Changing Education

One of the reasons I started this blog is that I feel education needs to be changed. This not a new unique sentiment that few others share. I hear about it all the time. One person who feels this way is Sir Ken Robinson [1], [2], [3], an international advisor on education in the arts. He says that change is not enough. We do not need the system to evolve. If the foundation and fundamentals of the system are broken, then the evolved system will still be fundamentally broken. What we need is a revolution.

The problem is that despite all of the people that are passionate about educational reform, very little is taking place, especially at the college and post-graduate levels. The change within the sciences is even slower because a scientist wants to see scientific results that one set of educational methodologies is better than another. It is sort of a Catch-22. Where is the scientific method here?

So, my plan is to highlight education programs that are doing something new, reaching out to a larger audience, concerned with social and global issues, etc., as well as platforms for education, creative and new ideas, and outreach programs -- because education should not only be better, it should be available at a high quality to everyone, regardless of geographic, economic, and demographic factors.

Just as a start, I already partially introduced TED.com and their "ideas worth spreading" with the Sir Robinson videos above. TED is a conference that tries to feature people with great ideas and inventions. They oublish new videos weekly on their website.

Additionally, there is the Studio School, a new type of school for 14-19 year olds in England that turns the classroom into a hands-on environment in an attempt to bridge the gap between classroom skills and workplace skills.