Article Analysis of What Graduation Speeches Should Say but Don’t (Essay Example)

According to the article “What Graduation Speeches Should Say but Don’t” by Sir Ken Robinson, the U.S. spends more on education than many other countries, yet it has one of the lowest graduation rates in the world. This scenario is created by a misconception our school system is based on. Nowadays, education is still stuck in a singular concept of capacity which makes a broad approach to learning impossible. On the contrary, the community we live in depends on a huge diversity of skills, intelligence, and talents. So, there is a huge discrepancy between our nature as human beings and the way we are educated. This letter aims to suggest community college offerings be modified to guarantee more alternatives for students looking to seek a career in non-traditional majors. There are three main reasons why I am making this request. The first two emphasize the correlation between human intelligence and the educational system while the third deals with the effects of learning on our economy.

According to the Ted Talk entitled “Do schools kill creativity?”, intelligence is diverse, we think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically (Robinson 12:52). We all are human beings and such as we are different from each other. However, our schools are still built on conformity and not on diversity. Our school’s goal is to identify what people can do across a very limited range of achievements. This policy tends to narrow the attention to the STEM disciplines. They are essential but they are not enough. Real education must find a perfect balance between arts, humanities, physical education, and STEM disciplines. Many people are forced to choose a traditional major as there is no major that reflects their passions or that is not as developed as the traditional ones. This leads them to go to college unenthusiastic and do the bare minimum to avoid failing classes. In the worst case, they drop out of college permanently while in the "best" case they find themselves doing a job they don't like just to get a good salary. 

Through the “Do schools kill creativity?” Ted Talk speech Sir Ken Robinson sustains that “intelligence is dynamic” (13:03).  This magnific ability of our brain allows us to be interactive. It is precisely the interaction that gives rise to creativity. Collaboration between different disciplines creates new and different ways of seeing things. We all build our existence through this continuous process of envisioning alternatives and possibilities and the responsibility of our education system should be to stimulate and improve these powers of creativity. In contrast, we have a standardized culture which leads to a kind of education in which disciplines such as physical education, the arts, and the humanities have much less value than technical subjects. By placing less value on non-traditional majors, we deny the possibility of collaboration between more people and disciplines. We must make sure that people can interact with each other through different visions, resulting from the development of the study offers. Only by enhancing the non-traditional majors, we will finally be able to give life to a strong growth in creativity that will lead to a better future.

Finally, according to the article “What Graduation Speeches Should Say but Don’t” by Sir Ken Robinson, STEM disciplines are only part of a balanced education and cover only a few of the many skills and passions on which a successful economy depends. Furthermore, it costs an enormous sum of money to repair the damage from the dropout crisis. We would not have this kind of issue if people were not disengaged from school. We could make people enjoy school just by giving people a broader range of opportunities. In conclusion, by modifying our community college offerings we provide people a different set of expectations, we increase creativity, we offer huge support to our state’s economy, and schools that were previously abandoned come back to life.