Dave Eggers @ TED: improve education yourself

"The future is our children, thus we should pump vast amounts of money into schooling."

This is basically the argument that's always used by people who want better education. Well you won't hear me deny it, but I think there are other ways to improve schooling systems.
My opinion totally aside, some time ago I came across this really inspirational speaker at TED. The speaker being Dave Eggers, his speech on how he improved a local school being below.



The essence of what the man did was open up a tutoring center where he offers one-on-one guidance after school. Children, especially the ones in primary schools, have to be motivated to do homework and to do something at school. (If they're not motivated they don't do it). That's where Eggers came in, he managed to motivate the children at his center. Which is pretty awesome.

Ultimately Eggers is saying that the education level would improve if everyone invested a bit of their spare time in a local school to help with tutoring. And that's probably very true.

-jdh

Ken Robinson @ TED: Schooling and Creativity

Wow. This is an amazing TED talk. Funny, inspiring, and persuasive. Sir Ken outlines what he sees as a fundamental flaw into our world's education system in what is no contest, the laugh out loud funniest TED talk to date.

Enjoy.



Here's a great quote:

"I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology. One which starts to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.

Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip mine the earth, for a particular commodity. And for the future it won't serve us.

We have to rethink the the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children.

We may not see this future, but they will, and our job is to help them make something of it."

Marvelous.



Here's Sir Ken's Wiki
And Sir Ken's site