How to escape education’s death valley

Robinson, K. (2013, April 1). How to escape education’s death valley. TED Talks.

Robinson states that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy is ironically titled since it is literally leaving millions of children behind. In fact, the nature of NCLB contradicts three principals that enable human life to flourish:

1. Human beings are naturally different and diverse. Education under No Child Left Behind is based on not diversity but conformity. What schools are encouraged to do is to find out what kids can do across a very narrow spectrum of achievement.
2. The second principle that drives human life flourishing is curiosity. Teachers are creative facilitators of learning, and part of the problem is that the focus is not on teaching and learning but on testings. Creativity is replaced by compliance.
3. Human life is inherently creative. Education should awaken the powers of creativity but instead what we have is a culture of standardization.

Robinson draws attention to high performing systems across the globe and their practices that are lacking in the US; learning is individualized, a very high status is attributed to the teaching profession, and the school level is responsible for what needs to be done.