Ken Robinson is a teacher-basher: schools must stop listening to his Panglossian ideas
The implication of the so-called gurus ideas about schools is that teachers are complicit in a system designed to beat the love of learning out of children, writes one English teacher and research-lead
Sir Ken Robinson reiterated the claim that children are naturally disposed to learn and that its the construct of school that beats a love to learn out of students. He went on to note... that the problems tend to arise when kids go to school because the deeper they get in, the more they start to lose interest. Based on this talk, one journalist made the claim that kids dont fail, schools fail kids.
At the heart of his argument is a canny bit of sophistry: its not schools and teachers that are to blame but rather its the system thats to blame. The implication here is that teachers are either mindless automatons unable to think for themselves, fooled by an evil system into inadvertently beating a love of learning out of students, or we are complicit in the system forcing kids to guzzle down the neoliberal Kool Aid while laughing demonically as they struggle.
My experience of being a full-time teacher in various schools (something Sir Ken has never been, by the way) is that teachers are not beating a love of learning out of students but are working themselves to near-exhaustion to furnish kids with the kinds of knowledge and skills that will allow them to not just pass exams but also to flourish as human beings.
Despite this, working teachers are constantly bashed by "experts" who have little experience of being a teacher or school leader themselves and who deal in the nebulous rather than the specific, exhorting "creativity", "inspiration" or something "21st-century" without actually giving any concrete alternatives.
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