Creative Schools: Revolutionizing Education from the Ground Up
‘Ken Robinson is one of the world's most influential voices in education. His talk, 'How Schools Kill Creativity', is the most viewed in the history of TED and has been seen by millions of people all over the world. In Creative Schools he sets out his practical vision for how education can be transformed to enable all young people to flourish and succeed in the 21st century.’
‘In this inspiring, empowering book, Robinson argues for an end to the outmoded, industrial systems of mass schooling and proposes a highly personalized, organic approach that draws on today's unprecedented technological and professional resources to engage all students and develop their individual abilities and love of learning.’
'A comprehensive and compelling statement of why creativity matters for everyone, what it looks like in action, and how to get there. Inspiring and so readable you will feel Sir Ken is talking directly to you.'.
Jessica rated it it was amazingShelves: favourites-of-2018, educationThe first time I heard of Ken Robinson was through his Ted Talk "Do schools kill creativity?" (https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinso...). I thought it was a brilliant talk and had been meaning to read more of his work since then.
As written in the title, this book outlines Robinson's vision for an education reform. Note that many schools now have incorporated Robinson's concept of teaching/learning or have completely revamped their curriculum accordingly. What Robinson promotes is not just a theory anymore. It's applicable and practical, with astounding results. In this book, Robinson provides critics, vision, and theory of change to the current education system worldwide. This book is filled with Robinson's own experiences as well as works of other educators. Though a non-fiction, it is very engaging and irresistible.
I listened to this book in its audiobook format. Yet, I found the content of this book so interesting and important that I actually took notes as I went along. So here is the concise version of Robinson's ideas (or at least the parts that I found most intriguing).
Robinson starts off by differentiating education from training. According to Robinson, education has economical, cultural, social, and personal values, whereas trainging is simply equipping people with a specific set of skills or knowledge.
He then compares the current education style to industrial farming. In his opinion, education should foster the same four operational pillars as sustainable, organic farming does: health, ecology, fairness, and care.
Health: promotes the wellbeing of the whole student intellectually, physically, spiritually, and socially.
Ecology: recognizes the importance of students and the education community as a whole
Fairness: cultivates the individual talents and potential of all students, whatever the circumstances or background they come from. Respect the responsibility of those who work with the students as well.
Care: provides the optimum condition of learning based on compassion, experience, and practical wisdoms.
Sounds ambitious and lofty? Robinson follows that with what he believes teachers' roles should be: to engage, enable, expect, and empower. He says, teachers should:
Encourage learning through reasoning rather than memorization.
Foster conversation and collaboration.
Inspire students to learn and help them to become better learners.
Teach expectations of themselves (students).
Create conditions for learning, one that students want to learn in.
Adapt teaching technique that suits the moment/environment.
Be mentors that help students raise self-confidence, find sense of direction, and empower themselves
By this point, though I believed what Robinson was saying to be true, I thought his expectations of the public education to be too high, and that he expected too much of the teachers. However, Robinson was able to change my mind later by addressing changes that needed to be made at the community/district/policy-making levels for his idea to work for all students.
Robinson also defines the purpose of education as following:
Education should enable students to be economically responsible and independent. It should teach students to appreciate their own culture and respect cultures other than their own. Socially, education should enable student to be active and compassion citizens. Students should engage not only with the world around them but in the world within themselves as well. Robinson believes that education is an individual affair that fosters personal interests and dispositions as well as a global interest. Conventional education mostly focuses on external education without helping students engage with themselves. This results in boredom, disengagement, stress, anxiety, dropping out, etc. Finally, Robinson says that education should prepare students for life after school by building up mental, emotional, social, and strategical resources so that students can enjoy and cope with challenges and uncertainties.
Robinson then addresses what students should know and be able to do as a result of their education. Think of it as the competency profile that students should have upon their graduation:
Curiosity: the ability to ask how the world work
Creativity: the ability to generate new idea and put them into practice
Criticism: the ability to analyze information and ideas and to form reasonable arguments and judgements
Communication: the ability to express thoughts and feelings clearly and confidently in a range of media and forms. Also the ability to understand and appreciate other poetic forms of expression.
Collaboration: the ability to work constructively with others
Compassion: the ability to emphasize other others and to act accordingly
Composure: the ability to connect with inner life of feelings and develop a sense of personal harmony and balance
Citizenship: the ability to engage and participate in the process that sustains it
With that in mind, Robinson then discusses how school curriculum can be designed in order to achieve the above very vast and "ambitious" (in my opinion) goals. Robinson does not believe in real academic subjects, only academic ways of looking at things. In his opinion, students should be taught disciplines, which consist of a mixture of theory and practice, rather than academic subjects. There are six disciplines in total: arts, humanities, language arts, mathematics, physical education, and science. Each discipline deserves the same amount of time and resources as each addresses major areas of intelligence, cultural knowledge, and personal development. Robinson pushed on the idea of personalized and project-based learning. He believes that when students learn through what interest them the most, the progress is unbound.
Finally, Robinson addresses the idea of evaluation. He says that standardization is not the problem. The problem is what we choose to standardize. Robinson favours assessments that take note of progress and are student based. He thinks good assessments should have the following characteristics:
Motivation: spurs students on to do even better
Constructive feedback: allows students to see how they have done with respect to other students so they can make their own judgement on their progress
Standards: clear, understandable, and relevant expectations
Funny enough, Robinson notes that push backs against new ways of evaluation (progress-based) are most often from students who do well with standardized testing because now they are required to shows true progress rather than simply getting high marks. Of the entire book, I think this is the most important take-way point for me that will help with my own personal growth moving forward and allow me to be a productive part of my child's education.
Robinson is very hopeful with the public education system. I, on the other hand, do not share his optimism. What I know is that because of people like him, who believe in building a better education system for the future generation, I reap the benefit of their ingenuity. Now I can take his points in this book and implement (or supplement) them in my own home. I give this book 5 stars, and I am very interested in reading other books written by Ken Robinson as well.
