After watching Ken Robinson’s TED lecture, I had to read his books. This is the first one I have read and it is fascinating, informative and again talks about balancing art and science, emotion and intellect. Robinson’s focus is a movement towards creativity. There is an imbalance and it must be corrected before we all fall behind. If you like Daniel Pink, you will enjoy this read.

More thoughts on this later.

Sir Ken Robinson’s ideas have been popular on the web lately, mainly because of his fantastic talk at TED. After seeing that talk I decided to get his book from my local library. At first I was a little concerned because the book read a little like his presentation put into writing, but after I while I realized that there was a great deal of depth to his writing and ideas.
He has a clear history of why we teach the way we do in mainstream schools and concrete suggestions of how we can change. He also has a chapter on how companies can encourage creativity in employees (even if they have had a mainstream education).
There was one thing that was surprising for me: he did not mention Waldorf Education in the book, even though it addresses many of the shortcomings of mainstream education. I realize that his focus was primarily on public education but he did mention several alternative education forms including Montessori. I was left wondering whether he felt that Waldorf promotes creativity or not. Of course, since both of my kids are in Waldorf school, you can guess what my opinion is on that…