Ted talk analysis

In 2013, Ken Robinson delivered a TED talk called “How to escape education's death valley” in which he discussed why our education system is failing in the United States.  

              

Ken Robinson (educator) giving his Ted talk.

At the beginning of his talk, Robinson captures the audience’s attention by introducing a humorous stereotype about Americans. He says that when he first arrived in America, he heard from numerous sources outside the U.S. that Americans do not understand irony. Before he loses the interest of the audience, he then relates that stereotype to an act of legislation passed in the United States called “No Child Left Behind”. He said that when he came across this act of legislation, it was evident to him that whoever thought of that title definitely understands irony, because it is actually leaving millions of children behind. In fact, the no child left behind act is doing more damage than it is good.

         He then explains why the no child left behind act doesn’t work, and he does this in a way that is very relatable to the audience. He first asks how many of them have children, which is the vast majority of the crowd. He then asks how many of them have more than one child. Many of the audience members responded even still. He very cleverly pointed out that if you have two children, or even know two different children, then you know that they are very diverse no matter how closely related they are. This is what is wrong with the no child left behind program, because it assumes that all children conform to certain standards, which are measurable by standardized tests. The standardized tests only collect data from a narrow spectrum of abilities; math and reading are the subjects that are primarily focused on. Since the tests do not measure a child’s artistic ability or their physical ability, schools have simply stopped teaching these skills.

A quote about art education from Robinson's talk.

      Since schools have stopped teaching the arts altogether, that brings Robinson to another point. What effect does this have on the children? It can’t be doing any good, because he mentions dropout rates being as high as 60% in some areas of the U.S. More importantly though, the blame is being placed on psychological disorders instead of where it rightfully belongs. In the last decade, there has been what Robinson describes as an “epidemic” of ADHD. He then goes on to explain that there is nothing wrong with the children, they are just not able to sit stationary all day and pay attention as adults do. He adds humor to this by saying “Children are not, for the most part, suffering from a psychological disorder; they are suffering from childhood. I know this because I spent my early life as a child, I went through the whole thing.” Art and physical activity gives children an outlet for their energy and creativity; it has also been proven to improve math scores. So why has it been removed from our education system?

          Robinson hypothesizes that in the United States, we treat education like a machine. We think that if we have better ways of measurement, or better information that learning will increase. That is not the way education works. He compares education instead to an organic system, because there are seeds readily available just waiting for the right conditions in order to sprout and grow. The current classroom conditions are causing children to become bored and dislike school. He ends his talk with another memorable quote from Benjamin Franklin "All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move." He follows the quote with a call to action by saying that we need to encourage people to move; if we can encourage enough people to move we will then have a movement, and if the movement is strong enough then we will have a revolution. He says that a revolution is what we need, and I believe that he is absolutely right.