Slow-coach that I am, I only just came across the internet sensation which is Ken Robinson’s (first) TED talk. I have a few ‘issues’ with TED, but you can’t deny the talks are good – and despite the perhaps occasionally questionable humour, I think this one is worth watching. I think all of his points about Education are well made, and the point about the system being designed to produce Professors hit home with me – because I love English and doing what I do, but in my heart I’m a musician, and a marine biologist, and an astronaut.
It occurs to me to say a couple of other things about this talk – it makes sense to keep things brief, because I don’t know much about Educational policy. I have (strong) opinions, but as Sir Ken’s opening section reminds us, so does everyone. Nothing distinguishes mine. However, it occurs to me to make these two points based on personal experience: firstly, that if public education is geared towards the production of university professors, it’s interesting that becoming (and remaining) one is so extraordinarily difficult financially (at least within the humanities sector). Perhaps this points to an interesting gap between education and economics? Secondly, a lot of Sir Ken’s arguments have some resonances with my own work – this idea of diverse specialism, of a polymathic society, of the section connecting the two halves of the brain. This is to put my spin on things egregiously, but it seems to me like a lot of the subtext of this discussion is to do with connection across boundaries – with celebrating those connections rather than restricting ourselves to the narrower view.
There’s more here, and its a fundamentally interesting and important issue which hopefully I can return to ‘officially’ at some point. ‘Officially’. Now isn’t that interesting?
Will Tattersdill
I’d be really interested in hearing what people think about the changes in policy in Higher Education being brought in by the coalition government too.. on a related but different subject to Will’s blog post. There’s going to be an announcement by Vince Cable tomorrow that could make quite a difference to Universities in the UK.