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| Photo: Henrika Florén |
To attend a speech by sir Ken Robinson was more like going to a consert than listening to a notable person in education.
The audience is pressing against the closed doors. There are elbows and crowding. I'm lucky to be placed in the very front row. I can without problem both see and hear sir Ken Robinson without difficulty. Just like other speakers I've listened to during Bett2013, he talks about change in society and education systems and that we are still educating and training our children as if we have to prepare them for working in an industrial society we have alreday left behind. We know very litte about what jobs they will be working with and what skills they will need.
The audience is pressing against the closed doors. There are elbows and crowding. I'm lucky to be placed in the very front row. I can without problem both see and hear sir Ken Robinson without difficulty. Just like other speakers I've listened to during Bett2013, he talks about change in society and education systems and that we are still educating and training our children as if we have to prepare them for working in an industrial society we have alreday left behind. We know very litte about what jobs they will be working with and what skills they will need.
Sir Ken also talks about education and personal development. Everybody have some unique skill, something they can excel at. Should we then not help students devlop these skills? He brings up the question of whether we as parents, educators and adults should influence young people's choice of subjects to study. We are prone to counsel in ways we believe will provide good jobs and steady incomes, but this becomes a problem when markets and jobs change and develop at an increasing speed.
Listening to sir Ken Robinson is interesting and stimulating. I agree with him in what I feel is the subtext in everything he says. We have to embrase change and meet young people with empathy and provide stimulating learning experiences.
My conclusion is that we need to teach children how to think, how to study, how to pursue knowledge. We should not just feed them information. For any one to be able to do this effectviely there are some skills which need to be mastered such as reading. But we should not confuse the retention of information with the ability to think.
Sir Ken also points out that we are in the middle of a revolution, not something similar to a revolution, or almost a revolution, but an actual revolution in society. The web changes many things and education has to be a part of this.
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