Via Zenpundit, here’s a great illustrated lecture by Sir Ken Robinson about education. My own views tip slightly to the other direction – I do believe that some basic standard skills are necessary, and I’m uncomfortable tossing aside the “standard curriculum.” But he makes several points in this that challenge my views, and require some serious thinking.
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I think these RSA lectures are great. They illustrate the productive use of sensory loading (as opposed to overloading). The different sensory inputs here are all coordinated and pulling in the same direction, as opposed to when we’re driving down the road bombarded by street signs, billboards, NPR, the cell-phone, and our private thoughts–or texting our friends in class!
Thank you for sharing that.
I find this video infuriating. Every single thing he says here (except about the Ritalin) has been the orthodoxy of the educational establishment for many decades. (And Ritalin is only there because it was easier for teachers if boys weren’t running around.) Curricula and any kind of actual learning have been downgraded and instead there is a fetish of individual spontaneous inspiration as well as for mindless collaboration. Twenty years ago my daughter was placed with people of different ages because the establishment already “knew” Robinson’s great discovery that great , “real” learning happens when you throw random crap at random groups of people.
I found it interesting to listen to, but I had a number of issues with his overall thesis. In no particular order: he’s simply historically wrong about the roots of modern education. It’s fundamentally Aristotelian in nature, whereby the young student is taught how to perform certain rote tasks and only later, after having attained a certain level of mastery, asked to understand the theoretical underpinnings of knowledge. It resembles a manufacturing facility because there are certain discrete steps that must be taken from a starting point of innumeracy (e.g.) and ending up with the ability to do calculus. You don’t start with the Peano axioms and ask the student to derive algebra. Most of us aren’t Pascal, after all. As an aside, does he think that the Jesuits were educating their charges using non-linear methods at the dawn of the industrial revolution? Feh.
Secondly, his hand-waving dismissal of deductive reasoning is just annoying. “Divergence” may be a nice way to get a discussion started around problem solving; but it’s utterly critical to think through the individual solutions profferred in a logical fashion.
And finally, the notion that small children are harmed by being educated out of their natural talents at “divergence” is only partially correct at best. The real reason why adults don’t think of 500 foot tall styrofoam paperclips is because we understand that in order to communicate effectively with each other we have to accept certain implicit definitions or we’ll never get anything done. If I ask my supply dept to order some paperclips, I don’t need to be asked 1500 questions on what size and material it should be. It’s safe to assume that if I want a foam paperclip, I’ll ask for one.
He identifies some weaknesses, but I think he misses the main one. We shouldn’t be teaching our kids what to think, we should be teaching them how to think. And that absolutely means teaching them how to use deductive reasoning.
Very interesting, but I agree with Phil.
Some rapid thoughts:
In my opinion, and trying to avoid getting onto a minefield, I think that the root problem stems from the fact that, from the evolutionary point of view, the human being is not naturally prepared for education, at least in the way we know it.
In ancient times, children were put to work at the moment they have grown enough for being able to carry out a task. Today, a complex society has created a period called adolescence in which young persons are forced to ignore their impulses and wander through a limbo as they search for their place in that society.
The stress this situation naturally causes has increased in the last decade, as the outcome of such period becomes more and more uncertain – the society getting even more complex – and information is easily available (why do I have to think about the answer to a question if I can find it in Google? Why do I have to figure out a 3D object out of a drawing if computer graphics could have represented it for me much better? I play every evening computer games!).
Regarding the divergent thinking, I also agree with Phil, divergent thinking, imagination are not bad and even very useful in arts (and, it seems, some economics), but a person is born naturally seeing no restrictions to his will – since this is what ensures his survival – and the first thing he has to learn is that there are such restrictions, first of all, in society, and secondly, in science.
Concerning solutions. I’d try to come forward with some:
There should be some elementary learning and some _elementary_ standarization since society has some rules that cannot be ignored: a child may work better in a group, but he should know that probably he would to have to work alone sometimes, and be prepared for that. Some basic skills in maths are needed, up to the point everyday economics are understood. I mean, I disagree with the approach of simply letting children, at elementary level, do what they do better and in the way they do better, trying not to cause them stress and _getting their whole potential_ (they won’t if the are unable to follow some basic rules): they should learn their advantages, but also their disadvantages and develop strategies to minimize them.
Of course, exams are a wrong method of checking knowledge. In professional life, it is rarely used, but it is the best we have, especially with big ratios of students per teacher. Could it be improved? Probably, but it would be expensive.
Same happens with one answer questions. They are rare in professional life, but they are useful up to some point. Developing small projects from an early age might be useful in that sense, but it also would increase the costs of education.
Things get further complicated in secondary and college, as society does so. A core knowledge is needed for science, and maybe such stages should focus in that for the students who want to follow this path. I disagree lengthening secondary (although it worked in Germany, AFAIK they end it one year later) at least out of the science path. Teenagers should be allowed to leave school at 15 – 16 and check their abilities in the real world. The contrary is a way of worsening education, hidding unemployment, and probably strenghten public employees unions.