Sir Ken Robinson , author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything , is one of the under the radar speakers who worked a lot of people into a tizzy at last week's TED Conference in Long Beach, California. The thrust of his talk: Our education systems are steering kids away from their passions by creating test-taking automatons who we think will become working stiffs rather than visionary thinkers, creators, or innovators.
CNN named him to its list of " 10 fascinating people you've never heard of " who spoke at TED2010. (That's not totally true for all of you, as a discussion about Robinson and his ideas has appeared in the comments on this site before .) MediaPost name-dropped him as well, writing that he grimly concludes that most of us are being prepared to work jobs that will give us no satisfaction . Instead of catering to the talents of individual students who think differently, it forces everyone to live up to a cookie cutter standard.
I think he'd be pretty excited by the efforts of Austin, Texas-based designers who are trying to inject creativity back into the curriculum of local schools, which Rob Stokes wrote about last month .
I'm waiting with baited breath for the good folks at TED to post his talk from last week. Until then, this one from the 2006 conference, will fill the void.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY