“All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso
So instead of attending the un-scheduled un-symposium this week (which some of us may or may not have tried to go ahead and do anyway ***note to self: read Networked Media blog more often***), we were instructed to watch a select few videos via the Networked Media blog.
I watched this TED video of Sir Ken Robinson discussing whether schools diminished the creativity of children rather fascinating.
The University Professor
Because it’s true, isn’t it? Schools do encourage a particular type of learning, and focus their mechanics around a particular model of teaching.
Sir Robinson argues that schools strive to churn out one kind of human being – the University Professor. The system is predicated upon the idea of academic ability, due to the Industrial Age.
- The most useful subjects for work are at the top.
- Academic ability has come to dominate our view of intelligence.
He argues that degrees, soon enough, won’t be worth anything.
Suddenly, degrees aren’t worth anything. Isn’t that true? When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn’t have a job, it was because you didn’t want one, and I didn’t want one. But now, kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA. And now, you need a PhD for the other. It’s a process of academic inflation.
And that this indicates that the entire structure of education is shifting below our feet.
Intelligence is dynamic.
It’s all well and good to go and blame the education system, but really, it’s part of a broader schematic, isn’t it?
The 21st century demands one thing of us, and one thing only.
We must be successful. It’s almost a mantra for the chaotic, self-driven, competitive 21st century individual.
Success is what we yearn for. Our entire system gears us towards this competitive, innovative, incessant drive to succeed. We strive for success, we hunger for it. It permeates our dreams. It becomes us.
Thus, the system seeks to shape us into the only image of success it knows – that of the present. But the thing is, it’s operating in a time-warp. Mirroring Sir Kensington’s sentiments, I’d like to argue that the system operates according to an image of success from yester-year. It can’t predict what success will look like in the future, it can only operate according to what success looks like in the now. But are we not educating the adults of the future? One could potentially argue that we’re geared to fail from the outset, even, operating and adapting to a system that’s moulding us into the Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs of yesterday.
You can’t teach the conditions for success.
Consider, converse, comment away.
