Learning Link, 104

A riveting talk about changing educational paradigms, by a master educator:  Sir Ken Robinson.

Robinson says, "Our best salvation is to  develop this capacity for imagination and to do it systematically through public education and to connect people with their true talents.  We simply can't afford this devastation any more."

On the current prevalence of the ADHD  diagnosis and the drugs used to medicate the condition:   "The arts...and science, and  math....especially  address the idea of aesthetic experience... one in which your senses are operating at their peak, when you're present in the current moment, when you're resonating with the excitement of this thing that you're experiencing, when you are fully alive.  An anesthetic is when you shut your senses off and  deaden yourself to what's happening.  And a lot of these drugs are that: we're getting our children through education by anesthetizing them, and I think we should be doing the exact opposite---we shouldn't be putting them to sleep, we should be waking them up to what they have inside of themselves."

and   "If you're interested in the model of learning, you don't start from this production line mentality....we have to question what we take for granted".

Amazing stuff.  Listen to the whole thing, here.