Finding Your Passion

1. Finding Your Passion Sir Ken Robinson, PhD The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

2. Creative Individuals Who Struggled in School • Gillian Lynne (dancer & choreographer) • Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons) • Paul McCartney (Beatle and songwriter) • Did not finish high school • Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac drummer) • Gordon Parks (self-taught photographer & film-maker) • Richard Branson (Virgin Records/Atlantic)

3. The Element • The meeting point between natural aptitude & personal passion • Features • Aptitude (I get it) • Passion (I love it) • Conditions • Attitude (I want it) • Opportunity (Where is it)

4. Narrow View of Intelligence • History begins with Aristotle and Plato • Fixed trait • Demonstrated by talent with numbers and/or words • Contributions of the Enlightenment • Importance of logic and critical reasoning • Importance of evidence in support of scientific ideas • Mass Public Education during Industrial Revolution • Need for quick & easy forms of selection & assessment • Most important ideas can be conveyed via words or mathematical expressions • We can quantify intelligence & rely on IQ and standardized tests to determine who is intelligent

5. History of Standardized Testing • Alfred Binet – one of creators of IQ test • intended it to be used to determine what students had special needs so they could get appropriate schooling • Did not believe intelligence was fixed • Lewis Termin – Stanford University • 1916, revision of Binet’s test (Stanford-Binet Test) • Eugenicist • argued poverty & criminality were inherited traits and that they could be identified via IQ testing • argued entire ethic groups inherited these traits, so their children should be given less rigorous education & discouraged or deterred from reproduction

6. SAT Test • Carl Brigham, inventor • Eugenicist • Conceived test for military • Rejected both the SAT and eugenics 5 years later • By then, Harvard and other Ivy League schools were using it to measure applicant acceptability • Been used for nearly 7 decades • John Katzman, founder of Princeton Review • Does not measure intelligence • Does not verify high school GPA • Is very poor predictor of college grades

7. Multiple IntelligencesHoward Gardner • Linguistic • Musical • Mathematical • Spatial • Kinesthetic • Inter-personal (relationships with others) • Intra-personal (knowledge & understanding of self) • Intelligences are • mostly independent of each other • None is more important, though some are dominant, while others are dormant

8. Robert SternbergProfessor of Psychology at Tufts University • Argues there are 3 types of intelligence • Analytic: the ability to solve problems using academic skills and to complete conventional IQ tests • Creative: the ability to deal with novel situations and to come up with original solutions • Practical: the ability to deal with problems and challenges in everyday life • Daniel Goleman • Psychologist and best-selling author • Argues there is emotional and social intelligence, both of which are essential for working with others • Robert Cooper • Author of The Other 90% • Argues we have a “heart” brain and a “gut” brain

9. Three Features of Intelligence Diverse: expresses itself in numerous ways Dynamic: growth comes to highly interactive brain via seeing new connections between events, ideas, and circumstances Distinctive: unique as a fingerprint The right question to ask is: How are you intelligent? Robinson: “We think about the world in all the ways we experience it, including all the different ways we use our senses. We think in sound, movement, and we think visually.”

10. Creativity: “the process of having original ideas that have value.” • Putting your imagination to work by making something new, coming up with new solutions, or identifying new problems or questions. • Involves a process: new ideas, considering different possibilities and alternative options • Tapping into your talents to create something original • Working with media that you love. The media help creators think in different ways. This illustrates diversity of intelligence and ways of thinking.

11. Open Mind • General Creativity • Non-linear thinking • Make fresh connections • See things in new ways and from different perspectives • Involves intuition, heart and feelings • Personal Creativity - Being in “The Zone” or in the state of flow • Can be periods of intense physical effort • Can be contemplative or meditative • Very personal and authentic • Sense of time differs while in the Zone – a meta-state • You channel ideas, are in harmony, ignore everything else and just concentrate, and the sensation is keenly delightful. • It is an life-giving and powerful state.

12. What puts you in the Zone? If left to your own devices (without worrying about making a living or what others thought), what are you most drawn to doing? What activities do you engage in voluntarily? What aptitudes do these activities suggest? What absorbs you most? What sort of questions to you ask, and what type of points do they make? What do you feel born to do?

13. Circles of Influence Tribes of like-minded people working in the same field Provide mutual inspiration and drive innovation Community of shared values Communities Differ

14. Re-Wiring of Brain • Studies of Visual Perception & Cultural Sculpting of the Brain • Westerners see Object in the foreground • East Asians see the background • Culture May Make an Impression • http://www.dana.org/news/features/detail.aspx?id=8008

15. Global Education Reform Efforts • Economic: challenge to educate people to find work and create wealth in changing world • Identity: countries want to take advantage of globalization, but not lose their identity in the process & education can help control the rate of change

16. Reform Efforts • 3 processes in education: curriculum, pedagogy & assessment. Reform efforts focuses on curriculum & assessment. • Policymakers think the best way to face the future is to improve what they did in the past • Try to control curriculum & reinforce the old hierarchy of subjects, pushing some disciplines and the students that excel at them to the margins • Put greater emphasis on assessment (currently standardized, which inhibits innovation and creativity for both teachers and students) • Penalize “failing” schools • Standardized tests have gone from tool of education to focus of education

17. Transform (not reform) Education • Focus on Pedagogy • Key is not to standardize education, but to personalize education • Build achievement on discovering individual talents • Provide environments where kids where want to learn and can naturally discover their true passions

18. RecommendationsEd is supposed to be the process that develops all resources • Eliminate the existing hierarchy of subjects & treat them equally • Question the entire idea of subjects & focus on disciplines and interdisciplinary education • Personalize the curriculum • Invest in teachers • Rethink assessment & include projects and performances • Reconsider the Western worldview of making distinctions & seeing differences, to include seeing synergies & making connections