How the education system is failing kids.

I heard an older interview from 2009 with Sir Ken Robinson that aired on Radio National this morning. He was sharing how kids are not given the latitude to be their true selves in an education system geared around certain imperatives and then sited two very talented individuals who either would have traditionally have been seen to ‘fail’ either in that system or what their parents deemed right and appropriate in their education and career.

The first was Mick Fleetwood, who turned out to be the drummer in Fleetwood Mac, all Mick wanted to do was be tapping things in school, he was enthusiastic and high energy and Sir Ken said it would have been likely in this day and age that Mick Fleetwood would have been diagnosed with ADHD. But that according to Sir Ken is one of the worst evils of the current system, over medicating kids who may not want to sit still behind a boring desk.

It concerns me so much. I follow the loving Dad and super funny, kind blogger Bereaved Single Parent on WordPress. Gary’s son Hawklad has been diagnosed I think with Aspergers (sorry if I got this wrong as due to hating categorization I may have got that mixed up) but his posts show what an amazing kid his son is and how much loss he has been through and so often how the system fails him and so many others.

The other example was Paulo Coehlo who wanted to be a writer from a young age but had his parents literally try to ‘shock’ him out of that aspiration.. They had him put into a psychiatric unit when we was an adolescent and expressed the desire to be writer and he subsequently got given three rounds of Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT). Fuck!!! Hearing this bought to mind not only my dear sister but my niece as well who came to grief after her family tried to force her to do accountancy. If you knew her as a Sun sign Pisces you would know how creative, artistic, loving and compassionate she is.

That abuse (she was also put on drugs and subjected to toxic psychiatry) made her run away and in time my husband and I tried to help her until that all broke apart in 1999 when we moved overseas and she got pulled back into the noxious fold of the family.. She started having seizures a few years ago and is now on medication and not allowed to drive.

I have shared about my own struggles with my father trying to shut down and confine me.. He told me an Arts degree was ‘not worth the paper it was written on’ back in 1979 but studying fine art would have been my first choice. After my the accident and all of the other shit and trauma going down in our family from 1979 to 1983 in those four pivotal years of my late adolescence and early 20’s I never got to pursue that line of study..

Anyway I will try to find the interview with Ken Robinson to include below.. The system needs to change so it does not continue to fail bright and gifted children. I know there are other modalities out there like the Steiner schools and other intelligent and switched on individuals trying to devise alternative ways of learning with more focus on allowing children a real childhood and time in nature to activate their creative and imaginative selves… To my mind, is an issue of most critical importance.

If you did not fit the system its not a sign of anything wrong with you.. the system may suit some but as he says most schools are not designed to help kids find their particular passions, forms of creativity and talents, nor nurture them.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/we-need-a-creative-revolution-sir-ken-robinson/3698640

There is also the issue of bullying.. I am linking to Cherie White’s post on this that I just found as they seem to be related.. Just because someone’s brain is wired differently it doesn’t make them ‘dumber’ or less than.

https://cheriewhite.blog/2022/03/25/special-needs-children-and-adults-why-they-suffer-such-high-rates-of-bullying/