Praxis Makes Perfect

Much thanks to Arvind and Alex over at 21st Century Learning for having me on their webcast. It was great fun to catch up with a classmate, and shoot the breeze on issues of education, research, and technology.

One of the things we wanted to talk about, but didn’t spend much time on, was this speech by Sir Ken Robinson. Check it out here.

Here are some of my thoughts on the presentation (and I’ll address some of Arvind and Alex’s other questions that we didn’t get to in the webcast in future posts this week): More after the jump.

For educators who attend many of these kinds of speeches, I’d recommend a few strategies for listening to popular speakers or researchers:

1. Realize if the speaker is advocating for a great, broad idea that intuitively makes sense. Mr. Robinson here is advocating for nurturing creativity in our children’s learning. I think most everyone would agree this is desirable!
2. Realize if the speaker is creating false dichotomies to effectively get his point across. Mr. Robinson fears we are creating a new generation of university professors and that those said professors have created the boring, traditional system of schooling that is killing creativity. A bit simplistic, but a popular tactic to make things clearer for the audience.
3. See if the speaker plays on our uncertainties… Yes the future is uncertain, but really is it all that scary? Yes, we don’t know much of anything about Education that is proven and clear (as supposed to say, like in medicine) so does that mean Creativity is THE ANSWER to our ills?
4. Be skeptical when an “expert” says this is what we know about about something… especially if it is about human processes like learning, social interactions etc. etc. etc. It is quite likely that what the experts know is still under fierce debate… there might be compelling evidence, and more of it in favor of one side over another, but it’s hard to say this is what we know.
5. Mr. Robinson’s “what we know about intelligence” is still under debate. On his advocacy of diverse intelligence - does he mean multiple intelligence (MI)? If so, MI is under serious scrutiny in academic circles, even though a huge industry has been built around it in educational practice. There is little evidence that MI really exists… but there is some evidence that a general overall intelligence exists.
6. Read between the lines and come up with your own interpretation… I took Mr. Robinson’s examples of the dancer, who “should’ve been ADHD”, but really just needed to dance… not as an example of multiple intelligence, but as someone who had an affinity for dance. Maybe it might take her longer to master mathematical concepts than someone with an affinity for math, but I think with time, persistent practice, and effort she would…. she just found it enjoyable to persistently develop in dance.
7. Lastly, creativity… what do we do with it? Just from the presentation I felt that Mr. Robinson was specifically advocating for the role of arts in our Education. That is fine. But creativity is also needed and nurtured in traditional academic areas… for example, in problem solving. Innovation happens when we understanding something deeply and figure out novel solutions to the problems we are interested in… this can happen in the math classroom, science classroom, social studies classroom, and everywhere. Creativity is applied in most every situation.