It’s National School Choice Week and although this video doesn’t focus directly on the issue of school choice, it continues with our theme of challenging the status quo in public education.

The below video is a Ted Talk given by Ken Robinson several years back. Mr. Robinson is a leading voice in the movement to revolutionize public education. Although I don’t agree with most of his politics, I think he’s really getting at some important things to think about regarding our education system and why we educate students the way we do.

This video is a must-watch for anyone who’s concerned about public education. A few quotes from Ken’s talk are below, followed by the video.

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original. We’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is, we’re educating people out of their creative capacities.”

“If you were to visit public education as an alien to see what it’s for, I think you’d have to conclude that the whole purpose is to produce university professors.”

“The universities designed the system in their image. The whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many talented, brilliant, highly creative people think they’re not because everything they were good at at school wasn’t valued or was stigmatized.”