Mulberry Street

Watch Sir Ken Robinson Explain What School Does to Marco

                 

Sir Ken Robinson  makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. Robinson is author of "Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative", and a leading expert on innovation and human resources. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 20:03) - More TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com

John Backus and the Honor Roll

John Backus died last weekend. Backus led the IBM team that created FORTRAN, the computer language that changed how programmers interacted with computers. Backus was one of the innovators who laid the foundation for modern software. He was awarded the 1977 Turing Award, often called the “Nobel Prize of Computing. “ The citation for his award reads:

For profound, influential, and lasting contributions to the design of practical high-level programming systems, notably through his work on FORTRAN, and for seminal publication of formal procedures for the specification of programming languages.

Pretty impressive-clearly Backus was a gifted mathematician and original thinker- but if you think that means he was a successful student you are wrong. In a 1979 edition of Think, the IBM employee magazine, he described his educational career as “checkered.” Referring to his prep school, Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, he said, “the delight of the place was all the rules you could break.” He managed to graduate from Hill but was invited to leave the University of Virginia after only six months. He studied premed after serving in the Army during WWII but dropped out of medical school because, “I had visions of right away doing research on the functions of the brain. But at medical school, all they wanted you to do was "memorize, memorize, memorize.”

I doubt that Backus made the honor roll during his school days but he earned numerous honors and awards in the real world. As I read his obituary I was reminded of the saying I have often heard from successful entrepreneurs and corporate leaders.

The A students go on to academia, the B students work for the C students.

There are a lot of kids like John Backus who are falling through the cracks in today’s test-driven, grade-focused schools. How do we nurture creativity and talent that our children will need in the future? Christian Long articulates his thinking about this subject in the Future of Learning Manifesto.

I am thinking about my response to his vision. More to come……….

Sir Ken Robinson and Marco

And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street is my favorite book by Dr. Seuss. You gotta love the protagonist, Marco, for following his father’s directions to:

Keep your eyelids up
And see what you can see.

But you also have to feel sorry for him because he can never satisfy his dad.

But when I tell him where I’ve been
And what I think I’ve seen,
He looks at me and sternly says,
Your eyesight’s much too keen.

Kids like Marco ask great questions and have original ideas because they are willing to take a risk.  School can be a very disheartening place for kids like Marco because, as Sir Ken Robinson said at TED in 2006,

"We are educating people out of their creative capacities."