Family Fathomings: Father and Son Squidology

My eldest son has a school project to build a marine animal for the classroom. He loves giant squids, and who wouldn't, with their galleon crushing tentacles and pirate eating beaks and slightly unhinged looking globular eyes. So off we set to turn a Nutri Grain box, plastic bags and several newspapers into Squidicus Giganticus.

There is something serene about sharing a project with your child. Their wonderment and fascination of the world given solid reality through tape, glue and paint is a real joy.

It's natural creativity at its best. Well he did a marvelous job cheered on by mum and dad and this is the result. Any more real and I would carve it up for calamari.

Social Scrutinies: Ken Robinson on CNN

Ken Robinson has appeared on CNN this week to discuss "Why teaching is 'not like making motorcars'" and continuing his crusade to get the world to wake up to the coming revolution. As he says it is not a matter of improving our education system but radically transforming it.

Ken Robinson on CNN

"The problem" as he so eloquently states "is that educating young people is not like making motorcars -- at all... And one key difference is that motorcars have no interest in how they're made, and young people do."

I feel mesmerised listening to Ken. His advocacy of personal passion and incorporating that into an institutionalised process like the education system is refreshing. Is it actually possible? He certainly makes it sound so and the possibility he creates touches, moves and inspires.

He sums things up beautifully - "A lot of people, in my experience, or perhaps a majority live their lives doing things that they're not really much concerned with or interested in. You know, they just get along with it and they do it because they've wandered into it and they wait for the weekend."

People are prevented from following their talents and passions by a forced inclusion and indoctrination of a system built for production. A factory process designed to turn out effective workers. With Australia adopting a new National Curriculum fresh, or perhaps just strengthened, standardisation and mass production paradigms are taking hold, not necessarily by evil design but by ill-conceived and ill-planned bureaucratic necessity.

Ken equates the education of our children to growing plants. You don't make one by gluing roots to stems and tacking on flowers. You nurture the seed and create the right environment for strong and successful growth. It is an organic process not a machine process. Currently education is broken as it is "absolutely dominated by habits of mind" and needs some rethinking.

Bravo Ken! Bravo!