2nd draft of my critical response to Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk (2nd version)

[The yes and no to an idea, an idea we need]

         Ken Robinson describes a part of our brain’s intelligence that was often overlooked by educationists. His theories on creativity and how public education kills it is valid and very true to both the current and future society. But, I also disagree with Ken Robinson on 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.

             Another problem Ken Robinson does a good job in illustrating is the problem of inflation of diplomas. As he said himself, ‘When I was young, if you had a degree, you had a job’. And that might be true even now for some countries, countries where selection of the talented happens once they are in the education system. But, countries where entrance equals a diploma, the inflation is perhaps worse than the economic crisis in Europe these days. The problem here is that because there are too many people with the same quality of degree, it is difficult for employers to distinguish who is the better candidate for a job. Therefore, more competitive and ambitious people would go on the graduate school. Then, the same happens to graduate school and so on until there is no place to move on. In the near future, we might randomly choose ten people out of a crowded train station and nine would declare himself or herself to be doctorate educated. In such a society, a degree is no longer guarantees a job as Ken Robinson said.

             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’.

Meanwhile, Ken Robinson’s solution to the inflation of diplomas also contains logical contradictions. Ken Robinson suggests that the current education system is still based on the enlightenment period. It is true in certain aspects, for instance with the mining of children, best described by Ken Robinson’s words—‘and then we focus on their head, and slightly to one side’. Nonetheless, drastic changes happened to the education paradigm throughout the scores of years in between. A core change was the transition from elite education to the orthodox-egalitarian education. This transition is what enabled all willing students to achieve a degree and therefore provoked the inflation today. Even though there is a clear problem with the current situation as both Ken Robinson and I pointed out, there were also problems with ‘raising the standard of education’; Ken Robinson’s voting for it. Ergo, simply a return to the elite education is not the solution. Instead, a mixture of the egalitarian paradigm on the primary level and a modified elite learning system at the higher level seems more credible.  

             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 to research the relevance between students’ creativity and the nature.

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