Book Review: Out of Our Minds

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“We cannot meet the challenges of the 21st century with the educational ideologies of the nineteenth.  We need a new Renaissance that values different modes of intelligence and that cultivates creative relationships between disciplines and between education, commerce and the wider community.  Transforming education is not easy but the price of failure is more than we can afford, while the benefits of success are more than we can imagine.” Sir Ken Robinson, Out of our Minds

Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Sir Ken Robinson, one of the leading voices for a revolution in the way we think about education, was an outstanding read the past two days as I was snowbound and missing school.  We are headed into possibly our 7th and 8th snow days of this spring semester…completely unheard of in Georgia where I serve as the Upper School Principal at North Cobb Christian School.  Now more than ever, in the midst of these homebound days, we are asking the questions…how can learning take place when the teachers and the students can’t get to the school house?

This book also fits well with my commitment to become more creative in 2014.  Robinson talks a lot about the fact that a lot of adults don’t feel like they are creative because they were talked out of being creative at some point in their younger lives.  Think about it…doesn’t every kid know that they are creative?  If you were to give a little kid some blank paper and a crayon, they’d get right to work wouldn’t they?  If you gave an adult that same paper and a crayon, they’d certainly hem and haw around about how they can’t draw a straight line.  Who needs straight lines anyway?  If we could all easily draw a straight line, we’d put rulers out of business.Let’s change our thinking about what it means to be creative.

Learning in the 21st century requires a different strategy than we used back in the 19th century, yet very little has changed about education.  Think about it…if you are adult that has a child of your own that’s in school.  What is different about their learning experience than your own learning experience?  I’m grateful to say that the team I have the privilege of serving with is challenging those norms on a daily basis.  We have a long way to go, but we are starting to take steps down the right path.

I highlighted a ton while reading this book and have pasted below what I highlighted.  I’ll start by posting links to two of Sir Ken Robinson’s most popular TED talks about creativity and the learning revolution.

How Schools Kill Creativity by Sir Ken Robinson (TED Talks)

Bring on the Learning Revolution by Sir Ken Robinson (TED Talks)

  • We will not succeed in navigating the complex environment of the future by peering relentlessly into a rearview mirror.  To do so, we would be out of our minds.
  • Everyone occasionally has new ideas, but how can creativity be encouraged as a regular and reliable part of everyday life?  If you are running a company or an organization or a school, how do you make creativity systematic and routine?  How do you lead a culture of innovation?
  • Everyone has huge creative capacities.  The challenge is to develop them.  A culture of creativity has to involve everybody, not just a select few.
  • Three fundamental themes of this book:
    We are living in times of revolution.
    If we are to survive and flourish we have to think differently about our own abilities and make the best use of them.
    In order to do so we have to run our organizations and especially our education systems in radically different ways.
  • What we become in future is deeply influenced by our experiences here and now.  Education is not a linear process of preparation for the future: it is about cultivating the talents and sensibilities through which we can live our best lives in the present and create the best futures for us all.
  • All organizations are competing in a world in which the ability to innovate and adapt to change is not a luxury: it is a necessity.
  • The challenge now is to transform education systems into something better suited to the real needs of the 21st century.  At the heart of this transformation there has to be a radically different view of human intelligence and of creativity.
  • We may not be able to predict the future but we can help to shape it.
  • “By about 2040, there will be a backup of our brains in a computer somewhere, so that when you die it won’t be a major career problem.”  Ian Pearson
  • The impossible yesterday is routine today.  Wait until tomorrow.
  • Responding to massive shifts in population will demand radically new ways of caring for natural resources, new technologies for generating energy, new and sustainable methods of food production and new approaches to both the prevention and treatment of diseases.  Here, as everywhere, innovation is critical.
  • The evolution of the Internet has been driven not only by innovations in technology but also by unleashing the imaginations and appetites of millions of users, which in turn are driving further innovations in technology.
  • Digital technologies are blurring the boundaries between home and work, business and pleasure.
  • “Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe.”  H.G. Wells
  • Education is the key to the future, and the stakes could hardly be higher.
  • Current systems of education were not designed to meet the challenges we now face.  They were developed to meet the needs of a former age.  Reform is not enough; they need to be transformed.
  • The real issue is that the very foundations upon which our current systems of education are built are shifting beneath our feet.
  • Thinking of education as a preparation for something that happens later can overlook the fact that the first sixteen or eighteen years of a person’s life are not a rehearsal.  Young people are living their lives now.
  • More complex economies demand more sophisticated talent “with global acumen, knowledge of different cultures, technological literacy, entrepreneurial skills, and the ability to manage increasingly complex organizations.”  Employers say they want people who can think creatively, who can innovate, who can communicate well, work in teams and are adaptable and self-confident.
  • Truly generative ideas excite intellectual passions in many different fields because they open up whole new ways of seeing and thinking.
  • Each major period of intellectual growth has been characterized by revolutionary new ideas that have driven forward the sensibilities of the times.
  • Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler did not solve an old problem: they asked a new question and in doing so they changed the whole basis on which the old questions had been framed.
  • Newton himself warned against using this theories to view the Universe as akin to a great clock.  He said, “Gravity explains the motion of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.  God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.”
  • For all their popularity and sway over educational policies, IQ test and SATs do not assess the whole range of a student’s intellectual abilities.  They look only for particular sorts of ability.
  • Our ideas can enslave or liberate us.
  • Now, more than ever, human communities depend on a diversity of talents; not on a singular conception of ability.
  • There are three crucial themes for understanding creativity.  They are that human intelligence is highly diverse, dynamic, and distinct.
  • There may be no agreed definition of intelligence, but we might agree here that intelligence includes the ability to formulate and express our thoughts in coherent ways.  We can do this using words and in numbers.  We can also visualize, we can think in sound, in movement, and in all the many ways in which these different modes interact.
  • The brain is not a mechanical object: it is an organic entity.  The mind is not a calculator: it is a dynamic process of consciousness.  The creative process is not a single ability that lives in one or other region of the body.  It thrives on the dynamism between different ways of thinking and being.
  • When people find their medium, they discover their real creative strengths and come into their own.  Helping people to connect with their personal creative capacities is the surest way to release the best they have to offer.
  • Being creative involves doing something.  Creativity involves putting your imagination to work.  In a sense, creativity is applied imagination.  Innovation is the process of putting new ideas into practice.  Innovation is applied creativity.
  • We see the world not as it is, but through a veil of conceptions.
  • Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.
  • If you’re not prepared to be wrong, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever come up with anything original.
  • Individual creativity is almost always stimulated by the work, ideas and achievements of other people.
  • We are laced together in networks of knowledge.
  • Creating a culture of innovation will only work if the initiative is led from the top of the organization.  The endorsement and involvement of leaders means everything, if the environment is to change.
  • Being a creative leader means ensuring that everyone in the organization is playing to their creative strengths and feels that their contribution is valued as part of the overall performance of the organization.
  • In all cases, innovation involves calculating risks.
  • Education is not a linear process of preparation for the future: it is about cultivating the talents and sensibilities through which we can live our best lives in the present and create the future for ourselves.
  • At the heart of education is the relationship between teachers and students. If students are not learning, education is not happening.  In many education systems, the clarity of that relationship has become obscured by political agendas, terms and conditions of employment, building codes, testing regimes, professional territories, national and state standards, and so on.
  • “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”  Socrates
  • There is a distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants.  The typical history of immigrant communities is that the children teach the adults about the new culture.  The adults often recreate the culture of the old country in the new one, and aim to preserve the old ways for the sake of nostalgia and security.  The young ones are thrust into a new culture and embrace it more vigorously.
  • The task of education is not to teach subjects: it is to teach students.  No school is better than its teachers.  When you think of your own time at school it is the people you remember: your contemporaries, and especially the teachers: the ones who turned you on and the ones who turned you off; who built you up or knocked you down.  In the right context, a casual remark by a teacher, or even a raised eyebrow or tone of voice can set you on a lifelong journey of discovery or put you off taking even the first step.
  • We cannot meet the challenges of the 21st century with the educational ideologies of the nineteenth.  We need a new Renaissance that values different modes of intelligence and that cultivates creative relationships between disciplines and between education, commerce and the wider community.  Transforming education is not easy but the price of failure is more than we can afford, while the benefits of success are more than we can imagine.
  • To realize our true creative potential—in our organizations, in our school and in our communities—we need to think differently about ourselves and to act differently towards each other.  We must learn to be creative.

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