What would Sir Ken Robinson think of the demise of arts education in 2024?
A former student of mine sent me this TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson (1950 – 2020) as a response to our post “Why art education matters.” Ken Robinson’s talk first aired seventeen years ago. It is astonishing that the conditions for arts education have not improved and his claim of ‘academic inflation’ is as true today as then.
In 2024, with the explosion of AI-powered technology, the notion of academic inflation is serious when arts and humanities degrees are devalued on the notion that they don’t produce well-paying careers at the end. What about the idea that these degrees create intelligent, empathetic individuals with ingenuity? All of which are highly desirable qualities for employers. We agree with Ken Robinson when he says:
“My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status…I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.” Sir Ken Robinson
We believe the arts can and will thrive through the power of an economy of our own making where individuals exchange their skills and knowledge. This is how [cloud] takes up the challenge to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.
Are you looking for creative skills to enrich your project? Do you have creative skills you want to make available? Do you have an arts venue or space you would like to promote? Contact us, we have several ways we can help.
