Sir Ken Robinson considers what a revolution in education might look like. His declared goal is to eliminate drop-out in schools, but the ideas may be universally applicable to all kinds of disengagement.
“Standardized tests have a place. But they should not be the dominant culture of education. They should be diagnostic. They should help . . . But all that should support learning. It shouldn’t obstruct it, which of course it often does. So in place of curiosity, what we have is a culture of compliance. Our children and teachers are encouraged to follow routine algorithms rather than to excite that power of imagination and curiosity.”
“The real role of leadership in education — and I think it’s true at the national level, the state level, at the school level — is not and should not be command and control. The real role of leadership is climate control, creating a climate of possibility. And if you do that, people will rise to it and achieve things that you completely did not anticipate and couldn’t have expected.”