Creative Thinking In Education

Another website that I enjoy frequenting is TED. It is part of that wealth of knowledge available to us on the web. I view TED as being able to attend a lecture series of some of the most creative and brilliant minds of our time - and it is free. (As all knowledge should be.)

With all the current debate on education in Manchester, specifically education spending, this recent lecture that I watched struck a chord. I ask you to spend twenty minutes and watch this:

I'm not implying that we need to scrap our entire education system in Manchester, nor that we should build a bunch of Montessori or charter schools. The fact is that most of our public education system is set at the state and federal levels, and this can be frustrating when dealing at the local level with the cards our children are dealt. Maybe we do need to think differently about the challenges that seem to recur year after year around budget discussions.

The chord that this lecture struck for me is that I am concerned that the very programs that our children will need to creatively compete with this quickly changing world will be moved to the bottom tiers of educational spending. We have some serious challenges facing us in both the near and long term. Now is the time for some creative thinking.