Education as a Factory

I really enjoyed the video of Sir Ken Robinson. My favorite portion is where Sir Robinson stated that our education system is in need of revolution, not reform. I delved into this a bit in my other discussion posts this week as well as in my Learning Manifesto from the first course. I am in full agreement with Sir Robinson on this point, and most of the points he made in the video. Our education system was created to function akin to a factory, which is entirely inadequate for the human factor involved. Not all humans are the same, unlike the machine parts that may be manufactured in a factory. I think our learning environments are the root of our human issues, as Sir Robinson pointed out. Although it was humorous, I think there is a lot of merit to his analogy of interviews for kindergarten. We as a people take education very seriously but in the wrong ways. Rather than letter our desire to be well-educated drive us to create new systems of learning, they drive us to push our children to adhere to the education system already in place. We tell our children to work harder or study longer versus asking what really needs to change about the system.

What can we do to change the system? I think adopting a mantra such as COVA is an excellent place to start. Children need an element of choice in their education for any learning to be genuine and I believe that technology is the perfect place for it. Today's technology can take what was previously a boring textbook and convert it to a visual experience, having materials read to you (auditory) or testing them out in virtual reality (kinesthetic). Given the advanced technology that is readily available in the developed world, there should be a strong personalized avenue for learning and perhaps we can be the catalysts in our own environments.

References:

Robinson, K. (2010). Bring on the learning revolution. [Video file] Retrieved from https://youtu.be/r9LelXa3U_I