Dear Superintendent Ramos, Jeff Waugh. President Jaramillo and Carol Cooper,
I hope you trust my emails enough to open the animated example of our failure in education produced by the late author and speaker, Sir Ken Robinson. Ken’s TedTalk on creativity in schools was the most viewed TedTalk ever. I just do not understand what happened to that well received information offered over ten years ago.
Formal Education and the Much in Demand Tradesman
The challenges to getting kids on the trades path come from the foundational principles of our educational process that states more is better, college is the only path to success and the trades is for the less intelligent. The last one requires a definition of intelligence with respect to application of knowledge.
Since trades people do not teach k-12 because it mostly requires a college degree, children never get a view from a person with that perspective plus teachers cannot teach what they do not know anything about. All they know is that college is how they got to where they are and teach from that perspective. Because of this throughout our whole education process college being the only path to success is irresponsibly drummed into all of us.
If one does not get on that college path for whatever reason they face a lifetime of trying to overcome the societal placed judgement that they do not measure up. College educated academics set this scale of judgement and then they wonder why they can’t get a plumber because their academic prows should deserve immediate action by the lowly tradesman.
A doctor hired a plumber to repair his stopped up toilet. When completed the plumber produced the bill. The doctor, in shock, says you charge more than I do as a doctor. The plumber returns with, “I know, I used to be a doctor.”
I enjoy the right to offer this perspective because I come from a well educated and highly successful lineage and due to a lack of ability to meet the standardized methods used to educate I dropped out and pursued a diversity of trades related skills that gave me and my family a life many college educated long for, and get this, without any debt except a mortgage.
I think what really leaves kids confused is that the Americans that have created the most financially successful businesses are college drop outs. Public education combined with college totally destroys the creative mind which is what we need far more than a bunch of stuck in their mental track PhD’s trying to decide how to better educate children. As the story goes, A students teach B students who go to work for C students.
Here is another story. The pastor of the Church I attended told the story of our Church’s school when it had parents come and speak on their careers. The Pastor had a fifth grade son in the school and Dad told his story of how he became a pastor which was lot about educational paths. The next Dad, Tony Rubatino, ushered all the kids outside where his career was parked. He drove a garbage truck and gave the kids a complete demonstration of how it works with all its roars, clangs and bangs. When those kids got home which career do you think the kids talked about and how did the parents react? and then when they returned to school there was no instruction on how to become a garbage truck driver and definitely no respective honoring of those that do.
I offered this before but few actually want the answer it offers because it does not align with the brainwashing they received.
Changing education paradigms (Sir Ken Robinson | RSA Animate)
https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tedspread
Rob Wood
