Sunday, January 29, 2012

Pre-Assignment 1: A Reflection on Sir Kenneth Robinson’s Changing Education Paradigms

Reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

As a kindergarten teacher, I work each day with geniuses.  At least, according to Sir Ken Robinson, I do.  He states that when given a test on divergent thinking, 98% of kindergarten students in a particular study scored at the genius level.  As they became older and more educated, the rates of genius went down.  This begs the question, “How do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century?”  Clearly the traditional system is failing.  One challenge is that we do not know what the economies of the 21st century will even look like.  Preparing my kindergarten students today for the economy of today will not help them twenty years from now when they enter an entirely different workforce.

Sir Ken Robinson argues that traditional education systems are based on the factory model of the industrial age: bells, hours, subjects and age.  This belief was also reiterated by Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs in her keynote address, at the Tri-Association Conference in Panama City this past year.  She argued that we are using a 19th century factory schedule and a 20th century curriculum on a 21st century learner.  We are preparing our students for 1982!  Our challenge here is how to we even begin to address this backwards model?

Education needs a huge reform in order to bring teaching and learning to the 21st century through an aesthetic lens.  When approached as a whole, this is a daunting and seemingly impossible task.  What one thing can you do, today, to help your students for the economies of tomorrow?  Teach them how to think and create so that they can adapt easily to economic changes.

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