Sir Ken Robinson’s latest TED talk about educational reform.  Get a coffee and spend 17 minutes being inspired.

And if ‘education’ isn’t your thing… substitute it with ‘church’.

Last night I was at an open evening at my kid’s primary school.  Their work was on display and I was finding out what the ‘not much’ and ‘nothing’ they do all day is.

Two things struck me.  The first that there seems to be little room for initiative.  I mean real initiative beyond using a  different colour for something.  Castles, islands, knights, maps… all slightly different but essentially the same.

You get good marks for meeting the set criteria.

Seth Godin talks about this:

Compliance is simple to measure, simple to test for and simple to teach. Punish non-compliance, reward obedience and repeat.

Initiative is very difficult to teach to 28 students in a quiet classroom. It’s difficult to brag about in a school board meeting. And it’s a huge pain in the neck to do reliably.

Schools like teaching compliance. They’re pretty good at it.

On the wall in each class was a chart asking parents the elements they think should be present to make the school a successful learning environment.

It was an interesting list and I wish I had taken a quick photo of it.  Coherent curriculum, rewarding success, respect, justice….

and also creativity, transferring skills, initiative…

I put my stars there.  But I was almost the only one.  Most parents preferred compliance.

I wonder if church is the same?

‘That’s not how we do that’  ‘That’s so-and-so’s job’  ‘We tried that once and it didn’t work’  ‘This is what the parable means’

Are we teaching compliance?  It is easier after all.

Sir Ken Robinson talks about his new book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything in the film of a talk at the RSA below.The book dropped onto my doormat yesterday morning and I’m really looking forward to reading it.  But for now have a look at a man who has clearly found his passion talking about how others can be helped to find theirs, and why that matters.

For further and probably much more informed thought than you will get here have a read at Ewan’s great post on the issues raised in the book.

Patrick Awuah makes a passionate case for why a liberal arts education is vital to help educate leaders in Ghana.

I think his idea is transferable.  Here in Scotland there are now far too many courses around these days that teach you how to do one thing in one way.  They don’t teach you how to think, to problem solve or to create.  That works if the thing you are trained to do never changes.  But that’s not life as we know it.

Sir Ken Robinson gives a challenging talks on education and creativity to TED.  Go make a cuppa and spend 20min watching.