I’ve just re-watched the remarkable video from the RSA of a short talk by Sir Ken Robinson. One of the best ten minutes I’ve spent for a long time. You can see it here:

The things I take away from it (other than the brilliance of the animation) are:

• The production-line mentality of education hampers creativity. There is no inherent need to group learners according to their “date of manufacture” (aka their birthday). Standardisation is an unhelpful offshoot of the production line mentality too.
• Divergent thinking is an essential capacity for creativity, and one that is for the most part inhibited the more we are educated. Encouraging this type of thinking should be a key component for any course.
• Collaboration, so says SKR, is the stuff of growth. Atomisation doesn’t boost performance, on an individual or on a group basis.

For some reason this has led my brain to think again about the power of peer influence. An inherent problem in the organisational model that we’re putting together for Spark+Mettle is that its very nature demands a lot of highly-individualised support. (NB I don’t think this is incompatible with collaboration. In fact I think a programme that delivers both personally-tailored support and group-oriented tasks is pretty strong).

Anyway, it made me think about an article I read a long time ago (and can no longer find) that explained that by influencing a small number of people in a large group, those people can then go on to influencing the other group members themselves. I guess I might be getting at a positive, socially-valuable version of interactionism. Like being contagious, but in a good way.

On that note…