I wonder how much of what I read in the papers from the start of the pandemic I actually took in. Don’t get me wrong, I checked, I read, I kind of processed, but nothing meant much. To the point that I was just scanning, skimming and moving on. And then I was hit. August 2020, and there I was, confronted with this news that felt so close to my heart.
The news of Sir Ken Robinson’s passing after a short battle with cancer was more than the loss of our very own scouse education giant. It felt like a loss of a mentor to me. Having become an educator highly inspired by his words and ideas, this sole headline was enough to make me embark in an internal journey of reflection. A reflection of my last 12 years working in education,thinking of education, and living around education at a time when I was ‘abandoning’ my teaching career.
In recent years, I had become progressively disenchanted with the profession and I was slowly moving away from mainstream classroom teaching. Reflecting back on when I decided to get into teaching, I was probably too naïve to think I personally could bring to life some of Ken’s visions of what needed to be changed in schools. Schools, the institutions that he claimed were responsible for stripping creativity out of children by putting all emphasis on the academic achievements. If you’ve heard of Sir Ken Robinson, you know what I am talking about. For those who haven’t, I invite you to go online and search for “Do schools kill creativity?” and watch the talk that made him the most watched speaker in Ted Talks’ history at the time, 2006. That is, our Ken, Liverpool-born author, speaker and international advisor on education, he was an influencer (at least among educationalists) before that was even a thing.
Our Ken believed that children do not grow into creativity as they grow up, but they are educated out of it by the school system that prioritises academic achievement and conformity instead of liberating imagination and initiative. Personally, I did not have to stick around in the profession for too long to see that he was, indeed, not wrong. From the early days of my teaching, I struggled to take the school’s side when some of my students were being taken out of their favourite lessons to do extra Maths and English. This, sadly, echoed some of my adult friends’ school memories, many of them in the arts now, who had often talked about how they had been made to feel ‘stupid’ in school and resented the teachers for exactly the same thing we were still doing to them: take them out of Music or Drama for the sake of a C in Maths GCSE. Many of my very talented friends now ‘make a living’ out of the arts, as much as this is possible, but sadly, they often talked about how school let them down. So yes, interestingly, even though it is clear we all agree on children’s extraordinary capacity for innovation and adaptability, which is increasingly in need in the current ever-changing times (and that was 2006, just imagine what we would have to say now in our current climate), Ken believed we keep educating children under systems that were created to meet the needs of an era of industrialisation, based on academic ability, ignoring and cutting down opportunities for children to find their unique talents. Naïve again of me to think that moving into primary teaching would be different. It was, to some extent. However, as you moved up teaching towards the older years, the spark often started diminishing and by year 6 pupils were mini-secondary school students, whose achievements would be marked as ‘successfully transitioned’, that is, ready for secondary. Primary, complete. Next.
It is in this context, that 2020 had become the year in which my professional life was taking a new direction. I had finally managed to move on from formal teaching and I was about to embark in a new career in educational research. However, this would not start until later that year, and I had been hired to write a book chapter on Indigenous Education in Brazil, which is my research focus. What better place to wait for my PhD to start and work on my chapter than Brazil. Having had such a structured life as a teacher for such a long time, it felt like such a liberation to have this off-time, with no plans or responsibilitiesotherthanwritingthischapterand immerse myself in a Brazilian life for a bit. After all, was that not the way my career was going anyway. So, I called it a ‘pre-PhD research year’. Why not? Well, because of Covid-19. That is why not.
Like most people on this planet, the appearance of Covid-19 meant change of plans in my life. Change of plans for the ‘no plans’ I had planned for 2020. You can imagine, then, my disappointment when I found myself making an early return to the UK at the end of March. The rest of the months… well, nothing new I could tell you on that front that you already don’t know. Of course, I was grateful I had a place and the economic and social resources to be fine during the next year, but still, disappointment was high and the up and downs a common human factor of these months.
Then August, and the news of Sir Ken passing hit me. And at the same time, twelve years on from having encountered and being inspired by Sir Ken Robinson, here I was, jumping out of what felt like a sinking boat to me, mainstream education. Was I abandoning my peer-teachers and betraying our Ken?
Let me defend myself here, though. My years in education as a teacher sadly confirmed many of Ken’s concerns about the education system that I have briefly explained already. I even tried international teaching (in some very very priviledged settings in Asia) and more informal community-based education work in South America. This is probably a story for another time. But something I took from these international experiences was that the issues I saw in the British system were not unique to here. Education systems all around the world are not only killing creativity, but they are also replicating social differences and inequality from the very core of our society. Yes, my international school in Asia was a thriving community with drama societies, talented musicians at the age of 11 and touring choirs, but also this was a school reserved for the very few parents that could afford sending their kids there. Then, you have the other extreme, like the Mexican mining community I spent some time in, where children all they want to do is learn English because that is a step closer to getting a job or try it ‘al otro lado’ (on the other side, AKA, the States).
So, yes, I did escape… in my defence I’ll say it wasn’t a premeditated escape but it happened slowly, as I moved on, tested, and I could see that, although you can make a difference to individuals, I was being complacent to a system I so fundamentally disagreed with. There must be something else. But was I letting you down? Was I quitting too soon? I hope I touched the lives of some of my students, as many teachers do, and even helped them get qualifications that will help them advance in life, because I am also realistic, and I do know exams are also important. To an extent, but not in detriment to all the rest. I really hope I did. But is this enough? At a personal level, it could have been enough. At least I was making a difference to someone, right? But what about the bigger picture? I was being complacent with a system I so disagreed with, a system, that you, Ken, disagreed with so much too. I had to look somewhere else.
I’d like to think this desire to look for something else, somewhere else, some other way, it is also a kind of Sir Ken Robinson legacy. After having been unable to settle down for the education system so well described by Ken, I am now moving on towards new ways of doing education. Who knows, maybe I will find some new Kens in this new path. New allies with ideas and insights that will further open up other ways of rethinking education. Utopia? Maybe, but then I thought of Eduardo Galeano, another one of my allies:
“Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I’ll never reach it. So what’s the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.”
So off I go, to find new allies. Thank you Sir Ken Robinson. So long Ken, we will keep walking.