An Evening with Sir Ken Robinson

I am fortunate enough this week to be attending my 3rd straight Strengths in Education Conference in Omaha, Nebraska.  The conference is focused on maximizing student engagement and success by helping students focus on their core talents through the use of the StrengthsFinder assessment tool.  Gallup developed the StrengthsQuest program to focus on the use of this tool with students and the University of Minnesota (where I work) is one of the largest users of the Strengths tool in the country.

Sir Ken Robinson kicked off the conference last evening with a wonderful speech focused on education, creativity, and passion.  I was first introduced to Sir Ken in the form of the outstanding Ted Talk below:



Here are a couple of takeaways from his speech last night that might be interesting to others:

• The human experience is designed to be creative, diverse, and organic.
• Our creative lives exist as part of a conversation between our disposition and circumstances.
• The United States has a 30% stopout/dropout rate and 1/31 adults is currently in prison (highest rate in the world).  A majority of those in prison left schooling early.
• Investing more money in our broken education system is a bad idea.
• The money that could be spent on a successful education system is cheaper and a better investment than the current spending on individuals in the criminal justice system.
• Successful education is focused on identifying aptitudes (Strengths), tapping into passions, having the right attitude, and taking advantage of opportunities. 
• Education in an organic and personal experience.
• "We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up." - Phyllis Diller. We need to encourage and feed our children's curiosity and creativity, not stifle it.

The most powerful story he told was about Death Valley in the spring of 2005.  That area of the country typically only receives about 2 inches of rain per year.  As a result, nothing is able to grow and be sustained there.  In the year prior to the spring of 2005, this area received a very rare 6 inches of rain and for the first time in 50 years flowers bloomed.  The flowers stayed in bloom until July and the seeds they dropped will lie dormant until the next wet winter in that area.

For many students, their passions and talents are lying dormant like the desert seeds just waiting for the educational nourishment needed to bring them to life.  Unlike desert flowers, once a student's passions and talents come to life they have the ability to sustained for a lifetime.

The reason I am in higher education is to help as many students as possible discover their passions and talents, productively apply both to their lives, find the meaning and pleasure needed to be happy, and to develop and learn as much as possible in order to positively contribute to society.  I want to be a drop of rain that develops others to become drops of rain and collaborate with as many people as possible to be the flood needed for each student to thrive.