Back to Education: Creating Linchpins

Posted by mdraycott on Feb 20, 2010 in Education, Enterprise | 1 comment

I’m still reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin…in fact it’s that good that I am rationing reading so I don’t splurge and read it all at once, Godin for me is an inspiration someone who thinks like I do and writes about it.

However I am not going to use this blog to discuss my man crush on Mr Godin, anyone who comes to my lectures will know this to be self evident, instead I wanted to discuss something that he brings up in his new book Linchpin; education, more specifically how can we make education more remarkable?

In his 2006 video another great inspiration of mine, Sir Ken Robinson likened the modern education system to an 11 year university entrance exam rewarding only those with the aptitude to succeed at university, Godin (in his new book) goes a stage further and compares it to a machine, producing drones to fulfil the needs of the manufacturing industrial complex; uncreative, uninteresting and uninspiring.

…So what’s wrong? There are great inspiring teachers out there; doing amazing things…Katie, a good friend of mine is a great example of this, she gets students running awesome projects and inspires them to achieve amazing results. My Dad was also like this he taught art for almost 40 years and could get kids to draw who had never even gone near a pencil…hell he gave me the confidence to find a form of art I could enjoy and I have about as much talent for painting as dad does for business

The problem is that our education system actively encourages educators to self edit; to curb their creativity, their ability to do amazing things and instead pushes them towards teaching the prescribed material in the simplest manner possible and enforces this by reducing the time they have to do anything else; giving them more admin, assessment and teaching than ever before.

If we want to create kids who can embrace the Linchpin philosophy of Godin and become remarkable, creative people we need to give teachers all the time and resources they require to provide inspirational education coupled with a less prescriptive curriculum which rewards value that is not just academic, but social and aesthetic, in short a curriculum which is more enterprising.