Sir Ken Robinson - Changing Paradigms [in education]

"Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson will ask how do we make change happen in education and how do we make it last?"

Here's a shorter, illustrated version that will give you the gist of the above video, if you haven't got 55 minutes:

Changing Education Paradigm from Mike King on Vimeo.

Interesting that I found these just after receiving my books on Leadership Education. Which, frankly I can't wait to sell. What attracted me to the Leadership Education specifically was the phases of learning and that it used age ranges rather than specific standards by specific age. Also, that it seemed perfect for a homeschool application. The use of mentors to inspire the student to embrace the hard work of being educated. And that you can't really "teach" anything, an individual needs to make the decision to "learn". What I didn't like about it was how tied to religion it is, though, to be fair, while the author spoke of his christian religion, he encouraged the reader to use his/her own religion as the foundation of the teaching method. What of us, the religion-less? Sort of Buddhist, but not really, philosophical without a "Book" to use as foundation. Meaning The Bible, Tho Koran, The Torah, etc. The other imperative of the teaching is that in order to learn/teach how to think critically one must use the Classics in order to achieve this lofty goal of being a leader type person. In addition, I was looking for more practical organization of a day, a month, a year, I wasn't looking for praying, pledging to the flag etc. I know I should just be able to find/create a rhythm and make it so, it seems to be the most challenging task for me. Other than my morning coffee and thyroid pill anything is game! That doesn't help bring structure to a day of homeschooling a challenging child. And by challenging, I mean resistant and contrary and down right combative at times.

Since last March, the beginning of our homeschooling experience, I have experience such mixed notions and emotions about what I think our "school" should be for both Coleman and I. On one hand I look at everything the state and federal government say he needs to know and when. Then I think of what he's interested in, what I'm inspired by and can share with that sparkle a teacher needs to have. I question and he questions what he really needs to know, "for real". I worry I'll do him a disservice by not feeding him what is on the books as neccessary learning, and at the same time worry I will kill his curiosity if I feed it to him. (I know it should be about delivery - but if I have to fight him to play a dice game so we can learn the times table - what does that mean. A dice game! What could be more fun to learn math?) Perhaps I'm spending too much time picking this apart and looking for a specific way to do it. This is so darn difficult.

I'm still searching, still think that we're doing the right thing. Not sure how well I'm doing it, but I'm going to work at being better at my job. I'll still search my own thoughts for my own philosophy of education and try to inspire my [brilliant] son to want to learn about things. I guess we could spend the year building weapons or mechanical things and I'd have his attention...hmm...that could actually lead to serious learning.