Dear TCS Community,
Over the weekend, I watched another thought-provoking affirmation of Touchstone’s progressive education—in the form of Sir Ken Robinson’s latest TED talk, “Bring on the Learning Revolution,†filmed in February 2010 in Pasadena and posted in May 2010. Who’s TED, you ask? Actually, it’s a what. In 1984, a number of idea entrepreneurs in California created a conference on Technology, Entertainment, and Design, which morphed into a bank of online, 18-minute presentations—now called TED talks—to spur global thinking about a range of topics. Sir Ken Robinson, a noted British speaker on creativity and education, gave his first TED talk in 2006. This 2010 talk is the follow-up to that presentation.
In his 2010 TED talk, “Bring on the Learning Revolution,†Robinson was sharply critical of the current methods of educating children in America. Too many Americans have little passion for the jobs they do, he said, the result of an educational system that consistently dampens enthusiasm for learning by batch-processing students and by operating on a one-size-fits-all model. Robinson would have us change from an industrial model of education (where input of money, information, and unimaginative teaching methods is supposed to lead in linear fashion to uniformly educated children) to a farming model of education (where we provide the right conditions for growth and let each child blossom in his/her own way). If that were to happen, our students would find their passions rewarded and would find clearer paths to the lifelong rewards of adulthood centered on enjoying much more of their lives and work.
Touchstone is already doing this! We are aligned with Sir Ken’s critique and solution, both in principle and in practice. Here are three recent examples of TCS learning activities that had children’s passion front and center:
–Ginny’s and Tamara’s classes performed a set of rounds for the community meeting last week, under Emily’s direction. When the last one, “Black Socks,†called for audience participation, the enthusiasm of the performers bubbled over into the rest of the gym, and we all looked at black socks in new ways.
–On the Tuesday before our Thanksgiving break, Susan’s class created a multi-sensory learning project on Thanksgiving: sewing period costumes with class parent volunteers, making Thanksgiving dishes from four different eras of American history, and playing colonial games. This event involved adults and children on many different levels and created new connections between them.
–As Katy Aborn explained in her December morning curriculum presentation (or TCS talk), she engaged students in learning about Mesopotamia by asking all of them to research a particular part of the culture that interested them, deliver a lesson, and design an assessment of what others had learned. This ensured a breadth of topics equal to any text, while it also depended on peers learning from each other about their passions.
Sir Ken Robinson believes that the learning revolution cannot wait…and we heartily agree.
Best,
Don Grace, Head of School