Sir Ken Robinson Says It Better

This, this is what I have thought about concerning education in this country but have not been able to articulate. Fortunately, Sir Ken Robinson is incredibly articulate as well as delightfully amusing.

http://www.wimp.com/escapevalley/

I encourage you to watch it. You'll be enlightened and entertained.

I have frequently thought about this subject because I love to learn but I hate school. I loved school when I first started elementary in our small Idaho town, but I learned to hate it with a burning passion once we'd moved to Northern Minnesota. Why? Because in Idaho, the teachers fed the creative spark that they saw inside me. In Minnesota, I was forced to toe the line.

In Idaho, we still did worksheets and boardwork and all the clerical work that must be done to meet district policy; but during my free times, I was encouraged to explore my love for reading and writing. I was allowed to read books that challenged me, which were far above my grade level (I attribute that to my parents, who refused to allow a television in the home and who read to me from the time I was very small). When I wrote plays, my teachers allowed me to select fellow students to play the parts and rehearse and then perform them during class times.

I felt a constant support from my teachers, who always encouraged me to reach ever further to develop my talents. Even in kindergarten, the teachers would hand us a hammer, some nails, and some wood so we could make things. We were allowed to play with each other for a large part of each school day, and learning was part of the play.

What happened when we moved was like a dark and horrible cloud descending to dampen my enthusiasm. Suddenly, my interests and talents were to be squelched because they did not fit in with the curriculum. Teachers didn't want to know how I was processing and analyzing information into a bigger picture of life; they wanted me to spit back memorized facts and figures so I could pass the tests so the school could get needed federal funds. The fun was gone. My education was no longer about learning how to learn.

So I did what any self-respecting and eager student of life would do: I decided to get my education despite my schooling. I read the classics and listened to the best music (which, again, was bountifully available in my home because I have two classical musicians as parents). I tried to keep that desire to learn more and more alive in myself, and finally I found that school did provide a sort of catalog of what there was to learn about, even if it fell far short of actually teaching me much beyond rote memorization and team projects.

I'm not brilliant or a genius, but I'm happy to say that I absolutely love to learn. I cherish the fact that the more I learn the less I know, and that, to me, is absolutely exhilarating. Just don't give me a multiple choice test, because I still choke.