“One of the essential problems for education is that most countries subject their schools to the fast-food model of quality assurance when they should be adopting the Michelin model instead. The future for education is not in standardizing but in customizing; not in promoting groupthink and “deindividuation” but in cultivating the real depth and dynamism of human abilities of every sort.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
I found this quote today as I was setting up the website; a place where we can store all the wonderful things we encounter on our journey. It rings true. Funnily enough it came up in conversation today as my boy and me went about rescuing a bumble bee from the path outside our garden. It was flagging in the heat, just needing a cool place to rest and a drink which we gave it. The process of rescue and recovery prompted a discussion about different types of bees and how they live in hives, or not as is the case with a bumble!
I am a big believer in going your own way, which is just as well because that is the preferred learning style of our wonderful son. Being able to turn on a sixpence and learn about the world all around us and how we can impact it for the good is a joy and I worry that its something he would not be able to access in the rigidity of a school setting. As Ken said “The future for education is not in standardizing but in customizing; not in promoting groupthink and “deindividuation” but in cultivating the real depth and dynamism of human abilities of every sort.”