A world-leading education expert says the academic 'caste system' is ruining American schools
Beloved education theorist Sir Ken Robinson thinks our philosophy on education is totally backward — and it's made the way we set up our schools breathtakingly stupid.
In his new book "Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education," Robinson laments the fact that we privilege the kind of intelligence found in academia over those found in the arts or trade work.
"As the story goes, the smart kids go to college. The others may leave school early and look for a job or apply for a vocational course to learn a trade of some sort. Either way," he writes, "they have taken a step down the status ladder in education.
Robinson is a 40-year-veteran in both the US and UK education systems and the man behind the most-viewed TED talk of all-time — the 2006 talk "Do Schools Kill Creativity," in which he champions the diverse range of talents and passions kids have, and which schools quickly beat out of them.
"This academic/vocational caste system," Robinson argues, "is one of the most corrosive problems in education."
By Robinson's measure, one of the most repeated political mantras in the US is severely misguided: No, not all children should go to college.
Giving book smarts more weight than other forms of brilliance puts kids who'd excel in other fields on a path they weren't meant for. In turn, the value of a college degree drops and other forms of work continue to get left out in the cold.
Over the last half-century, college enrollment rates have jumped from 45.1% in 1959 to 68.4% in 2014. Master's degrees are now as popular as bachelor's degrees were in the 1960s, arguably
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