Bil­dung ist kein Wettbewerb

Edu­ca­tion is not a competition

Lear­ning is an indi­vi­dual pro­cess that can only be orga­ni­zed by the brain of the one wil­ling to learn and I don’t know any child that doesn’t want to learn. Babies learn to speak wit­hout anyone tea­ching them. It’s not like you explain to a thodd­ler what nouns, verbs and adjec­ti­ves are. Don’t worry about the sub­junc­tive because nobody gets it.

Kids absorb lan­guage and other know­ledge by them­sel­ves. When edu­ca­tion kills this natu­ral moti­va­tion to learn, it needs to change. Let’s try a dif­fe­rent take.

Edu­ca­tion is not a pro­duc­tion line, it’s an orga­nic pro­cess. Pul­ling on grass won’t make it grow faster. Com­man­ded, con­trol­led tea­ching is inhi­bi­ting crea­tive, moti­va­ted learning.

A sum­mary of Sir Ken Robin­sons view on Edu­ca­tion (RIP) 

Intellect and intelligence

Intel­li­gence is not the same thing as aca­de­mic abili­ties. Not being very good at aca­de­mic abili­ties doesn’t mean you aren’t intel­li­gent. Don’t be inte­re­sted in what peo­p­les’ disa­bi­li­ties are, look what they are good at.

All kinds of kids are told they’ve got pro­blems, who don’t have them. They’re crea­ted by the system. And it’s the pro­blem with the system that we need to address. If we re-frame ability all of these dif­fi­cul­ties peo­ple seem to be suf­fe­ring from sud­denly dis­ap­pear. If you find the things they are good at, if you create an envi­ron­ment, which is holi­stic, which is addres­sing your spi­ri­tual deve­lo­p­ment, your phy­si­cal deve­lo­p­ment, which reco­gnize that human life is not linear, it’s orga­nic and it will take many dif­fe­rent cour­ses – then you have a com­ple­tely dif­fe­rent set of con­di­ti­ons under which peo­ple will flourish.

So we now have a system based on com­pe­ti­tion, nar­row view of ability, and one in which peo­ple being medi­ca­ted to stay with the pro­gram, they’re being patho­lo­gi­zed for losing inte­rest in what is essen­ti­ally very bor­ing stuff. We sit them down all day long and won­der why they fidget.
There are dif­fe­rent ways of doing it – bet­ter ways, I mean. For me, it’s as plain as day, really. Edu­ca­tion is not like an incura­ble dise­ase where we don’t know what to do. We know what to do in edu­ca­tion. It’s about taking this thing to scale.

Ins­truc­tion is part of it, but the important part is faci­li­ta­ting, pea­king people’s curio­sity, enga­ging them and inspi­ring their ima­gi­na­tion and see­ing the pos­si­bi­lity in some­thing rather the ina­bi­li­ties or what we can’t do.

Edu­ca­tion became a money-making busi­ness and its goal is to create com­pli­ance by stan­dar­di­zed test­ing. We can change this and we need to change it because we are facing chal­lenges on earth that can’t be sol­ved by the way we were thin­king till now. Our spi­ri­tual deve­lo­p­ment is lag­ging a long way behind our tech­no­lo­gi­cal capa­ci­ties. The pro­blem is our lack of con­scious­ness and crea­ti­vity. It’s not about saving the pla­net. The pla­net will be fine, we need to save our­sel­ves. There is no per­fect way to do it but it’s about prin­ci­ples such as con­di­ti­ons, a holi­stic view of huma­nity, children’s growth and poten­tial, reco­gni­zing the power of tea­ching and reco­gni­zing that you need to get these balan­ces right and that we can do it. But it couldn’t be more important that we get on and do it.

Sir Ken Robin­son (enjoyed spe­cial edu­ca­tion from five till eleven)

Your intellect func­tions with accu­mu­la­ted infor­ma­tion. If your memory is taken away your intellect is quite use­l­ess by its­elf. There are other dimen­si­ons of intel­li­gence within you, which are inde­pen­dent. Fee­ling for exam­ple is not depen­dent on your memory. 

Once you become edu­ca­ted you become iso­la­ted because this is the nature of the intellect. It sepa­ra­tes and orders things into right and left, or wrong. You become an expert in an intellec­tual field you are lonely, and you are usually so iden­ti­fied with your intellect that you are like a car dri­ving on one wheel, only using this part of your intel­li­gence, jud­ging it to be the most intel­li­gent and others the­r­e­fore as stu­pid. Brin­ging down all wheels on the ground means to also use and apply the rest of your intel­li­gent being such as your emo­tio­nal intel­li­gence for example.

Sadhguru

Inno­va­tion

What we need is an inno­va­tive intel­li­gence. The thing is, we don’t know what that is. The point is not about what we have gathe­red. What we have gathe­red is useful in crea­ting com­fort and con­ve­ni­ence for the world. What we have gathe­red is not useful for crea­ting well-being for our­sel­ves and our world. If well-being has to hap­pen, we have to access dimen­si­ons of intel­li­gence which are not intellec­tual. Because intellect can­not func­tion with accu­mu­la­ted infor­ma­tion. Crea­ting out of memory is not inno­va­tive. It is copy­ing what alre­ady is.

Sadhguru

Why we com­bine music and math

Dance and math are just as important and not sepa­ra­ted from each other. They only func­tion tog­e­ther like your liver and kid­ney are con­nec­ted and need to work tog­e­ther. Thin­king is also about making rela­ti­on­ships and con­nec­tions. We don’t need to sepa­rate everything.

Sir Ken Robinson

Why we train the mind to ima­gine
Ima­gi­na­tion is prior to creativity.

Cul­ti­vat­ing crea­ti­vity and curio­sity are the para­mount start­ing point of education.

It beg­ins by enli­vening the ability to ask questions.

Sir Ken Robinson

Why we give writ­ten assessments

Who does well in the world is not deter­mi­ned by how many marks one received.

Sadhguru