On the passing of Sir Ken Robinson

I fell into teaching by accident. In fact, I actively resisted. In my younger days, I never saw myself as an educator. I believed that I did not have the temperament.

But life happened. Out of need and necessity, I took on a part-time teaching job. And loved it. And hated what went with it. I accepted a permanent position. And my doubts about me being in education increased. Maybe I was right after all. Maybe this wasn't meant to be.

After a while I realised that, even though I was still struggling to get it right, it wasn't the teaching or the students that got me down. It was the culture in the buildings. It was, more often than not, the staffrooms. And it was the politics around education. The public perception - and misconceptions - around education.

How can something this important be treated in such an off-hand manner, I asked myself. How can we allow policies to suck the life out of teaching? How can we allow bad, uninspired teaching to be foisted upon our youth? And because I, myself, had not been trained properly or exposed to best practice before setting foot in the classroom, I did not know where to begin looking for answers.

This dilemma became even worse as I moved into management positions later on. I knew something was wrong. Something important was missing. I fell into the poisonous circle of endless complaining without doing. Things looked uninspiring and without hope. Was I going to be just another cog in the wheel of this soulless education machine?

And then Sir Ken happened.

I can't remember the event that I attended. But I saw my first Sir Ken TED talk. And the lights came on. For the first time I heard someone put into words what I had only vaguely suspected. And how eloquently those words were expressed!

It was a call to arms. It was a challenge to all teachers and administrators to remember that we are not just preparing cannon fodder for the great Industrial God out there, but that we were instrumental in helping young humans become. That the "becoming", in all its potentiality, was the business of education. That narrowing the picture to end of year results amounted to a kind of sin.

He spoke passionately about teaching. But he also spoke passionately about educational management. And from one of these talks I got my own motto: 

“The real role of leadership in education…is not, and should not be, ‘command and control’; the real role of leadership is ‘climate control.’”

If you haven't yet done so, go and watch everything of his that you can find. He really does light the way for all searchers in the teaching space.

Rest well, Sir Ken!