Last Updated on November 10, 2026 by Karl Thompson
In this RSA Animate (2010), Sir Ken Robinson argues that our current educational systems are still based on an industrial paradigm of education – education is increasingly standardised and about conformity, and kids, who are living in the most stimulating age in history, fail to see the point of going to school, which is about ‘finding the right answers to pass the tests’ rather than about stimulating divergent thinking. The animation illustrates highlights of a talk Robinson gave at the RSA (the Royal Society of Arts) when he was awarded its Benjamin Franklin Medal.
According to Robinson, one of our major solutions to the plague of distracted kids (alienated by a system they don’t identify with) is to medicate them to get them through school, whereas what really needs to change is the system itself – we need a paradigm shift, rather than mere reform.
Sir Ken Robinson was an educationalist and writer. He died in August 2020, aged 70. His arguments are still widely discussed, and they’re useful in A-level sociology as a critique of standardised, test-driven education.
Current Education systems are not fit for the future
Robinson argues that every country on earth is in the process of reforming its education system. There are two reasons for this:
- The first is economic – countries are trying to figure out how to prepare children for work when we simply don’t know what work will look like in the future.
- The second is cultural – countries are trying to figure out how to pass on their ‘cultural genes’ while at the same time having to respond to globalisation.
The problem with current processes of educational reform is that we are trying to tackle the future by doing what we did in the past and we are alienating millions of kids in the process, who simply can’t see the point of going to school.
When generation X went to school, we were motivated by a particular story: that if we worked hard and got good grades, we could get to college, get a degree and get a good job. Today’s children do not believe this, and they are right not to: getting a degree means you will probably get a better job, but is no longer guaranteed to get you a decent job!
The education system is rooted in an industrial paradigm
The problem with the current education system is that it was conceived in the cultural context of the Enlightenment and the economic context of the industrial revolution. It emerged in the nineteenth century, which was the first time which compulsory public education, freely available to all and paid for by taxes was established.
The Modern education system was originally founded on an ‘us and them’ mentality as many thinkers in the 19th century seriously believed that ordinary street kids could not cope with it, and it is also founded on an Enlightenment concept of the mind – which favours a knowledge of the classics and deductive reasoning, what we might call ‘academic knowledge’.
The system thus divides people into ‘smart people’ (academics) and ‘non-smart people’ (non-academics) and while this has been great for some, most people have not benefited from this system, in fact Ken Robinson argues that the main effect is that it has caused chaos.
We medicate our kids to get them through education
Robinson argues that statistics on prescriptions for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) suggest that America is suffering from an ADHD epidemic. In his words, we are ‘drugging’ our kids with Ritalin as a matter of routine. However, Robinson suggests that this cannot be an epidemic as the rates of prescription vary from West to East – they are much higher in the East of America, which suggests that this is a fictitious epidemic – it’s the system that’s choosing to medicate a ‘problem’ which is only a problem because the system has labelled it thus.
What’s really happening, according to Robinson, is that our kids are living through the most information rich age in history – they are bombarded with information from many sources through T.V. and the Internet – they are in a way, hyper-stimulated, and yet our response is to punish them for getting distracted from ‘boring stuff’ in school.
Robinson suggests that it is no coincidence that the incidence of prescriptions for ADHD corresponds closely to the rise in standardised testing.
He argues that the increasing use of drugs such as Ritalin to medicate kids means that we are effectively getting our kids through school by ‘anaesthetising’ them.
The school system is run for the benefit of industry, and in many senses along industrial lines, mirroring a factory system of production in at least the following ways:
- Ringing bells
- Separate facilities
- Specialised subjects
- We still educate children by batches (‘as if the most important thing about them is the date of their manufacture’).
Increasingly education is about conformity, and you see it in the growth of standardised curricula and standardised testing. The current paradigm is mainly to do with standardisation, and we need to shift the paradigm and go in the other direction.
The education system kills creativity
Robinson draws on research into divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is an essential capacity for creative thinking – it is the ability to see lots of possible ways of interpreting and answering a question; to think laterally and to see many possible answers, not just one.
An example of this is simply to give someone a paper clip and to get them to think of as many different uses for the paper clip as possible – someone who’s good at this will be able to think of hundreds of uses for the paper clip by imagining that it can be all sorts of sizes and made out of all sorts of different materials.
Robinson cites a longitudinal study (taken from a book called Breakpoint and Beyond) in which kindergarten children were tested on their ability to think divergently, and 98% of them scored at ‘genius level’; the same children were retested at ages 8-10, but only 50% of them scored at genius level, and again at 13-15, where hardly any of them scored at genius level.
Robinson takes this study to show two things: firstly, we all have the inherent capacity for divergent thinking and secondly it deteriorates as children get older.
Now lots of things happen to these kids as they grow up, but the most important thing, he argues, is that they have become educated – they’ve spent 10 years being told ‘that there’s one answer and it’s at the back, and don’t look and don’t copy’.
The problem we have is that the industrial-capitalist mode of education is deep in the gene-pool of the education system, it is an educational paradigm which will be hard to shift.
Shifting the Education Paradigm
We need to do the following to shift the industrial-capitalist education paradigm:
Firstly, destroy the myth that there is a divide between academic and non academic subjects, and between the abstract and the theoretical.
Secondly, recognise that most great learning takes place in groups – collaboration is the stuff of growth, rather than individualising people which separates them from their natural learning environment.
Finally, we need to change the habitual ways of thinking of those within the education system and the habitats which they occupy.
Relevance to A-Level Sociology
This can be used to criticise New Right approaches to education, as well as New Labour, the Coalition and the Conservative governments that followed – because all of them kept in place the basic regime of testing introduced in 1988.
There’s also something of a link here to Bowles and Gintis’ Correspondence Principle – in which the Hidden Curriculum mirrors the work place, because the system is still based on an industrial model.
Robinson seems to be suggesting we have a more post-modern approach to education – freeing schools and teachers up so they can encourage more creativity in the classroom rather than being constrained by the tyranny of standardised testing. See my post on postmodernism and education.
Limitations of Ken Robinson’s Perspective
His evidence is illustrative rather than systematic. The talk is a persuasive argument, not a piece of research. Robinson uses a small number of striking examples, such as the map of ADHD prescriptions and the divergent thinking figures, rather than a systematic review of the evidence. That makes it memorable, but it also makes it hard to test.
The divergent thinking figures come from a book, not a published study. The ‘98% at genius level’ figure comes from a popular book, Breakpoint and Beyond, rather than a peer-reviewed study, and we’re not told how ‘genius level’ was measured or who the children were. And even if divergent thinking does decline with age, that doesn’t show that schooling causes it: lots of other things change as children grow up.
The ADHD argument is contested. Robinson’s claim that ADHD is largely a ‘fictitious epidemic’ created by the school system is his interpretation. Variation in diagnosis rates between places could reflect differences in access to healthcare, diagnostic practice or awareness, as well as pressure from schools. Many doctors and researchers regard ADHD as a real condition, so this part of the argument should be used with care in an exam answer.
He says more about the problem than the solution. Robinson’s three proposals for shifting the paradigm are very general. He doesn’t explain how a less standardised system would be funded, assessed or held accountable, which is exactly what New Right supporters of testing would ask.
The functionalist and New Right response. Functionalists would argue that a shared, standardised curriculum and exams perform important functions: they pass on shared knowledge and values, and they allocate people to jobs fairly on the basis of merit. Without some standard measure, it’s hard to see how employers or universities would compare candidates.
But the argument fits sociological critiques. Robinson’s account of the factory model is close to the Marxist idea that schools correspond to the workplace, and his call for a creative, personalised education fits the postmodern view that education should respond to a more diverse, less predictable society.
Sociology of Education Revision Bundle
If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my sociology of education revision notes bundle, written by Karl Thompson, who taught A-level sociology for eighteen years and spent twelve as an AQA examiner, marking all three papers on the current specification.
Signposting and Related Posts
- Postmodernism and education
- Bowles and Gintis’ Correspondence Principle
- Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the Wall Experiment
This material is relevant to the sociology of education.
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