Sir Ken Robinson, educator extraordinaire ....

Ken Robinson was one of the last speakers at TED2010 today. He was also one of the best, with a powerful yet simple message about change in the education system - valuing each of us for what we are, and not continuing with the "fast food, industrialised" approach we currently have. Each child is unique and should be treated as such.

I thought it might be fun to copy a few tweets which give an idea of his key points (and the great audience response)

@missrogue "Every day our children lay their dreams beneath our feet. We should tread lightly." Sir Ken Robinson #TED

@brainpicker Sir Ken Robinson: "Our education system is impoverishing our spirits as much as fast food is depleting our bodies" #TED

@brainpicker #TED Ken Robinson: It's not about scaling the solution to education, it's about a grassroots model of personalized solutions

@TEDNews: Sir Ken Robinson at #TED: We have built our education systems on the model of fast food. Standardized, not customized to local circumstances

@brainpicker #TED Sir Ken Robinson: People are often good at things they don't care for, but it's about passion. About what moves you.

@mickyates "A watch is a single function device - Ken Robinson's 20 year old daughter - so I don't want one" #TED

@Michaelgnovak: RT @brainpicker: #TED Sir Ken Robinson's book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, is a MUST read http://is.gd/8jUKl

@brainpicker "Human communities depend on a diversity of talent" Ken Robinson #TED #quote

Here's Ken's Huffington Post article from today on a slightly different - but related topic ..."Imagine a World Ending Slavery"

"As part of the work we do in education, my wife Terry and I are committed to promoting a world in which all children live in freedom. This is why we support the Tronie Foundation in its work to ensure that all children live free of exploitation and have the opportunity to laugh, play and go to school. Many estimates agree that there are now about 27 million slaves in the world, more than at the height of institutionalized slavery in the 19th century. These are men, women and children held against their will with the threat of violence and little or no pay to do what ever their owners demand. Often these are what are known as 3D jobs -- dirty difficult and dangerous -- that few people with a free choice would tolerate. It's estimated that roughly half of all slaves are children.

The good news is that there are people and organizations around the world fighting separately and together to end slavery in all of its forms. They range from government agencies to private foundations and the, often heroic, efforts of lone individuals. All are committed to ending practices that degrade all of us. One such organization is the Tronie Foundation.

Rani and Tron are acting from first-hand experience. They found their separate ways to the United States as children. Rani was sold and resold into slavery as a child in India and then into illegal adoption in the USA. Tron was shipwrecked off the coast of Vietnam after his father's desperate attempt to save him from being abducted as a boy soldier. As adults and parents, they are now committed to the global struggle to offer the gift of freedom to every child.

People around the world are ringing in a New Year. This could also be a new time of awakening. For the United States, freedom is a founding principle. Here especially we should support those who do so much to defend it on our behalf and for the children we all say we cherish. Take a look.

http://TronieFoundation.org/donate

Biography extract from his webpage:

"Sir Ken Robinson, PhD is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources. In 1998, he led a national commission on creativity, education and the economy for the UK Government. ‘All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education’ (The Robinson Report) was published to wide acclaim in 1999. He was the central figure in developing a strategy for creative and economic development as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, working with the ministers for training, education enterprise and culture.For twelve years, he was Professor of Education at the University of Warwick in the UK and is now Professor Emeritus. He has been honored with the Athena Award of the Rhode Island School of Design for services to the arts and education; the Peabody Medal for contributions to the arts and culture in the United States, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the Royal Society of Arts for outstanding contributions to cultural relations between the United Kingdom and the United States. In 2003, he received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for his services to the arts."

Posted via web from mick's posterous

Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Educate every child about food

From the TED Prize session: Jamie Oliver has announced his TED Prize wish.

THE WISH:
“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”

THE PLAN:
Set up an organization to create a popular movement that will inspire people to change the way they eat. The movement will do this by establishing a network of community kitchens; launching a travelling food theater that will teach kids practical food and cooking skills in an entertaining way and provide basic training for parents and professionals; and bringing millions of people together through an online community to drive the fight against obesity. The grassroots movement must also challenge corporate America to support meaningful programs that will change the culture of junk food.

THE NEEDS:

Help to establish the organization, with funding, office space and facilities.

Find partners to equip and run the community kitchens, and food suppliers to provide the fresh ingredients.

A partner to build and maintain a fleet of food theatre trucks.

Education experts, graphic designers, artists and writers to develop and produce creative, fun teaching materials.

Communications experts to create messaging for the movement.

Web designers and developers to create and build the website.

Establish a food range that generates a sustainable income for the movement.

Corporate partners to invest in cooking and food education for their customers and champion honest food labelling.

Posted via web from mick's posterous

Can Ethics Be Taught in Business Schools? An insightful blog article from Chris MacDonald

From "The Business Ethics Blog", by Chris MacDonald, PhD

It's a common refrain. Don't blame the business schools for all the bad stuff happening on Wall Street. It's not the b-schools' fault, because after all, ethics can't be taught. The first bit there is reasonable enough: the recent financial crisis is the result of a complicated convergence of factors, apparently including bad decisions by quite a number of individuals, and some poorly-structured institutions. But the latter part, implying the futility of ethics instruction at business schools, is simply wrong-headed.

For the latest iteration of this mistaken view, check out this opinion piece by Clifford Orwin, professor of political science at the University of Toronto, in the Globe and Mail: Can we teach ethics? When pigs fly

Ethics is a serious business. And that's why, reading in last weekend's Globe and Mail about the gurgling wave of ethics education sweeping North American business schools, I had to laugh.

“MBA programs around the globe,” wrote Joanna Pachner, “are rushing to prove that they teach students to be good – not just rich – by revamping their curriculums and encouraging debates about ethical corporate behaviour.”

I blogged about the MBA ethics oaths here. But Orwin's real focus is on business school curriculum:

I'm not suggesting that business students are bad people, or that those who would teach them to be good are any less competent than the rest of us. It's just that the whole notion of teaching ethical behaviour rests on a fundamental misconception – namely, that ethical behaviour can be taught.

But Orwin's criticism is off-target, for two reasons.

The first problem is that Orwin neglects that the main goal of business education is to teach people management skills. So we can usefully teach people to devise management structures that minimize wrong-doing on the part of their employees, even if we can't change the characters of future managers themselves.

The second problem: people like Orwin wrongly assume that the key to better behaviour is modifying character. But that flies in the face of our best understanding (as represented in the criminology literature) of the psychology of wrongdoing. The key to wrongdoing is not primarily that wrongdoers have the wrong values (from which it would follow that ethics classes need to accomplish the difficult, perhaps impossible, task of instilling the right values in just a few short months of instruction). The key to wrongdoing is much more likely to involve faulty ways of thinking about certain behaviours, namely thinking about them in ways that "neutralize" them, morally, effectively exempting the wrongdoer from moral blame. (A simple example is the redescription of theft as "borrowing", or the redescription of stealing from one's employer as "merely taking what I deserve"). The arguments behind such neutralizations are generally fallacious, and fallacies of reasoning are something that can be taught, either in an ethics class or indeed in a first-year Critical Thinking class.

Thus it's not that Orwin is wrong in claiming that virtue cannot be taught. It's that he's wrong in thinking that that's a decisive argument against ethics education.

--------------------------------------------
Chris's take on the moral psychology of wrongdoing, and the conclusion it implies about ethics education, is adopted entirely from Joseph Heath's wonderful paper, "Business Ethics and Moral Motivation: A Criminological Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics 83:4, 2008. Here's the abstract.

Chris teaches Philosophy, including business ethics, at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Canada, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Duke University's Kenan Institute for Ethics. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Business Ethics.
He was named one of the "100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics", for 2008.

 

Posted via web from mick's posterous

Couldn't resist creating another blurb book ...

smile

During a vacation trip to Cambodia in 1994, we fell in love with the country and its people. But we were especially touched by the impact on children in areas still controlled by the Khmer Rouge, almost twenty years after "Year Zero". Education and health care were rudimentary.

In 1999 we were lucky enough to find a way to help, via a school building and teacher training program started by Save the Children. From the early pilots, this is now a vibrant program covering hundreds of schools and thousands of children.

We have been inspired by ordinary people who, despite the difficulties of their own situation, work so very hard for the welfare and education of the children in their communities. Education is truly the key, and in every country we have visited it is treasured. It is a pity that in our "developed" world we seem to value education so lightly.

Perhaps a different kind of leadership, where ordinary people do extraordinary things for their children?

Personal Libraries of Executives

I just loved this recent blog entry from Jeffrey Keefer's Silence and Voice blog.

"There is a revealing article in today's New York Times (the complete article can be found here) about how some of the most successful people in business today have large personal libraries that contain few of the best-selling business success books that fill the bookstores today. While this makes sense (why would somebody who is already successful read books about how to become successful?), what is most surprising is what they are reading. According to this article, they are reading subjects that include:

• poetry (such as Blake)
• philosophy (such as Aristotle)
• classic literature
• global works on science and weather (climactic change)

Having a personal library has always been important to me as well. I am always buying (and even reading) books. Philosophy, adult education, classical literature, non-fiction, and academic and professional journals line my bookshelves. As they get full, I have to move them to other locations as well as weed-out the ones that just are not needed (which usually means they were never needed in the beginning). With all the increasing emphasis on electronic content delivery and management, I still like having books in my hand, and I think Seth Godin expressed most concisely why this is:

"Holding and owning the book, remembering when and how you got it... that's what you're paying for. Books are great at holding memories."

I think I will do some reading this afternoon. Ahh, the choices!"