Ken Robinson on Education (AKA why we’re homeschooling)

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(Sorry for the false post earlier. I accidentally hit publish.)

I’ve mentioned before that we have decided to homeschool our oldest daughter. While in her particular case, the primary problem was the general disregard of her level since she wasn’t jeopardizing the results of the standardized tests that public schools are obsessed about.

I recently ran across two presentations of Sir Ken Robinson at the TED conference. The first is from 2006 and was an observation of children’s innovation and creativity and how that is trained out of them as they work through the system:

He again presented just earlier this year with additional thoughts the subject:

He recommends revolution of education system and not evolution. I couldn’t agree more. While I hope that those involved in the system (at all levels) take these thoughts to heart, but until things change significantly, I don’t think we’ll be alone in finding our home as the best place to learn.

But I’m a Night Owl

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Since I was a teenager, I’ve always stayed up late. Working over 50 miles away from home leaves me to not wanting to spend any more time in traffic than I need to. As a result, I head in to work early in the morning to beat the majority of traffic. That requires me to get up early to be able to get in early. No biggie, I’ve been doing it for years and it works out great. The problem is, I like staying up late. Having to get up so early for work, I only get the chance to do that on the weekends. That makes Monday mornings particularly challenging.

In addition to that, I’ve noticed that while I typically only get about 6 1/2 hours of sleep a night, the times I get 7 or 8 hours leaves me feeling more tired rather than more refreshed. Sleep studies have long busted the concept that 8 hours is required for everyone. Different people need different amounts so it isn’t terribly surprising that I generally get by with less.

Studies have also suggested that keeping the same sleep schedule helps which leads me to an experiment. For the next month, I’m going to get up at my normal time seven days a week. I’m not thrilled with the idea about getting up earlier than I need to, but this could work out well. Heck, the last time I did something like this I greatly reduced my Google Reader, Facebook, and Twitter consumption so part of me is looking forward to it, kinda.

I’m getting smarter by the minute

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While I believe that someone’s intelligence should be measured by the amount of useful information they possess, insight to their character can be determined by the amount and type of useless information they can recall. I’m not sure where I rank on the first measure, though to be well-rounded, I do occasionally need to work on the useless part. Fortunately, one of my podcasts, The Podcast About Nothing by Jimmy Jett, highlighted a source of Unnecessary Knowledge. I’ll be all set for the next lull in a conversation.

Here are some examples from a few minutes of studying:

  • More than 10 percent of all the salt produced annually in the world is used to de-ice American roads. (#2588)
  • Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite. (#114)
  • The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they can be easily confused at a crime scene. (#557)
  • The verb “cleave” is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate. (#51)