Sir Ken Robinson - Education's Death Valley

• Education is not based on diversity but conformity
• Schools are encouraged to do is find out what kids can do across a very narrow spectrum of achievement
• A real education has to give equal weight to the arts, humanities, PE etc.
• If you sit kids down hour after hour doing low grade clerical work don’t be surprised if they start to fidget
• Children are not for the most part suffering from a mental condition, they’re suffering from childhood
• Kids prosper best with a broad curriculum that celebrates their various talents
• If you can light the spark of curiosity in a child, they will learn without any prompting
• Great teachers don’t only pass on information, they are their to stimulate, provoke, engage, motivate, mentor
• Testing is important but they should not be the dominate culture of education - they should be diagnostic, they should help
• Excite the power of curiosity and imagination
• Finland have a very broad approach to education
• Little standardised testing
• No drop out rate - if people are in trouble we get support for them

This TED Talks by Sir Ken Robinson struck a note with me and my philosophy. I am constantly asking myself "Am I doing enough?" "Are these kids going to show enough progress?" "Who decides who that enough is?"

I think, at the end of the day, I KNOW that my kids are engaged and motivated. Sure, their behaviour leaves a little to be desired some days and I feel like I'm tearing all of my hair out other days because everything they have learnt one week, they have forgotten the next week but at the end of it all, my kids are learning SOMETHING. Which is better than what they came with in Term 1.

Yet, those questions till hound me every night... "Why are they not learning this skill?" "How else can I teach them to chunk words, until they just do it?" "Why did this child show this behaviour today?" "Why has this child done NO work, despite all of my best efforts? What am I missing?" It seems like for every new thing that my kids learn and understand and retain, it is a small celebration and then something else takes the place of this thing that they have just learnt, which is just as important for them to learn before next year. I think this is a cause for a lot of my stress and insecurity when working with this group of children, at this target level, with so SO much further to go.