Sir Ken Robinson – Do Schools Kill Creativity?

As soon as a friend or acquaintance becomes interested in education, it is not long before they send me Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk: Do Schools Kill Creativity? Accompanied with subject-lines like ‘Been kept up all night by this…’ or ‘SO TRUE!!’.

Once a fellow believer, my short time in education has convinced me of the utter falsehood of his position, and the troubles that result from this sort of thinking. As the talk is representative of much progressive thinking on education, I thought it would be helpful to point out what I believe to be the three most glaring errors:

1. The ‘Unpredictability’ Argument

KR:

“If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue…what the world will look like in five years’ time. And yet we’re meant to be educating them for it. So the unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary.”

This statement is not so much wrong; it has simply been true of education forever. It was as true in 1911, in regard to 1965, as it is true today. It reveals a common mistaken belief that the pace of technological change is now so fast that knowledge is out-of-date almost as soon as it has been learned. It’s a popular stick with which to bash academic education – with such an uncertain future, why learn Latin etc?

It is the assumptions, rather than the point itself, that are troubling. Instead of boring, outdated knowledge, they argue, we should teach students ‘dispositions’,  ‘habits of mind’, and ‘aptitudes’ that will help them in the future. What are these dispositions? Dubious abstract nouns – creativity, innovativeness, team-work, problem-solving – that are as hard to define as they are to teach.

2. Anti-academia

KR:

“At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts. There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think math is very important, but so is dance.”

You can’t be a respected educational progressive without beating up on Maths. Guy Claxton devoted a whole chapter to it. A moment’s thought should reveal the strangeness of this line of argument. There are many competing definitions for the ‘purpose of education’ (to transfer knowledge from one generation to the next; to help increase GNP; to have an educated democratic citizenry; to alleviate social inequality – to name a few). None would allow for Dance to have equal-footing with Maths.

But that is to miss the point. Because like most arguments put forward by education progressives, they are fighting a battle that they have already won. There is dance in schools – to the exclusion of academic education. And at the same time: there is less Maths. We have plummeted in the PISA league tables in Maths. And frankly who’s surprised when Maths, as conceived by the National Curriculum, is defined like this: “mathematics provides opportunities to promote spiritual development, through helping pupils obtain an insight into the infinite, and through explaining the underlying mathematical  principles behind some of the beautiful natural forms and patterns in the world around us.”

3. Educational Romanticism about Talent

KR:

“All kids have tremendous talents, and we squander them…ruthlessly.”

The first half of this statement is Robinson as the father in The Talented Mr. Ripley: “every man must have a talent, Mr. Ripley. What’s yours?” Except that: it’s not true. Most teachers you speak to will admit it – there are some children who do not have tremendous talents. The problem with the current system is not a pessimism about the potential of children, but the reverse: a crazed optimism, an “Educational Romanticism” in Charles Murray’s words, that refuses to discern between the varying abilities of children.

As a result, those who do have tremendous talents are not allowed – whether it is through grammar schools or other selective means – to realize that talent; and those who have less academic talent are not given opportunities to learn the sorts of valuable skills at secondary schools that will enable them to lead valued lives.

James Paul Gee

I recently came across James Paul Gee through David Smith. He is exactly what I was looking for: an eloquent champion of the beneficial role of computer games in learning.

You can see him in two great talks here and here. Wikipedia entry here.

Three points that resonated:

  • “School is all manual and no game.” A Professor of linguistics before becoming interested in gaming, JPG argues for the existence of “situated meaning”. Anything we read, he says, makes much more sense if we can relate it to an experience, image, idea, action or argument we’ve already had. (His comparison is with computer game manuals – they only become useful after you’ve played the game for a bit). Most children do not connect with textbooks not because they can’t make sense of the phonics [aside: I had the enriching pleasure to see Margaret Snowling talk about phonics last week] but because the books’ specialist language doesn’t connect with anything out of which children can make meaning.
  • Assessment. As JPG says, you don’t need to test a player who has completed the most difficult level of Halo on his Halo-playing skills: the assessment is built into the game. His argument is that there must be some means of mimicking this design when designing, for instance, algebra-learning courses. Would it not be possible for students to only qualify for a more challenging level once they defeated the last, in a way that was built into the whole learning process – and without the endless annual trauma of exams.
  • Problem-solving. In just a few comments, JPG brings a breath of fresh air to the turgid knowledge vs. skills debate currently boring the UK. Facts about Science/ French vocab items/ History dates are putting so many children off because, despite teachers’ vigorous assertions to the contrary, they can’t see them as tools. In well-designed games, knowledge is realized as tools. To quote JPG more fully:

“School is locked into content-fetish. It’s all about facts. Biology is the 1200 facts somebody in Biology discovered. Memorise 1100 and get ’em on paper – you pass Biology. [But] Biology, Physics, Chemistry ARE NOT FACTS; they are problems to be solved. And Biologists, Chemists and Physicists use facts as tools to solve these problems, and once they’ve used them again and again, they can’t be forgotten.”

I have one criticism so far:

  • This is a little unfair, as I have only got about fifty pages through it, but I can’t understand JPG’s unbridled support for Marc Prensky’s Don’t Bother Me Mom I’m Learning. The splurge of exclamation marks (+15 per page in some parts) is off-putting; the lack of footnotes unsettling. The hysterically partisan style (chapters are titled with scammy phrases like “But Wait – What About All That Bad Stuff I Hear About In The Press”) is what really put me off, though. Once I’ve finished the book, I hope to post more, but I get the feeling that this stuff is only going to convince the massively-sceptical wider population if its approach is cautious and substantiated with sound, academic arguments.

Tutoring: A fresh debate

I’ve just finished an article on tuition, and am boldly looking for a publisher!

I thought I’d share it here:

Tutoring: a fresh debate.

Private tuition has entered the national conversation. For long a rather mysterious operation, the media has woken up to its rapid growth – especially after the Sutton Trust showed that 43% of children nationally had received private tuition. This openness in the media is both symptom and cause of a similar openness amongst parents. No longer a whispered secret, recommendations and warnings about certain tutors and agencies are now regularly swapped outside the school gates.

Regrettably, this openness has led to very little debate on the merits and demerits of tuition – or much analysis as to why parents are seeking it in such droves. Some commentators have seen in tuition a desire to recapture the cosy world of governesses and nurseries. Others have reached, inevitably, for the recession as a possible explanation – either that a place in a good school is even more essential in the long march to the furiously-competitive job market, or that tuition is parents’ compensation for choosing state education. Where are the considerations of its impact on learning, or the larger questions posed by its rise?

So: do children (or some children) learn better as a result of a one-on-one tutoring? What sort of learning goes on one-on-one? The answer is that you can regulate the learning in a very specific way: whether you’re looking for focused troubleshooting (fractions, decimals) – or a deeper exploration (“why do we have cases in Latin?”), the form is flexible to the content. The former is the most popular, and areas of misunderstanding (sometimes layered up over years of confusion) can be quickly unblocked with a good tutor. For some subjects and topics in particular, such as Maths and Languages, this creates something of a delicious learning environment. There’s no hiding in tuition, no slouching at the back of the class hoping that you wont be asked a question. Many parents talk about the benefits tuition delivers for self-esteem. It is not difficult to see why, when students are given the opportunity to learn in an environment where questions can be unlimited – and where it is okay to be wrong.

Continue reading “Tutoring: A fresh debate”

Repetition

I’ve recently moved house, and for the first time have all my books in one place. This evening was one of the first chances I have had to actually make use of them. I re-read some dog-eared passages from Richard Sennett’s amazing, rambling book The Craftsman.

I’m glad I re-discovered this passage – a defence of repetition:

We should be suspicious of claims for innate, untrained talent. “I could write a good novel if only I had the time” or “if only I could pull myself together” is usually a narcissist’s fantasy. Going over an action again and again, by contrast, enables self-criticism. Modern education fears repetitive learning as mind-numbing. Afraid of boring children, avid to present ever-different stimulation, the enlightened teacher may avoid routine – but thus deprive children of the experience of studying their own ingrained practice and modulating it from within.”

I particularly agree with reference to a subject like Latin – so much of the joy of what Mary Beard calls the “command and control” of Latin comes from the pencil-breaking frustration of all those mistakes – all that self-correcting – early on.

Role of Teacher in 21st Century?

I quite like this from David Price’s blog today, about the role of the teacher in the future:

Imparter of Knowledge, Guide and Personal Search Engine

The last most of all, though. It seems to have gone pretty unnoticed that teachers are strictly not gatekeepers of knowledge these days – rather, they are the sifters, the qualifiers, the challengers of that knowledge.

Jan Sramek and Racing Towards Excellence

We’ve been having some very interesting meetings with the team from Racing Towards Excellence. They seem to share some of our concerns about the provision for quality, impartial careers advice in schools today.

For the purposes of this post, I wanted to quote a bit from Jan Sramek (the co-author’s) introduction to the book – in which he discusses his own education. Those with especially good memories might remember the small ripples of controversy caused by his astonishing A-level results: 10 A’s.

To Jan:

What was remarkable during those formative years of my life was my parents’ ability to create an inspiring environment where outperformance was natural, rather than expected. The pressure was non-existent, replaced by an almost implicit understanding that I would go on to do great things…

…My parents’ thinking on parenting and education [were] progressive for the time and place [the Czech Republic]..My chores as a child were very light to non-existent, as was any intervention from either of them into how I spent my free time. This allowed me to spend much of it studying what I wanted to study, rather than what others thought I should study.

The idea of naturalizing a habit of mind resonates very much with comments I’ve heard from Matthew Taylor about this. There is obviously cross-over with Outliers too on the role of upbringing for future “outperformance” status, even if Jan’s 10,000 hours remains in doubt.

The Traveling School

I came across a student of the Traveling School on holiday this summer. I had been initially struck by how much she enthused about her education, and was fascinated to hear about this project.

In their own words:

The Traveling School started in the Spring of 2000 with a revolutionary concept generated by a group of high school girls and their teacher, Gennifre Hartman.

“What if,” one asked. “What if there was a school that traveled around the world while we still kept up-to-date with our classes?”

“What if,” asked another. “What if it was all-girls so that we could just hang out and be ourselves?”

“What if,” asked a third. “What if it was for a single-semester so we could go back to school and still be able to go to prom and participate in a regular high school?”

As a teacher, Hartman thought, “What if all of the classes were about the areas where we are traveling to expose the girls to inspiring, authentic learning in a genuine setting?”

They described a school with an educational format that gives students an alternative to traditional education for a single semester during their high school careers. This group of confident, intelligent, inquisitive young women described a program for girls, a program with overseas exploration, a program with strong academics, a program with an emphasis on outdoor skills development, and a program that would offer scholarships.

It chimes nicely with some of the work we’re doing on students talking about – and shaping – their own education. I ran an evening workshop last year for 11-14 year olds, and the suggestions were staggeringly creative: pupils to be assessed on how many questions they asked etc.

More evidence for the case that students respond better to work that is led by their own curiosity and therefore, above all, feels relevant.

Michael Gove and the return to ‘chalk-and-talk’

I would really urge watching Michael Gove at the RSA on ‘What education is for’. There’s quite some possibility that this talk will act as one of the first big salvos in what is shaping up to be an increasingly divisive debate between the parties on education ahead of the General Election.

It has galvanised certain bloggers into action, to be sure. This post was emailed to me: it packs some important and convincing punches, but it is the tone – unbridled concern – that is the most noteworthy.

This paragraph is good:

No, for the purposes of this diatribe, let’s just focus on his spurious argument that not teaching history in chronological order, and depriving kids access to Cicero and Wagner is some social injustice, perpetrated through the ‘tyranny of relevance’. First, it’s a fallacy that ‘relevance’ automatically means hip-hop, Carol Ann Duffy, and pandering to what kids like, rather than ‘the very best of what has been thought and written’.

Matthew Taylor could well become one of the forefront commentators in this education debate, and his plea (best expressed here) that the debate is an open one without recourse to knee-jerk reactions is surely one we should all support: and is why I have set up this blog. His open letter to Michael Gove, still unanswered to the best of my knowledge, raises such important questions, and is posted below. These are the inferences that Matthew Taylor draws from Michael Gove’s talk – what education is for, in conservative eyes:

1. Curriculum content should contain the classical canon of history, literature and scientific knowledge and we should pull back from seeking to make content more relevant to the contemporary concerns and lives of young people. Young people should be discouraged from pursuing newer or non traditional subjects like media studies, which are not seen as credible by the best universities.

2. The curriculum should be delivered though traditional subject disciplines and not through approaches emphasising cross cutting themes and competencies, such as, for example, the RSA’s Opening Minds.

3. (Something I heard emphasised by your number two, Nick Gibb), the practice of the best schools shows traditional chalk and talk forms of pedagogy are superior to practical, project based, forms of learning.

4. Schools should focus much more on the core activity of imparting knowledge. Children’s wider development is best enhanced through extra curricular activities such as schools clubs and societies but not through ‘teaching’ life skills or well-being.

5. Schools should be institutions that are primarily or even exclusively about learning and should not be required to engage in the wider delivery of children’s or community services.

6. Rather than blurring the divide between academic and vocational learning we should assert it, with, for example, 14-19 Diplomas restricted to vocational content.

7. Implicitly, strategies to widen participation in learning should not include developing forms of content and levels of assessment which enable more children to succeed: more should rise to the bar, the bar shouldn’t be moved to allow more to jump it.

Video Games and Children: first salvo

I’m going to start fondly at home: with dysTalk.

Last October, Tom Maher gave a talk for us on Video Games and Children. It was an elegant and convincing argument against their use from the perspective of a teacher, and shall form a perfect opening for our debate.

His allegations:

1. They take up children’s time and make them exhausted.

2. They affect children’s capacity to learn by encouraging in them a desire for “immediate response.” The assumption is that because children can change screen when they’re bored gaming – and can’t when bored in class – they are less likely to have the resilience of attention needed to stick at trickier topics/subjects.

His suggestions are moderate – and surely sensible:

1. A more comprehensive debate with the industry, a la the film industry and the junk food industry.

2. More awareness for parents as to the issues; and that computer games be brought out of the bedroom and into a family room.

Benjamin Franklin’s education

I’m re-reading John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education, a rollicking read, and feel compelled to quote the passages on Benjamin Franklin’s education. Frustratingly, JTG is quite footnote-shy so I’m going to have to take his word for it.

Indirectly, this provides early anecdotal evidence for the key role parents play in a child’s upbringing. As Gatto says, “A major part of Franklin’s early education consisted of studying father Josiah, who turns out, himself, to be a pretty fair example of education without schooling”.

This is on Franklin’s pop:

He had an excellent constitution…very strong…ingenious…could draw prettily…skilled in music…a clear pleasing voice…played psalm tunes on his violin…a mechanical genius…sound understanding…solid judgment in prudential matters, both private and public affairs. In the latter, indeed, he was never employed, the numerous family he had to educate and the straitness of his circumstances keeping him close to his grade; but I remember well his being frequently visited by leading people, who consulted him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of the church…and showed a great deal of respect for his judgment and advice…frequently chosen an arbitrator between contending parties.

This bit is brilliant too; again about Franklin snr:

At his table he liked to have as often as he could some sensible friend or neighbor to converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds of his children. By this means he turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life; and little or no notice was ever taken of what related to the victuals on the table…I was brought up in such perfect inattention to those matters as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me.

The rest of Gatto’s chapter on Franklin is well worth reading; his conclusion will do for now:

Josiah drew, he sang, he played violin—this was a tallow chandler with sensitivity to those areas in which human beings are most human; he had an inventive nature (“ingenious”) which must have provided a constant example to Franklin that a solution can be crafted ad hoc to a problem if a man kept his nerve and had proper self-respect. His good sense, recognized by neighbors who sought his judgment, was always within earshot of Ben. In this way the boy came to see the discovery process, various systems of judgment, the role of an active citizen who may become minister without portfolio simply by accepting responsibility for others and discharging that responsibility faithfully.