosphere conducive to learning so that the transfer of knowledge can pass from teacher to student.
It is of fundamental importance that the setting is safe, and that there is no interference from disruptive and anti social behaviour. To maintain discipline in Schools is the key.
Curriculum Design and Development have always been based on the principles of Challenge and enjoyment, Breadth, Progression, Depth, Personalisation, Coherence, Relevance. The field is level enough to stimulate creative development in school children. The role of economic rationalism are driving current curriculum reforms in Britain. Schools in Britain are faced with many challenges. Sir Kenneth must revisit the grassroots one more time.
I like this…… Under the age of 40? You won’t understand.
My mum used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread butter on bread on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn’t seem to get food poisoning.
Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can’t remember getting e. coli
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake or at the beach instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.
We all took PE ….. and risked permanent injury with a pair of Dunlop sandshoes instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors that cost as much as a small car. I can’t recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.
We got the cane for doing something wrong at school, they used to call it discipline yet we all grew up to accept the rules and to honour & respect those older than us.
We had 50 kids in our class and we all learned to read and write, do maths and spell almost all the words needed to write a grammatically correct letter……., FUNNY THAT!!
We all said prayers in school and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.
I just can’t recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations. We weren’t!!
Oh yeah … and where was the antibiotics and sterilisation kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!
We played “King of the Hill” on piles of gravel left on vacant building sites and when we got hurt, mum pulled out the 2/6p bottle of iodine and then we got our backside spanked.
Now it’s a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10 day dose of antibiotics and then mum calls the lawyer to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family.
How could we possibly have known that?
We never needed to get into group therapy and/or anger management classes.
We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn’t even notice that the entire country wasn’t taking Prozac!
How did we ever survive?
Changing Paradigms and how we can make things happen in education. I will scrutinize Nigel Farage’s policies on education under the microscope, if he also fails to apply common sense and not identify the real problems, I will not be able to vote for him either. Common Sense is the way forward, political correctness will destroy your children’s future. I do not advocate left or right wing ideologies, I make the argument for common sense to prevail.
I still remember the day my late father enrolled me in the local Primary School, I had just turned 6 years old. We were the only Jewish family in a overwhelming Christian community, there was so much prejudice against us. I used to fear Bible classes as I was unfamiliar with the new testament, I used to go home crying to my father, as I always ended up getting a spanking from the teacher. My father was fed up with my crying, and he always had the solution to every problem, well so he thought.
My father said “Chaim, what topic will the teacher be covering in the Bible class” I responded “the birth of the little Lord Jesus and the three wise men” My Father had a master plan he was going to write the answers in the waistband of my underpants. I was to stand behind my desk, and being short, my father assumed the teacher will not notice.
The next day in the Bible Class, the teacher shouted in his usual strict manner, “Paddaman, tells us the story of the birth of Jesus Christ”. I nervously stood up, I could feel my hands and knees shaking, my throat was very dry.
I said “Yes, thank you teacher, I slowly twisted the waistband of my underpants forward, and started to read from it. Once a upon a time, there was baby born in a manger, three wise men brought him some presents, at this point I found it difficult to read any further, I concluded in my nervous state, “the babies name was Calvin Klein.
This was viewed by the School as a serious incident. My father was called to the Head Masters office. The incident was seen as deliberate blasphemy. My fathers defence was that it was a honest mistake as both men were good upstanding Jews.