This small snippet of a longer presentation by Sir Ken Robinson, renders in cartoon the Gordian knot of challenge we now face in relation to education and to transcendence from being an industrial world to being a collaborative one.
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I find this item to be a purely brilliant encapsulation of the challenge and crisis facing all of us; the world culture has changed faster than those changing it can effectively manage.
This is not unusual nor even unexpected; so one of the real questions should be: “Why the hell haven’t we been doing something about it all along?” (But likely only addressed once a general outline of how to effectively begin has occurred, else we’ll spend the next fifty years arguing and it will be another fifty years in which we’ve actually done nothing whatever!)
I strongly suspect the answers are the same as they have ever been:
(a) those guiding are more interested in being ‘those who guide’ than actually guiding (the systemic anomaly that corrupts all human collectives over time), which results in,
(b) those who would contribute are minimized or outright demonized (perceived as “threats” to (a)), which creates,
(c) an environment where not only is there no motivation or support for progress, there is an active resistance and chilling reaction to any instance of its appearance.
Mind you, I am not saying people are deliberately and with forethought impeding things (most times); this is, however, the crux of it – layers of cultural and societal impediment to “difference”, “change”, and embrace of ideation.
Anthropologically speaking, this too, is a cycle that may be seen throughout human history; in fact, it is the thing that causes the collapse of all great societal or cultural accomplishments.
So I suppose the real question becomes, “How do we overcome an impediment that it seems we are, both physiologically and societally, greatly prone to missing (blind spot) or deliberately ignoring?”