Ken Robinson - Ted Talks

Robinson expressed that he believed that the education system has shown that children of today are set up to learn stuff now but by the time they have left school the world will be a different place especially by the time they are 60. However I believe that you learn through experience and you adapt through life-long learning and that you are more mentally developed when you age. You can also take adult learning classes throughout your life to increase your skills and understanding in modern stuff such as Information Technology.

In the speech, Robinson made a point that children are not frightened to be wrong. I completely agree with this statement as children learn through their mistakes and learn through creative play. He used the quote “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” In my opinion he proved that as you go through your education that they slowly drain out the creativeness that you enjoy for your early years and add more right and wrong answers which leads to people being frightened to make a mistake. Losing this creativity means we could lose inspirational figures in the arts as they may be made to focus on the core subjects that they do not enjoy.

Robinson discussed that there was a hierarchy for subjects in education. He believes that subjects such as dance and art should be regarded as in the same light as maths and languages. He also asked why we don't learn dance everyday. When I heard these I was quite sceptical. This is because I believe that children need to learn how to read and write more than they need to sing and dance because they would do that in their own time. I do however feel it is possible to learn core subjects through the medium of dance and using that with numbers could make schooling more fun. He did however make an interesting point suggesting that “Many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not because the thing they were good at in school weren’t valued.” I agree with him on this as many creative and inspirational figures have struggled in school and gone on to do wonderful. I believe it is about finding the right balance between core subjects and the foundation subjects that will improve the child's happiness in school.

In his speech, Robinson said that degrees are not as valuable as they were 30 years ago or so. He believes that this is because we go through the education system to go to university, with this, more and more people have accessed university which means that now it is harder to find a job. He believes that to get a job that once required a BA honours, now needs a masters degree. I agree with him on this because there is much more competition for places in this modern age. I also agree with him on that he believes education is to produce university professors. With that in mind it is clear to see why a lot more people have been able to access higher education. Although, this could also be a good thing as if more people are attending university, it shows that means that the population are getting more academical.

Overall I believe that Ken Robinson is a very charismatic figure and I agree with most of his key themes and that a minor shake up of the education system could be very beneficial to the children and the way we learn would improve.