Imagine my delight to hear Sir Ken Robinson interviewed by Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 Report this week.  Sir Ken is described as an ‘education and creativity expert’ and received a knighthood for his contributions in these fields. He has written a book called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.

Here are a few excerpts from the interview:

I’ve interviewed a lot of people for the book, and, you know, there was a time when Paul McCartney, so to speak, was not Paul McCartney.  You know, it isn’t that all these people were born as celebrities; they achieved some celebrity because of pursuing their own particular talent and their passion.  And I do think we all have that in us, yeah.  The people achieve their best when they firstly tune into their natural aptitudes – and lots of people I have interviewed aren’t musicians, they’re mathematicians, they’re business leaders, they’re teachers, they’re broadcasters, you know, they’ve found this thing that the completely get.  But the second thing is that they love it.  And if you can find that – a talent and a passion – well that’s to say you never work again.  And it is true, I think, that our current education systems are simply not designed to help people do that.  In fact an awful lot of people go through education and never discover anything they’re good at at all.

… we’re all born with tremendous creative confidence and abilities.  Young children are full of great ideas and possibilities.  But that tends to be suppressed as we get older. And it happens in part through this culture of standardised testing that I think is now a blight on the whole of education.

But the second thing is that we all think and learn differently.  I mean, some people are highly visual;  you know, some think best when they’re moving;  some think best when they’re listening;  some people respond well to words, some people don’t.  And getting the best from kids in schools is about understanding the way they think, as well as what it is they’re supposed to be thinking about.  And I think that’s also why some people get through the whole of their education and don’t discover themselves at all.

… the one thing we have as human beings is this extraordinary power of imagination and creativity and the ability to solve problems as well as to deal with ones that we’ve just created.  So, this isn’t some whimsical idea.

– Sir Ken Robinson

Read the whole interview at www.abc.net.au

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything