Critical Response to Ken Robinson's ideas

In response to Ken Robinson

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Ken Robinson describes a part of our brain’s intelligence that was often overlooked by educationists. I believe his theories on creativity and how public education kills it is true. But, I also disagree with Ken Robinson on certain aspects of his theory and specific parts of his solution to the crisis.

I support Ken Robinson’s view on the creativity of children and agree that public education shape them into non-characteristic beings. Especially on how the today’s society forces special students whose talents shine too bright to be reshaped into the same tuna cans everywhere. I believe this to be an oppression of the minority by the majority. In this case, standardized tests and diplomas are used as the main tools in forcing people with different talents than the majority to forfeit such a talent and adopt the ‘right’ skills. Through this procedure, the society limits itself from using minorities of the society who possess unique gifts that would have otherwise enriched the society and thereby make such students ‘losers’ of the society. Hence, I share Ken Robinson’s concern on the absence of critical discussion on this issue and call for changes that recognize differently talented students as well.

Yet, I also have problems with Ken Robinson. His lecture is concentrated too much on students who are gifted in areas of dance, drama, and other such arts. Yes, there certainly is a problem with the status quo. But, the area he touches is all ready touched by others who had similar ideas with him and therefore is thrown spotlight all ready. Also, even in the traditional system of education where students are ‘mined for purposes’, the fields he focus on have institutions around the globe with the purpose of studying and exploring the fields. Rather, I feel that a call for bridged study is more important. The self created term ‘bridged study’ is applying the concept of consilience to teenage students. At first, this might seem unnecessary and impractical since teenage students are supposed to be building their academic background on all fields of study while consilience is needed due to isolation of individual fields. Nonetheless, when we pay attention to Ken Robinson’s words ‘mined for purpose’ we realize that actually, teenage students are not educated as broad as they are supposed to. In reality, students are trained from an early stage of development to acquire skills that are deemed ‘useful’ in their career. To illustrate, students learn Chinese and not Tibetan since Chinese skills are expected to come in handy when dealing with tasks related to world economy and politics whereas Tibetan is not expected to be needed in almost all parts of life. This is in the same lines with Ken Robinson’s claim that subjects that were more valuable in the industrial society were given more emphasis than less useful subjects. Therefore, by applying consilience to junior highs and high schools, we can solve the problem of certain fields of study being undervalued and also prevent students gifted in those fields from becoming ‘losers’. Furthermore, I believe this option to be a more valid one than Ken Robinson’s on the basis of practicality.

Lastly, I want to comment on Ken Robinson’s ignorance of the environmental setting in general as an important factor for students’ education. By including the influence of the environment in which students learn, Ken Robinson’s claims can become more persuasive. I would recommend him on researching the relevance between students’ creativity and the nature.