"The purpose of education is to focus on the culture of schools", says Sir Ken Robinson during his keynote on Day 1 of the recent EduTECH 2014 conference.
Along with 5199 other educators I sat in the dark of the Brisbane Convention Centre at 4:15 pm waiting for what (I'll be honest) I expected to be the absolute highlight of the conference. 90 minutes later I, along with most others in the auditorium, rose to give him a standing ovation. It was an incredible experience to listen to such a wonderful story teller.
Now - the messages? Well, there were some of the old ones. Creativity, industrial schools and the like. But the context had changed a little from the past. He spoke passionately about the current obsession with PISA results and their use as a ranking system. He is perfectly correct when he observes that education policy is now as important as defence policies in many western governments. He rolls out some incredibly powerful graphical representations of the changes in population growth in general, and the shifts from rural to urban in many of the big cities of the world. LA and Sao Paulo were particularly impressive with the scary growth that has happened there over the past 50 - 75 or so years.
Back the culture of schools as important. He talked at length about the nature of agriculture and the shifts in farming as industrialisation really kicked in. The shifts from diversity in the local farming area to one where mass production of crops, aided by machines and fertiliser, had changed the landscape (and the land). He spoke of the problems of soil health and disease that easily results from this type of farming, and a major response to this move has been to see organic farming increase in importance. Where if you get the conditions right (get the soil right) then diverse growth happens.
He talks of the 4 principals of culture: diversity, ecology, fairness and care.
He says that growth comes from beneath (and he shows a great visual of a tree to support this). He makes the point that politicians are usually only passing through, and very little of what they do will stick. Teachers must make the difference - the revolution must come from the ground up.
He urges teachers and educators to see the world through the eyes of students. Move towards more organic education. Move away from the battery hen format of curriculum and assessment to organic and free range.
He ends with two short videos - one that has been on Sunday (or 60 minutes) recently - the Landfill Orchestra and one from a school that I didn't quite catch - but was in the Middle East and looked at kids responses to the same task that had been worded differently. It was something around giving kids a partially completed drawing (in fact it only had a triangle in it) but one group of students was given the image with the instruction: "complete the house". The other was given the instruction : "complete the image". The difference between the outputs of the students was astounding. [I must find that video somewhere!]
I'll leave you with this short clip from Sir Ken's keynote. I hope more of it appears online in the coming weeks. It was an honour and a privilege to listen. It as the fastest 90 minutes of being "lectured" I have ever witnessed.
Sir Ken Robinson at EduTECH 2014 from EducationHQ on Vimeo.
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