Twitter Summary: We have all grown so afraid of being wrong that we are not living up to our potential.
Principle
Ken Robinson gave an amazing talk in 2006 and it has since been viewed by over 4 million people. He spoke about about how we’re all afraid of being wrong and this made me want to learn more about Mr. Robinson and to get his popular book, The Element. There are a handful of YouTube videos on Robinson and I highly suggest searching them out. Since hearing this 2006 talk I’ve read The Element and want to share the first of a few principles I found of value.
In the book Robinson talks a lot about the failure of education and educational systems. He argues that they destroy our creative genius and unintentionally teach us to be afraid of being wrong. He goes on to say we are born with a magical curiosity to learn, but somehow it’s beaten or taught out of us by the educational systems. The destruction of our greatest talents appears to be self-imposed. He says:
…when they are very young, kids aren’t particularly worried about being wrong. If they aren’t sure what to do in a particular situation, they’ll just have a go at it and see how things turn out. This is not to suggest that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. Sometimes wrong is just being wrong. What is true is that if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.
That last bit just rings with truth and I’ve seen photos of people who have tattooed that phrase on themselves.
He goes on to say, “Education is the system that’s supposed to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way in the world. Instead, it is stifling the individual talents and abilities of too many students and killing their motivation to learn.”
Bottom line, we have all grown so afraid of being wrong that we are not living up to our potential.
Making Connections About Being Afraid
I bet you can recall a specific moment or moments when you were afraid to speak up or give an answer in class. And the reason is likely because you didn’t want to look stupid if you got it wrong. I can remember those moments. High school can be a painful place to grow up.
However, I also remember moments when I decided I would no longer let other people dictate my happiness or what I could or could not do. I have clear memories of these types of moments in music, where I decided I would never let others tell me what was good or bad music or what music I should or shouldn’t do. I felt liberated! I was able to focus on what made me happy and when I did that, when I quit focusing my efforts on specifically crafting something based on the opinions of others, I found that I loved the process and product more and others did as well. People can smell authenticity and what is genuine and we love it.
But far too often we sacrifice the most amazing portions of ourselves because we’re afraid of what others will think or we try too hard to cater to the desires or appetites of others. Nothing is more appealing than authenticity or someone who is willing to wear their heart and soul on their sleeve and then stand in front of a crowd.
Call to Action
What are you passionate about but afraid you’ll get wrong? As Robinson says, if you forget about what others think in the big picture, engage in the activities that make you most happy, “being wrong” will never happen. You will always be right. If you focus on doing the things that light your fire, that will make other people happy as well.
I encourage you to do something you’ve been afraid of, for whatever reason, because if you do you’ll begin to see you have the potential to accomplish amazing things that you have been putting off for far too long.
I agree with what you and Mr. Robinson say about the educational system. Standardized testing (aka No Child Left Behind) and the new “core” initiatives being practiced in schools absolutely sidetrack the whole purpose of “education”. Like our economy, the education system is a derailed train and no amount of testing or core education will get us back on track. Here are a few fundamental reasons why: (I exclude the quality teachers from these remarks, here I am speaking about the majority)
1) The job of a school teacher is cushy enough to attract the laziest of people:
This is the nature of the beast. I mean no disrespect to those few teachers who do the work because they love it. I am indebted to them forever because they chose to inspire kids with little pay, but I am talking about the majority of teachers. We all know that a good teacher is hard to find, the majority of teachers are the backwash of the educational system. They have gone through primary and secondary school, and found that the benefits, retirement and lifestyle of teaching is desired. They are not ambitious enough to really make change in the world and they end up creating lesson plans for a paycheck and not for the students. I am not sure how to address this problem because mediocre teachers breed more mediocrity in the students that will become future mediocre teachers. However, an inspired and inspiring teacher could ignite a flame in a pupil, therefore the change must take place on an individual basis. It cannot be mandated from some obscure bureaucracy.
2) Teachers are mandated to spend time teaching their pupils how to jump through hoops.
Because of the problem listed above, some regulations have been enforced to bring teachers up to par. But remember, that does not work. The lazy teachers who took the job because it was cushy will not react well to rewards programs or else they would have gone into business and never would have gone into the education field. Also the lazy teacher will continue to be lazy and teach to the standardized test and not teach creativity. They will do the bare minimum to get the best results; and, since a teacher’s salary can be effected by the performance of their students’ test scores, a lazy teacher will teach kids how to improve test scores. Once again, they fail to teach how to learn. I could go on and on with this point, but I’ll save that essay for later.
3) Core subjects teaching:
Yes we need both math and science, but since when have they become the essence of America? I see this as an economic cop-out. Policy makers see this: The economy is struggling and outsourcing is killing us! If we train up our youngsters to be equal to foreign information specialists, then we will have a thriving economy again. Problem: we are seeing (and using) our children as results of a system. A McDonald’s burger is the same in LA and in Boston, and that makes it a great business, but I don’t want my child to be a metaphoric meat patty equal in size, taste, ornamentation, ect. as the kid next to her. Humans don’t act like commodities (and they generally rebel violently when they are treated as such). Core teaching excludes and under-funds creativity, without a creative outlet our kids will rebel.
4) Government is not a surrogate for family.
This should be point #1 in importance and it is clear enough without explanation. If we really want to see a change for the better we need to return to family values. Father, Mother, sister and brother. This is where real learning, education and creation/creativity occur.
Well, my baby is waking up from her nap. Thanks for the post marc
I applaud the honest look at where the education system has taken this country. As a holder of an advanced degree, I’ve seen the plague of much unoriginality and it’s influence to make it’s participants fit into some type of rubric first hand. It’s all about doing what needs to be done to finish the program. Though there are some incentives to excelling in school, it is also important that the “economy” is comprised of more than math and science scores, but by hard working innovative people that dare to be wrong, to go against the grain and be different in spite of what they are expected to do or create.