Blog #10

What can we learn from Sir Ken Robinson?

  Sir Ken Robinson, an English author, speaker, and advisor on education, was spot-on in his YouTube video entitled Bring On The Learning Revolution. I have never listened to such a subtle man with so much passion on what he had to say to the public. It was almost like he was talking to me on a one-on-one basis.

                               

                 

                    In this eye-opening video, Sir Ken Robinson explains how we as people should do something career-wise in our lives that we thoroughly enjoy, not something that society or even our teachers expect or want us to do. We should not let our natural talents go to waste by any means. We essentially don't need to go to school to find out what we will be there, but rather use school to enhance our talents to do what we want to do in our lives. He gives an important example of a child who was in school, and all of his teachers asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up. His answer, to no one's surprise at the time, was to be a firefighter. Well of course, everyone at the time wanted to be that, so none of his teachers took him seriously. One teacher, though, told him that he will never make anything of himself if he goes down that path of being a firefighter. But the teacher's comment did not inhibit him from reaching his dreams. He applied to be a firefighter years later, and was accepted. A couple of months later, he saved that teacher's life and his wife's life in a car accident! It just goes to show that when you dream of something, do not let anyone get in your way because later down the line you can prove that person wrong and possibly open their eyes too.

 

                 Another important point that Sir Robinson mentioned was that the world was always changing, especially education, and that we should not rise TO the occasion, but rather rise WITH the occasion. Instead of being apprehensive about changing matters, we should as educators learn as much as we can about the new thing and go along with it for the sake of our future classroom! By going backwards in the education system, we are not accomplishing anything for our students. It all goes back to students fulfilling their dreams in life. If we do not rise with the occasion (or in other words, technology), we are limiting our students in their abilities as people in the real world. The greatest gift we could give our students is a new medium of learning and understanding.