In education, everyone deserves a chance

I am a huge fan of Sir Ken Robinson, the educational expert. This video has been around for a few years, but it’s well worth another watch.

   Everyone has the potential within them—so we need ways of encouraging this for every life, rather than suppress them in favour of just the three Rs.
   I was blessed to have done well at primary and secondary school, and in my business degree at university, though for the first couple of years at law school, you might say I was a middling student, getting between B-pluses and C-pluses. It was only at 300 level that things began to click.
   I think back to the kids at the so-called bottom of the class at primary. I won’t name my fellow student but there was one who buried his head in his Mission: Impossible annual who I say had a better imagination than most of us. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as strong on the academic stuff. And you think: if only.
   Or, for that matter, Karl Urban, the actor, who really was that talented as a kid, but not in the top three to which our school awarded prizes.
   A small proportion of those who don’t get recognized academically might wind up as internationally fêted actors, with a lot of sheer hard work. But a whole lot get let down at the beginning, even at a really good school, and told they needed to shape up.
   I visit my primary and secondary schools regularly and keep up with their progress, and I am happy to say things are much, much better than in the 1970s and 1980s. There is more recognition of the different styles of learning, and the different strengths of each student. I see more group work and collaboration between students, as well as more extracurricular activities than we ever had. I hope that we don’t have the trend of medicating students as Sir Ken mentions in his talk, and it is very interesting to note that the prescriptions for ADD increase as one moves eastward across the United States (see 3′38″).


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