Multiple+Intelligences

=Multiple Intelligence =

Finding One's "Authentic Self" Through Education: We Must Rise WITH the Occasion
Within his TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson (2010) breaks down the current work force into two catagories: those who truly enjoy their profession and those who merely work towards the weekend. While both types of individuals exist, Robinson finds that a great majority fall into the latter category Who's to blame?

So what are we doing wrong?"Education, in many ways, dislocates people from their natural talents." The current model of education, as Robinson finds it, has become hyperfocused on what and how "should" be done and has truly lost focus on how students learn and what they are passionate about. As opposed to forcing our curriculum on an outdated model, Robinson advices teachers to "create circumstances through which [natural talents] show themselves"

In order to push towards the ideal classroom of 2025, in place of the subpar reformation that classrooms are currently undergoing, Robinson advocates for a "revolution." In order to achieve this very lofty goal, educators must first overcome the "tyranny of common sense" by coming to the realization that things can be completed in different ways. For as Abraham Lincoln stated in 1782, "as our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew." As educators move towards the classroom of the future, we can no longer allow ourselves to get caught up in how the way things used to be taught. For, those practices may have worked for the "circumstances of previous centuries."

A single notion pointed out within this lecture is the "linear" trend of education. At the end of the line: "college." Yet, as Robinson highlights, life tends not to be linear,instead organic.While college may be an immediate, post-secondary goal for a number of students, it is not the answer for ALL of them. Robinson stated, "we have sold ourselves to a fast food model of education" in which everything has become standardized. The standard notion is that the lives of all of our students fall on a pre-determined time-line. Any student that lands outside of that path is labeled as wasting their life.

In the end, "it's about passion." If one devotes time to something they love time begins to travel at a different pace. While we continue to work in the Fast Food model, education is not feed the soul. "Human flourishing is not a mechanical process but an organic one" The classroom of 2025 will need to represent a "personalizing education to people you are actually teaching" Long past will be the one size fits all, standard view of classroom curriculum. Instead, educators will have realized that each class represents a unique set of needs and mold their curriculum to meet those needs.

Robinson leaves his viewers with a beautifully, poignant line of poetry that we believe encompasses our vision, "everyday our children spread their dreams below our feat...and we should tred softly"

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