There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why?
Ken RobinsonRead
When my son, James, was doing homework for school, he would have five or six windows open on his computer, Instant Messenger was flashing continuously, his cell phone was constantly ringing, and he was downloading music and watching the TV over his shoulder. I don’t know if he was doing any homework, but he was running an empire as far as I could see, so I didn’t really care.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the distractions faced by students today while they attempt to focus on their homework.
Ken Robinson humorously describes the chaotic environment in which his son attempts to do homework, filled with distractions from technology and media. He suggests that while it may seem like his son is not focused on his schoolwork, he is actually managing a range of activities that reflect the multitasking nature of modern youth, ultimately implying that this may be a new form of engagement rather than a problem.
In practice
During a seminar on modern education, I shared this quote to illustrate the challenges students face with technology.
There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why?
Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.
Creativity is the greatest gift of human intelligence.
Teaching for creativity aims to encourage self-confidence, independence of mind, and the capacity to think for oneself.
Helping people to connect with their personal creative capacities is the surest way to release the best they have to offer.
Creativity involves putting your imagination to work. In a sense, creativity is applied imagination.
Theory is taught so as to make the student believe that he or she can become a Marxist, a feminist, an Afrocentrist, or a deconstructionist with about the same effort and commitment required in choosing items from a menu.
Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over.
Once you've got a child to the point that they've discovered books, they're safe. There's a world of the imagination that when they're hurt or upset, they can move into, and it is wonderful.
There should be no such thing as boring mathematics.
It is important that we discover an educational method where people learn to learn and go on learning their whole lives
Access by kids to the Internet should be like kids breathing clean air.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.