ART & CREATIVITY VS EDUCATION.
Watch full speech here: https://www.facebook.com/100026977778251/videos/638404727227888
This week at Full Council, I took off my blue Conservative tie to speak openly, passionately and frank about educational reform in this country and it was really humbling to have senior politicians from both Labour and the Lid Dems cross the political divide to praise me for my speech at Lord Mayor Making on Wednesday.
I talked about how the whole system of state education is a protracted process of university entrance, which has come to dominate the view of intelligence and academic ability, because the universities have designed the system, in their own image.
I spoke about how sending 50% of students to university was a colossal mistake that has not only created the toxic social and political divide we see today, but has resulted in 40% of all graduates working in the public sector while a third go onto none professional rolls. This is not a successful outcome in my book.
In contrast, the system has profoundly stifled creatively for decades, telling kids they won’t ever be musicians, or artists, or an entrepreneur, which in this day and age is profoundly wrong when the internet has changed everything and in many cases has become a direct competitor to the state educational model.
As a result we now have a society full of talented, brilliant, creative people who think they are not! Because the very thing they were good at as kids, wasn’t valued at school, or at worse, stigmatised, which again is profoundly wrong!
The system, is stuck in the 19th century and it needs radical reform, but I simply don’t see anyone on the green benches with the foresight or courage to be brave enough to talk about this and I’m apathetic as to whether they ever will, because the same system has served them so well….
#FrankleyForward