TED Talks are all the rage in today’s North American education world. Since British educational visionary Sir Ken Robinson’s 2006 star turn in “Schools Kill Creativity,“ the short You Tube video talks have become a staple at most provincial teachers’ conferences and local Professional Development Days. Millions of people, mostly futuristic educators, university-educated parents, students, and techies, have lapped up the polished mini-lectures professing to extoll “Ideas Worth Sharing.“ The incredible buzz has fueled expansion of the “TED brand” and sparked mini-conferences around the world taking advantage of the organization’s name and populist appeal.
TED is the brainchild of a futurist. It was founded in 1984 by American architect Richard Saul Wurman as a small “think tank” conference for visionaries and ‘egg heads’ from a wide range of fields interested in talking about the impact of technology on reshaping the world. It’s true roots are in Long Beach, Southern California.
Not until after Chris Anderson assumed control in 2001 did the TED franchise turn into a global intellectual powerhouse. Today TED Talks on video have attracted over 800 million viewings and the average TED video gets 40,000 views withing its first 24 hours. The TED Talk series has made Sir Ken Robinson the reigning “rock star” among North American educators. Now that Vancouver has been chosen the site for the next annual TED Conference, you can expect the hype to spread even more across Canada.
The initial spell cast by the TED Talk phenomenon is beginning to wear off, six years after the real take-off on You Tube. Most recently, The Globe and Mail’s Gary Mason (February 7, 2013) produced a fine commentary posing the fundamental question of whether the “Ideas Worth Sharing” might better be described as “a mountain of new-agey, mumbo-jumbo futurism that promises far more than it delivers.”
Prominent social critics and pedantic academic specialists are beginning to feast on the TED Talks, holding them up to much closer scrutiny. A TED conference costs about $7,500 per person to attend, so the gatherings attract well-healed college educated adults with avante guard pretensions. As Nathan Heller noted in The New Yorker (July 2012), TED Talks tend to feature style over substance and attract mostly uncritical audiences who are inclined to give standing ovations.
Leading academics, initially disdainful of over-hyped TED Talk events, are now beginning to weigh in with withering critiques. Former presenter, Evgeny Mozorov, writing in The New Republic (August 23, 2012), was merciless in his criticism of the genre. “Today TED, ” he stated, ” is an insatiable kingpin of international meme laundering – a place where ideas, regardless of their quality, go to seek celebrity, to live in the form of videos, tweets, and now e-books. In the world of TED… books become talks, talks become memes, memes become projects, projects become talks, talks become books –so it goes ad infinitum..” In the process, he claimed, “any shade of depth or nuance disappears into the virtual void.”
Some of the TED Talks, as Gary Mason recognized, do have impact and value, but the spread of the concept has led to rather amateurish TEDx attempts at replication. Sir Ken Robinson’s classic talks on Schools Kill Creativity, The Learning Revolution, and Changing Education Paradigms have set the standard, but the TED Talk movement may have passed its prime. Far too many of the more recent TED Talks look like the work of imitators or worse, charlatans. Watching some of those speakers shilling for their utopian schools or flogging their books leaves the distinct impression that you are witnessing the polished presentation of “ideas that no footnotes can support.”
What does the growing mountain of TED Talks amount to –a burst of creative ideas or a pile of New Age mumbo-jumbo? Aside from Sir Ken’s impressive performances, have any of the Ted Talkers changed your life or the way you look at the world? Why do assembled crowds of educators, in captive audiences, break into applause at the end, then return to their schools settling back into their comfortable routines? Are we really being taught to Sit Back and Listen to the Sophists of the 21st century world? What is the “take away” for today’s educators genuinely committed to education reform?
The Top Ten TED Talks on Education tend to support the position taken in this Educhatter commentary. They are ranked on the infamous and much overused Jim Collins scale of “Good to Great.”
Take a look at http://blog.ted.com/2012/10/09/10-talks-on-making-schools-great/
1. Ken Robinson: Bring on the Learning Revolution
2. Emily Pilloton: Teaching Design for Change
3. Stephen Ritz: A Teacher Growing Green in the South Bronx
4. Daphne Koller: What We’re Learning from Online Education
5. Ann Cooper: On School Lunches
6. Taylor Mali: What Teachers Make
7. Dan Meyer: Math Class Needs a Makeover
8. Diana Laufenberg: How to Learn? From Mistakes
9. Simon Schlocken: The Self-Organizing Computer Course
10. Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms
The hidden curriculum of TED Talks is most clearly reflected in Will Richardson’s WHY SCHOOL? The next Evolution of Schools.
http://blog.ted.com/2012/10/10/the-next-evolution-of-schools-highlights-from-our-chat-with-will-richardson/
Such a “Best of” listing, of course, excludes hundreds of other immitators flouting Positive Life Philosophy, Green Schools, Meditation, and Zen Philosophy. Some of the best are actually TV-style interviews with the likes of Bill Gates. A few outstanding individuals like Steve Jobs and Salman Khan spark genuine curiosity, but also do so in other genres.
Centuries ago the great Greek Teachers inspired by Plato and Aristotle waged a noble battle against the Sophists, skillful orators championing empty rhetoric and style over substance. Perhaps a similar movement is now taking shape.
Most of the TED Talks also follow a rather predictable formula and some take on the form of an extended video commercial. Style is in the ascendancy, but substance has a way of clawing its way back into the public consciousness.
A story posted March 3rd is worth a read, since it’s tackling many of the same issues that are discussed here: “Hacking at Education: TED, Technology Entrepreneurship, Uncollege, and the Hole in the Wall” (http://bit.ly/YavJKr). While it focusses on one TED talk in particular (the winner of this year’s $1M prize), the author discusses some of the deeper issues with the TED format. An excerpt:
“Since any meaningful discussion of politics is off limits at TED, the solutions advocated by TED’s techno-humanitarians cannot go beyond the toolkit available to the scientist, the coder, and the engineer. This leaves Silicon Valley entrepreneurs positioned as TED’s preferred redeemers. In TED world, tech entrepreneurs are in the business of solving the world’s most pressing problems. This is what makes TED stand out from other globalist shindigs, and makes its intellectual performances increasingly irrelevant to genuine thought and serious action.” (Evgeny Morozov)
The same can be said of many such enterprises which “cannot go beyond the toolkit available to the scientist, the coder, and the engineer”…
We are on the same wavelength on the value of TED Talks. (Sir Ken) Robinson’s pitch was interesting but generally I find them shallow, cliche ridden, “look at me” attention seeking as people pitch books, speaking tours, or just try to move their peg up the board.
Within education institutions, those who don’t enthusiastically sing the company song become the nail that must be hammered down. They are removed from the promotions list so you tend to get North Korean style standing ovations. (Former Toronto School Board Director) Chris Spence was cut from this cloth before he was shown to be a total fraud. I’m so glad i ran a piece a year ahead calling him a faux progressive from the corporate school.
Innovation is the mantra. I am totally fine with innovation but not uncritical innovation. The mentality with TED Talks seems to be, if it is new it is good by definition. If it uses technology, it is good without ever considering technology companies have a sales agenda.
I agree with both of you on this one.
The TED talks have lots of style but if I use them in a class, say education, or senior high social studies, I think we need to
- analyze what they say
- what they leave out
- subject their major claims to analysis aka “critical thinking” to use a current buzz phrase
I have looked at a couple more seriously than others enough to do a fact check, though that is not sufficient.
BTW
I read Richard Saul Wurman’s Information Anxiety more than 2 decades ago. Great book then and still applies given the amount of “data” that is thrown at us.
What is Sophism? “Sophism in the modern definition is a specious argument used for deceiving someone. In ancient Greece, sophists were a category of teachers who specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric for the purpose of teaching arete—excellence, or virtue—predominantly to young statesmen and nobility. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophism
What is a Sophist? “A Sophist (Ancient Greek: σοφιστής, Latin: sophista) was a specific kind of teacher in both Ancient Greece and in the Roman Empire. Many sophists specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric, though other sophists taught subjects such as music, athletics, and mathematics. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophist
What is TED? Certainly not Sophism of the 21st century, although I probably could point at the politicians, the government, operations of the government and government media material as the modern day Sophism deception using 21st century marketing 101 and propaganda 101 as the means to control knowledge. Controlling knowledge by who and what way knowledge is obtained, allows the politicians and government to operate within ideologies, dogma that in turns allows the rhetoric to flow, for deception to take place.
Knowledge back in the days of Plato, was only for the naval gazers who also had influence over the politicians of the day. Unfortunately, Plato has carried the day throughout the centuries, where our Western Civilization rests its roots in Ancient Greece and with it – Sophism.
However, its 2013, and things have change a lot. Knowledge is at our fingertips, much to the chagrin of the politicians, governments, its agencies that allows ordinary citizens, including the students to fact-check what is being said or writing by our elected officials, government employees, and other esteemed people who are imparting knowledge/information. Since the advent of the technology revolution of the personal computer, data/knowledge/information gateways have flooded the consciousness of society, changing the very fabric of society on how we operate in our day to day lives. No longer can the government dictate to their citizens, how, what and where we obtained our knowledge. Unfortunately, what has not change is the deep-rooted tools of philosophies and rhetoric that began in Greece, and is now embedded in the 21st century matrix.
You bet it is flourishing, where facts are replaced with empty words and vague promises. One just has to read the media headlines to see the empty words and vague promises by the Canadian politicians. Its really hard to sort out, to determined the truth, but as Richard Wurman has stated, to understand the data, the information flows behind the rhetoric. In this series of videos, Wurman says, he can see the lie but he can’t understand the numbers.
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/richard-saul-wurman-information-anxiety.htm
John writes – “Great book then and still applies given the amount of “data” that is thrown at us.” As Wurman has stated, data has to be presented in a way that we can understand it, and 21st century knowledge allows this to happen easily much to the dismay of the old gatekeepers of knowledge. Hans Rosling is one of the top 20 Ted speakers, and he is famous for making data understandable to most people. TED and Reddit interview Hans Rosling
http://blog.ted.com/2009/09/08/ted_and_reddit_2/
Hans Rosling went on to create Gapminder for a fact-based world view.
http://www.gapminder.org/
TED has also brought on a new understanding, a differenty way of seeing people with disabilities. “Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds”
http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html
Or this one that makes you think – “Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong
http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html
To recapped, TED is about presenting the knowledge and bringing it to the masses, or otherwise TED would not have blossom, if only the old gatekeepers of knowledge were allowed admittance on their web site. What is not important, is who attends the conference and their deep pockets. What is really important is how the information/knowledge is assimilated into society, on data/knowledge that represents a new way of thinking on looking at new or old knowledge. Reframing knowledge within the 21st century matrix, to initiate change and curiosity into exploring at a deeper level.
What of the educators? There is not much hope, judging from the last two posts – dismissing TED as pretenders and would-be sophists. Perhaps the three TED video links, that I provided might change their minds, but I won’t hold my breathe on that one. The educators would rather retain their old gatekeeper status on knowledge, acting as a sophist using the tools of education philosophies and pedagogy to guide the education of their youth and teacher excellence. It is where critical thinking is the same kind that Plato and the boys practiced in Ancient Greece, and educators are in good company with the politicians and other government agencies. Practicing a kind of knowledge control – usually at the expense of their citizens. If anything, the public education model, its education philosophies wants everybody to listen and heed to them, just like Plato was in Ancient Greece. Politicians? Well that is a different story sorting out he rhetoric, their actions, their behaviours from actual facts, I would rather watch TED videos, and become curious about a new set of knowledge, than listen to the excuses of bad actors trying to pulled the wool over the citizens that have elected them. They are always right, and everybody else is wrong…..
Sometimes some posters drift into conspiracy theory talk as they become frustrated that some reform ideas they support are not accepted by either educators or the general public.
Many of the reform ideas have been tried in the past and failed in the past or are failing right under our noses today.
Note how Doug dismisses by categorizing differing thinking into another conspiracy theory. Commonly found in places and people who were once the guardians of knowledge, having the legal authority and the resources in having the final say, how, what and where knowledge and learning will take place. In the 21st century, governments and its institutes no matter the political stripe are at a cross-road today. The operations of government can no longer be sustained by doing it the traditional way and methods, because the government no longer has full control over knowledge. Governments like to think they do, and one just has to read the front page to read the latest restrictions on the federal government scientists and their research. Where the scientists research findings are put through the political ideological filtering processes and if it makes the grade, the research findings might be made public or buried so deep in the science journals that nobody reads, or much less understand the implications of the findings.
In the education model, its design has a filtering process to block new ways of thinking on old knowledge and new knowledge/advances that has major implications for the education model built within the 19th century knowledge matrix. New ways of thinking are quickly dismissed, like this TED talk entitled, Ernesto Sirolli: Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen.html
The public education system could take a lesson or two, or many by shutting up and listening to the people they supposedly served. Another video at Ted-Ed, entitled -Rethinking thinking – Trevor Maber: a refresher on thinking for the adults, rather than a lesson plan for students. Perhaps it should be shown at every school board and its trustees…..
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/rethinking-thinking-trevor-maber
Or this interesting TED video – Marco Tempest: A cyber-magic card trick like no other
http://www.ted.com/talks/marco_tempest_a_cyber_magic_card_trick_like_no_other.html
It would certainly cause a discussion on old knowledge, that I had no idea what a deck of cards can represent, and an innovative way of making boring facts into something exciting.
Or another one in TED-Ed, called Situational irony: The opposite of what you think – Christopher Warner. One just has to looked at the Language Arts curriculum or English in other circles to truly see how the public education stakeholders can turned irony and its types into the complicated, the hard to understand, and where only the most blessed of students have the know-how, leaving the vast majority of students confounded and looking rather dumb. The TED video is simple to understand compared to the long winded explanations in the curriculum.
A real shame – in some circles within the public education model, the above are seen as reform ideas and have no place in the public education system. Why? It does not meet the ideological and dogma of the 19th century matrix, and where knowledge and learning was reserved for the few. The remainder receives the dumb-down version, filtered and processed on knowledge by the public education stakeholders that is selected by what the stakeholders think the students should know in knowledge. Any new ideas of differing thinking are quickly dismissed as quackery or a conspiracy theory, and in the case of a student, no doubt a trip down to principal’s office to explain the heresy of questioning the teacher’s knowledge.
At least in the days of Plato, the students were urged to explain why based on deductive reasoning. The students were not dismissed, simply because they dare to question Plato or Socrates. The old gatekeepers of knowledge are the distrustful ones when it comes to new knowledge, technology and new ways of thinking . Pity……
Nancy states above “What of the educators? There is not much hope, judging from the last two posts – dismissing TED as pretenders and would-be sophists.”
An even cursory reading of my post does not “dismiss” TED. It does ask for analysis, like in any class, rather than blind acceptance. I used neither “pretender” or “sophist” to describe the talks.
One of the achievements of Greek philosophical thinking is to subject claims to analysis. We could use more of that in the previous post.
As for bringing knowledge to the masses, how much does it cost to attend a TED conference?
As for Nancy’s claims, these are subject to the same level of analysis as should be all claims by all bloggers. That is what Socrates or Wurman would want.
In Wikipedia – “Many philosophers today maintain that Greek philosophy has influenced much of Western thought since its inception. Alfred Whitehead once noted: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”[1] Clear, unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers, to medieval Islamic philosophers, to the European Renaissance and Enlightenment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_philosophy
Greek philosophy are the forerunners of the political philosophies. “While there was philosophy prior to Socrates, it was Socrates, says Cicero, who was “the first who brought philosophy down from the heavens, placed it in cities, introduced it into families, and obliged it to examine into life and morals, and good and evil.”[34] In this he is the founder of political philosophy.[35] The reasons for this turn toward political and ethical subjects remain the object of much study.[36][37]
The fact that many conversations involving Socrates recounted by Plato and Xenophon end without having reached a firm conclusion, which is to say, aporetically,[38] has stimulated debate over the meaning of the Socratic method.[39] Socrates is said to have pursued this probing question-and-answer style of examination on a number of topics, usually attempting to arrive at a defensible and attractive definition of a virtue.”
It led to the Socratic method – “The Socratic method (also known as method of elenchus, elenctic method, Socratic irony, or Socratic debate), named after the classical Greek philosopher Socrates, is a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method
The Socratic method is very much part of the education model – “This is a classical method of teaching that was designed to create autonomous thinkers.”
Is the TED format based on the traditional methods of inquiry, debate, analysis and to stimulate critical thinking? The format of TED does not lend itself to the traditional methods of analysis, because its very essence is to provide new ways of thinking about old knowledge and bringing forth new knowledge. The design of TED creates the conditions that urges the individuals within a collective to think for themselves, independently of others. “: Autonomy means behaving and thinking independently of others.” http://tweenparenting.about.com/od/physicalemotionalgrowth/a/Autonomy.htm
One could argue that the TED conferences, provides inquiry, debate and analysis after the presentations, when the individuals gathered in small groups to discussed what has been verbalized. What excites them as individuals, and what should be worthy of discussions. What of the masses, that cannot attend the conferences? The masses indeed have access to the presentations of the TED conferences via through the web, and is free to all. It allows the individual of many to interpret based on their personal knowledge banks, arouses curiosity to learned more and behaved in ways that honours the passing of new knowledge from one hand to the next hand, by providing links in their facebook pages, a blog or two, and to talk about it at the dinner table. All done without having another individual (perhaps an educator) to become the authority of knowledge.
One could looked at the professional development days and Ed Camps for educators. Which one allows the freedom for the individual to expressed themselves stating to the presenter, that they are wrong, proceeding to state reasons based on personal knowledge banks and experiences. Which one allows people to become brave enough to expressed thoughts of knowledge that are the opposite to the commonly held views, its belief systems and ideologies of the collective. In education, one just has to look at the reading wars or the math wars, or asked a parent what happens when we asked questions on reading and math instruction.
Its not a pretty picture, and its ugliness comes in the form of dismissing the questions of not being worthy of discussion. Dismissing new knowledge because it does not sit well with the old gatekeepers of knowledge, and nor does it sit well with the political ideologies and belief systems of the old gatekeepers of knowledge.
TED provides a window that promotes critical thinking processes of the individual, to think independently of the collective and what is more important to be urged on to further exploration of knowledge. TED is the spark, that ignites further independent exploration of the many individuals to learn without the collective’s approval or authority.
Nancy is confident that TED talks are promoting critical thinking and raising the level of public debate. I am not so sure. Rather than make a sweeping statement about everyone who has taken to the TED stage, I would rather make a less ambitious claim about one particular TED star: Sir Ken Robinson. Bearing in mind that Sir Ken was a professor of education, I would want to argue that he gets good marks neither for promoting critical thinking nor for raising the level of public debate. I argue the case here:
http://www.digitalcounterrevolution.co.uk/2013/ken-robinson-caricature-teacher-education-paradigms-or-changing-caricatures/
Your post, Torn Halves, prompts a response.
Ideologies and dogma of the 19th century matrix are being challenged. It’s more about old 19th century cultural thinking versus 21st century cultural thinking.
Who’s winning that war in 2013? Well some folks in the political lens, would state the revolution is occurring right now, and in front of our eyes. The struggle between cultural values of the 19th century and the 21st century. We see it everywhere, the cultural revolution is unfolding every day. In the social institutes of our democracies are struggling to maintained the foundation of the 19th century matrix that guides the systems of the political,, the economic, governance, and operations to reinforced the cultural values of the 19th century. The kind of 19th century cultural values, that really had no choice but to make assumptions, create theories and philosophies to justified the belief systems of its day and in the end the government policies of the day. But why should anybody take the values of the 19th century seriously in 2013?
We all should, because Torn Halves’ blog commentary therepresents the 19th century cultural matrix, its values and his arguments rests on 19th century educational philosophies and pedagogy. Such as this quote – “What does art become in the public pronouncements of Sir Ken? It is nothing more than creative thinking, renamed: divergent thinking. And what is divergent thinking for Sir Ken? It’s coming up with new ideas that must justify themselves in terms of their utility. His example is children being able to think of lots of different uses for paperclips. Here, everything that is interesting and important in the world of art is abandoned.”
http://www.digitalcounterrevolution.co.uk/2013/ken-robinson-caricature-teacher-education-paradigms-or-changing-caricatures/
Divergent thinking is dismissed like other 21st century terms found in the 21st century matrix. By the way, Robinson did not state the creativity is the same as divergent thinking, and it is nicely explained by him in the video called Changing education paradigms
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html
The public education model is exactly that – part of the 19th century matrix that has a very difficult time in adapting itself into the 21st century knowledge and cultural matrix. Likewise, the employees and the employees who make their living in the education ivory towers. They are not accustomed to having people questioned their edicts immersed in the ideologies and dogma of the 19th century matrix that are masquerading as 21st century wisdom, and supposedly on 21st century knowledge.
In the comment section on the Robinson video – if that is not critical thinking in action, I don’t know what is? One caught my eye – ” For 3 years I have worked with a 55 year old man from China diagnosed with ADHD and Aspergers. He was judged “Rebellious” “Not Good Student” and never received education in any form. Upon landing in Canada he began to spend all his time at Libraries. He educated himself. He is amazing. Once while driving to a dinner in part to his honour he asked “Clifton… do you feel like a loser?” to which I replied “Yes Dani, I often have in the past but not so much now.” It has been a very long haul of perpetual positive reinforcement with Dani. What I find extremely upsetting is the Social Agencies and Social Workers who send him for “Assessment testing” for suitability for employment only to tell him he is not suitable. Dani has always worked to the degree he could. He loves to work despite the social anxiety he suffers because in his own words “I do not feel like such a loser when I work!” So the system in Canada is fiercely invested in telling Dani that he is a loser (in his words, not mine) all the intervention is for the sole purpose of informing him he is a victim and is disabled and should not even attempt to work. What he believes he is hearing is that no one wants to allow him to work, he is somewhat paranoid of tampering professionals. All Dani wants is to be in a Graphic Design Studio or even a library with a Graphic Design Professional to watch and learn, he will do the rest and he will find his own employment. Believe me, Dani hears the phrase “New Educational Paradigm” all the time. We have a loose knit library club of ADHDers to bounce ideas off each other and undo damage by well meaning professional educators. This group ranges in age 18 to 70, we get along just fine without the educational oligarchy selling the lame idea of E.Q. (Emotional Quotient), and Social Skills. Educators like all skilled professionals are being replaced in part due to economics. Their security is superstition and they need to wake up to their imminent demise.”
Clifton’s only objection to the Robinson video – is the ADHD part. He takes it one way, where as I take it in another way. My take, is the the weird data outcomes coming from the data streams. Its rather perverse that the ADHD data streams increases as one goes from the west to the east. It makes everyone to think about the connections to ADHD and the education system. What is happening inside the education model, that would cause such increases? Just like LD, most ADHD students are not identified until they begin formal schooling, and then both LD and ADHD students are caught up in the machinery of the public education system, and a system based on the 19th century that is tooled to spit out students who are not the round peg shapes, put to the side by well meaning educators to force the students to adapt to the 19th century machinery of the education model. The students are put back on the assembly line, only to be split out again because their round shapes are really illusions imposed by the education model , and they revert back to their originally odd shapes. All done even in 2013, without the 21st knowledge learning science in place. Nor will it be, because the 21st century learning science is the illusion to masked the 19th century education and pedagogy theories.
Both Clifton and I came from two very different starting points, based on different sets of knowledge and experiences but we both are united that the public education system needs to wake up to their imminent demise.
The TED format is one such beast flinging their knowledge and differing ways of thinking from a 21st century perspective to the folks by bypassing the filtering tools and machinery of governments, its agencies who have been the traditional modes of providing knowledge to its citizens. The traditional modes of providing knowledge based on the 19th century knowledge matrix.
Within the 19th century matrix, the professional, the learned person with higher levels of education of the PHD kind, numerous across the span of the education model – to spew out edicts of one way communication to dictate how, when and by whom education will be delivered. Back in the 19th century, few would dare question another person with a higher set of knowledge and skills for obvious reasons. The obvious one because people with lower set of knowledge and not necessarily skills did not have access to the banks of knowledge sets as we do in the 21st century. So, when the first PHD educator in 2001 give out the first edict that my child was developmentally slow, and then proceeds to convinced me that there is no shame in it, and as a good parent I should accept my child is slow was the supporting evidence he used. All came from the 19th century matrix of knowledge, and what is really shameful as Ken Robinson has stated over the years, these children are labeled and condemn as non-academic material.
Duly stamped and in 2013 are consigned the dumb-down work of 2 grade levels below. Condemn because they are not given the remediation based on the science of the 21st century. As the years rolled by in a public education system, it is reinforced by those with the PHDs of the education degrees to delivered more devastating news that this child is only capable at the very best a C average and that is, if the child works very hard in school. This pattern and can be found in all public education systems starts at the grade 6 level, so the non-academic students will posed no problem entering high school. Posing no problem, happy with their state, and are conditioned by then to think in the 19th century knowledge matrix based on ideologies, dogma and belief system values and as well within the framework of the 19th century cultural matrix.
And the public education system are scratching their heads why there is so much trouble in educating our youth? Bound to be trouble, when the 19th century knowledge and cultural matrix confronts the 21st century matrix. Bound to be friction and stress pulling and stretching the treasured education maxims of the 19th century. Bound to be when one of the treasured bits of wisdom, children with difficulties in reading and/or behaviour are not academic material – they are the hard to teach. The latter, the hard to teach is still being used by those within the public education system. What an insult for every student that was not bless with the round shape, and so as Ken Robinson states – the education system built in the 19th century deriving all their knowledge within the 19th century knowledge matrix, just don’t believe in diversity.
So the TED videos such as Ken Robinson -
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html?quote=84
or this one – http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html?quote=729
Read the comments of each video – just the first page.
Go back to Torn’s article and his last two paragraphs – “Sir Ken creates the impression that there is no need for social critique any longer – the world is basically on the right track, we just have to get old-fashioned things like schools to catch up; and because we are basically on the right track, there’s no urgency about thinking carefully or deeply about things. The world is, in effect, on auto-pilot, and all we need to do is make sure we don’t snuff out the divergent thinking of our children, so that in the future we will have lots of ideas for new things which we can get people abroad to make for us.
The message is an insult both to the intellect and to an aesthetically informed concern about the sort of world that we are bequeathing to our children.”
http://www.digitalcounterrevolution.co.uk/2013/ken-robinson-caricature-teacher-education-paradigms-or-changing-caricatures/
Torn represents the 19th century dogma, and if left unchanged – it be the year 3000 before the educators with PHDs will finally admit that whole language instruction is not good for students, let alone acknowledge the 19th century education model and how destructive it was to the 21st century students of the past.
What TED represents are windows of knowledge. Glimpses of knowledge, that allows the individual to think about what has been stated within the 21st century knowledge matrix. On the TED page of bios for Robinson – “Why you should listen to him:
Why don’t we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it’s because we’ve been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies — far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity — are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says. It’s a message with deep resonance. Robinson’s TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? “Everyone should watch this.”
http://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_ken_robinson.html
What one hears from Ken Robinson, one will not hear that from the vast majority of educators with PHDs. Ken Robinson resonates with the everyday people of all sorts and sizes, because they themselves or their children have been victims of having their creativity being drummed out of them. Don’t you know – any kid that is hard to teach, don’t have any any redeeming strengths such as creativity. Of course, divergent thinking is out of the question for the dyslexics under the 19th century public education system in 2013. In the last 12 years, it has been the constant reinforcement by the ones with the educator degrees, and doubly so by the ones with the PHDs that my child had no strengths worth noting, since she had difficulty with reading, writing and basic numeracy. Ergo no creativity and the list goes on in the non-academic skills of having little to none. Yes Ken Robinson resonates with me because my own child was ignored and stigmatized that cause unnecessary emotional upheaval.
Meanwhile in the science of the 21st century – Who is at the top for divergent thinking? The dyslexics – and as I have discovered – the public education model may be able to beat out the creativity of children but what they cannot beat out is the divergent thinking of the dyslexics.
TED is raising the critical thinking of people and raising the level of debate into the homes and work places of the 21st century. What Torn and other like him don’t like, what is being discussed, what is being brought up, and what content is being raise. The public education model as it is today, doesn’t want to talk about their starring role that they have played in shaping society and the mess in the 21st century.
It time to rethink the paradigm of the public education system that is still thinking and acting as if it is still in the 19th century even though it is the year 2013.
Nancy, both you and Ken are right to insist on creativity and on the individual student’s freedom to explore and develop their own interests and abilities. The demands of the individual student that Ken rightly highlights are one of the twin poles of education at its best.
The point of view I represent insists that the poles are two. One is the individual student who has been at the centre of good, child-centred education for decades now (and, for the life of me, I don’t know why Ken refuses to connect with that tradition, as if he wants to create the impression that he alone is discovering the needs of the individual child for the first time in history whereas in truth he is merely re-emphasising a view that dates back at least to the 17th century – and there is absolutely nothing new about his farming metaphors either).
But the point is this: good teachers are concerned about two things. One is the flourishing of individual children; the other is the world that those children are going to help to give life to in the future. As well as caring about the individual children, we care about the world and what it might be like, and how it ought to be in the future. That care will always be partly conservative, because it is always a care about this particular world – a world with the history and the environment that we share – but it will also be more or less radical, insofar as it sees a need to improve the world.
My criticism of Ken, in a nutshell, is that this vision of the world is completely missing. He leaves all our attention focused on the individual child.
The absence of the vision is felt in odd things like the way Ken’s dismissal of industrialism ignores the fact that the world is becoming more and more industrial. Of course we want individual children to succeed, but if the institutions in which they can currently succeed are the very same institutions that are fueling an unsustainable model of economic growth, there is a problem, and we need to acnowledge that and bring an acknowledgment of those continental and global problems into the classroom, not as dogma but as problems to be faced up to and as posing challenges that the children will need to rise to. Solving them will require creativity and divergent thinking, but it will involve seeing the importance of devoting those talents to improving the world that we live in. As well as growing up to be creative individuals passionate about the success that is waiting for them outside school, those of us who still care about the world want the children to grow up to be adults who recognise that the world is a place that they are, in part, custodians and guardians of – a place that requires their care and attention.
Ken ignores this second pole of education. In this respect he is a more recent representative of the crisis of education described nicely by Hannah Arendt. I don’t think it is just a 19th century idea. I have a short summary of Hannah’s essay here:
http://www.digitalcounterrevolution.co.uk/2012/the-crisis-of-education-hannah-arendt/
Are you not reading too much into Ken Robinson and other TED videos?
In education, as in other topics such as neuroscience – the complexity cannot be deduce down to a vision, no matter how one wishes it to be. The world as it is cannot not be seen through a singular philosophy, that encompasses and captures the vision of the topic. Often in the public education model, it is the lens of the Marxist philosophy that filters and shapes the education practices. Hannah Arendt, is a product of the world, at a time when Nazism was the plague along with communism. That said she was a philosophy to which I shall confess I never heard of her until today. Or if I did come across her name, never became curious until today.
“”Exactly for the sake of what is new and revolutionary in every child, education must be conservative; it must preserve this newness and introduce it as a new thing into an old world.”
-Hannah Arendt, The Crisis in Education
In the central and perhaps most provocative passage of her essay on The Crisis in Education (1958), Arendt thrice repeats the same word: to preserve. This should not be surprising, in the context of her presentation of the thesis that “education must be conservative.” Education must be carried out with a “conservative attitude” in order to preserve the possibility for something new to arise.”
http://www.hannaharendtcenter.org/?tag=the-crisis-in-education
Torn states the two poles – “. One is the flourishing of individual children; the other is the world that those children are going to help to give life to in the future. ”
The problem arises in 2013, the public education system has not only walked away from the education of the individual child but also has walked away from old knowledge. I would think Hannah Arendt would be shocked today on the state of public education, and more so when she took a look at the data streams of the final outcomes of students and society. Would she be troubled by TED? I don’t think so, because it offers a format for her using the technology tools of the day. I bet the TED conference would be packed if she was one of the speakers. From what I have read, her works are as relevant today as it was in the 1950s and I will be exploring her and her works for sometime.
Further in the above link – ” Political conservatism, “striving only to preserve the status quo,” ultimately leads to destruction: if people do not undertake renewals, reformations, the world is abandoned to decay over time. Immediately after this second use of “to preserve” Arendt uses the word a third time. Since the world is shaped by mortals, it is at risk of becoming as mortal as its inhabitants. “To preserve the world against the mortality of its creators and inhabitants,” Arendt writes, “it must be constantly set right new.” The “capacity of beginning something anew” appears according to Arendt principally in action, which is the capacity that has “the closest connection with the human condition of natality”—“the new beginning inherent in birth,” Arendt writes at the same time in The Human Condition (1958).”
The public education model is filled with progressives claiming all sorts of things on the pulpit of ‘its the best interests of the children’, while fighting tooth and nail to maintain the status quo of the 19th century public education model. The TED format, like other social media are viewed with suspicion and cynicism by the education establishment. Not by all, but by the upper levels of the education establishment who are the most threaten by changes to the status quo. One of the biggest threats is providing new knowledge in formats that have not been filtered through the eyes of the intellectuals with many letters behind their named. Even the governments of the day, don’t like it either when the government scientists go directly to the people without their approval and on what they can talk about. Shades of 1984 in 2013. Ergo, Ken Robinson is torn apart just like other TED speakers and more so for speakers that has reached the 1 million plus mark.
There is reams of web pages dedicated for both sides. The educators that love Ken Robinson and the educators that don’t love Ken Robinson. Robinson if anything has done his job, making his education ideas part of the 21st century education matrix. As I stated in my other posts, TED is to encourage people to explore and learn more on your own, without having somebody over your shoulder telling you how wrong you are. Or in my case, I was told by others it was a complete waste to time as a mother, and for my child to learned everything they was to know about dyslexia and that damn education model. Sorry to say, it was the people with PHDs in education telling me, and people who have been conditioned to listen and heel to their betters with high education levels. At moments I thought I was out of my depth, but I was in good company with millions and millions of people across the globe learning new and old knowledge, and had the courage to begin questioning the people with their PHDs, or a bureaucratic government employee or an education policy wonk who thinks it is okay to denied education services of the reading remediation kind. On the way, I learned about the law, civil rights, spend an enormous amount of time in the philosophical files, boning up on old knowledge, rounding off my knowledge banks on files across the subject span and kept up with the news of the day. Self taught, and still learning new and old knowledge, and thanks largely to the new tools of the 21st century that open up the knowledge banks to the world to anyone with an internet connection. Hannah Arendt would approved whole heartily, just like the creators of TED who do think that knowledge should be shared without the filters.
Below is a typical example of one who does not like TED and never will. I would called him an intellectual snob, and he acts as a filter in the 21st century posing as being factual when in reality it is opinion. ” The trouble with TED talks
In the cult of TED, everything is awesome and inspirational, and ideas aren’t supposed to be challenged, says Martin Robbins.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/martin-robbins/2012/09/trouble-ted-talks
Hey guy, TED is all about presenting ideas – the new knowledge, and let the people do the exploring and learning on their own if they so wish to go exploring. The author writes – ” With the world’s easiest audience, many inaccuracies and errors go unchallenged. A talk by Terry Moore on algebra was littered with unsourced claims about Spanish language and history. Their coverage of science topics is at best superficial, and sometimes downright misleading. Felisa Wolfe-Simon’s infamous claim that bacteria could incorporate arsenic into their DNA led to a huge backlash from the scientific community, during which she refused to engage with critics and said that: “Any discourse will have to be peer-reviewed in the same manner as our paper was, and go through a vetting process so that all discussion is properly moderated.” Not long afterwards, she signed up to do a distinctly un-peer-reviewed TED talk. ‘Ideas worth spreading’ . . . except in this instance the ideas didn’t survive peer-review.”
Wonderful thing about 21st century technology, facts can be check. Why do used x in algebra? Something I had to looked up, when my child was 11 years old. She wanted to know why, and the reason was not as convoluted as his reason. I much rather have listen to the TED speaker, instead of a rambling account of different languages. I recognized the second rant on TED science talks as fudging the truth. Felisa Wolfe-Simon cause quite a stir among the scientists, but NASA was also involved. ” Arsenic-eating microbe may redefine chemistry of life ” http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101202/full/news.2010.645.html
New knowledge to bring forth, and no doubt NASA scientists have advance the theory that phosphorus is not a required element for life. If one explore the science talks on TED, one would be amazed at the new knowledge and how damn slow our education institutions are, let alone government who both don’t want to loose their filters, their authority over the knowledge banks of the world. Both are simply not prepare to deal with people with higher levels of knowledge that are mostly self-taught, and have not been obtained through the usual sources of degrees and certification. Not prepared to account for themselves when people question their policies, and at the worst, questioned their own knowledge banks. The latter happens more in the school setting, when parents bring in the material on the learning science. It gets ugly very fast, and the education establishment digs in their heels fighting tooth and nail not to have the 21st century new knowledge of the learning sciences in the classrooms. It would ruin the status quo, and unfortunately, the status quo crowd are the decision makers inside the public education model of 2013.
So the TED crowd has no choice, just like the reading science crowd has no choice but to present their knowledge in an open format bypassing the status quo crowd and their filters. On Teachers’ Lounge a popular teachers’ web site – what should be on every public education web site but is not.
The Lowdown on Dyslexia http://blog.reallygoodstuff.com/the-lowdown-on-dyslexia/
The public education crowd maintaining the status quo by fighting tooth and nail on 21st century knowledge that threatens their position in society and more importantly, their authority and gate keeper status to the knowledge banks. Reading science of the 21st century is a big threat to the education establishment, just as the new 21st century technology and it tools posed another kind of threat. Self-taught learning without the presence of the educators in the background filtering the knowledge through the 19th century knowledge matrix lens.
Critics of the TED Talk genre are surfacing and Zack Phillips of Brattleboro, VT, alerted me to a music video lampooning the Tower of TED-ubabble. His music group, Blanche Blanche Blanche has produced this little surprise. It’s a fascinating “take” on TED Talk World:
I can only imagine Torn Halves watching this video with a wry smile on his face. Yes, Educhatter is very cutting edge!
The local spin-offs of TED Talks are fascinating to behold. The version in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is entering its third year, and originated as TEDxHalifax, but it now called TEDxNovaScotia.
http://www.tedxnovascotia.ca/index.php
It’s run by the Dalhousie University Student Union and looks like a prime example of the “replication” phenomenon. I have never heard of ANY of the speakers listed on this year’s roster. The theme – “The Future of Education.”
TEDx Talks are franchises that can become problematic. In 2010 and 2011, TEDxHalifax at Dalhousie University was an experiment that attracted small audiences. It has been reborn as TEDxNovaScotia and was originally to be about “The Future of Education.” It is now apparently about “The Future of Higher Education.”
Innovative Halifax restauranteur Lil MacPherson of the Wooden Monkey is the host of the March 10, 2013 edition of TEDxNovaScotia.. Stay tuned for an eye-witness report.
http://www.dal.ca/news/2013/03/08/inspiring-ideas-2-0–exploring-the-future-of-higher-education-at.html?utm_source=DalnewsTwitter&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=tedx
An Eyewitness Report – on TEDxNovaScotia, 10 March 2013, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
“Bright-eyed, positively giddy, red shirted #TEDxNovaScotia zealots welcomed a crowd of over 400 to Dalhousie’s SUB Building this morning for the local version of TED Talks. Host Lil MacPherson of Wooden Monkey livened-up the formulaic event with her usual spontaneity. “I love TED Talks,” she gushed. ” They get me all all wound up. “They’re so addictive!”
TEDxNovaScotia, sponsored by the Dalhousie Student Union, was much better than expected. DSU President Jamie Arron is a true believer and set a very upbeat, worldly tone. “Local communities taking charge of their own learning and talking about the world outside the institution.”That’s the beauty of TED Talks. This is what universities should be about.”
Sitting in the TED Talk peanut gallery listening to Dal IDS prof. Robert Huish was a weird experience. Your social instincts say clap on cue, your head says “am I being manipulated?” Speakers at this TED Talk minor league are well-rehearsed, but the ideas tend to evaporate into thin air. It’s “education” without any dialogue. Some of the “Big Idea” presenters are strictly entertainers. A healthy slice of millennial video-driven culture.
A common refrain: “We’re all here to learn new ideas to make the world a better place.” Well-intentioned?, yes: naive?, possibly: totally authentic?, My guess is that Naomi Klein would be squirming in the seats.