The Real Path to Educational Excellence

Sir Ken Robinson is the individual whose first talk I used in my introduction for readers to TED Talks, a vital resource for all thinkers. Here is his second talk from 2010:  



He recently presented a third talk on his area of expertise.  It is full of his usual wit and wry observations, but this one hit particularly close to home. 

First, because I think "No Child Left Behind" is one of the stupidest, illogical, non-thinking, doomed-to-fail and just plain useless mandates to come out of Washington DC in some time.  It was a green light for educational bureaucrats and a red light for educational excellence and showed just how out of touch with the real world DC is.     

Also, it struck very close to home when in the middle of the talk he mentions some schools that do work --- and wondered aloud why we call them 'alternative schools'.......





This, like many TED talks is well worth watching -- please do if you care about the fact that the US schools have been in serious trouble since before the turn of the 21st century...and most are no more interested in doing something about it now than they were then, except for expensive little "feel good" tweaks like charter schools.  

What is needed is nothing short of a complete upheaval - tear down and rebuild the American public school system, and don't be so arrogant as to assume that we cannot learn anything from other countries whose graduates are whipping ours on the world market - particularly the STEM subjects that drive economies.