Optimising our human potential

Below you will find the entire text of Dr Noel Kalicharan's Address at Naparima College on July 8, 2011. It is worth repeating. No copyright infringement intended.

The bottom line: stop drugging our children, stop drumming our archaic ideas into their heads, revolutionise our school "system" or at least begin to be cognisant of the facts as they have been and will continue to be: not all children will blossom in an environment that stifles creativity. I wrote a calypso about this for my niece to sing at school this year (She got cold feet and promised to perform it next year).
The chorus goes like this:

I have potential,
So much to be realised.
I'm more than special
A masterpiece in God's eyes,
But when you stifle my creativity,
You really rob the whole of humanity.

Optimising our human potential
I first heard the following from a talk by Ken Robinson, educator extraordinaire. An elementary school teacher was giving a drawing class to a group of six-year-old children. At the back of the classroom sat a little girl who normally didn't pay much attention in school. In the drawing class she did. For more than twenty minutes, the girl sat with her arms curled around her paper, totally absorbed in what she was doing. The teacher found this fascinating. Eventually, she asked the girl what she was drawing. Without looking up, the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." Surprised, the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." The girl said, "They will in a minute."


This story reminds us that young children are wonderfully confident in their own imaginations. Most of us lose this confidence as we grow up. Ask a class of eight-year-olds which of them thinks they're creative and they'll all put their hands up. Ask a group of university students the same question and most of them won't.

About twenty years ago, I wrote, "With each passing year, I see more evidence of the devastation the emphasis of our current education system has wrought on the best young minds in the country. Einstein once said that there is born into the minds of all men and women an intense curiosity and desire for knowledge, but for most people, this is soon educated out of them."

I've been teaching computer science at UWI for thirty-five years. The vast majority of students have no desire for knowledge. Imagine students wanting a degree in computer science or information technology but try their best to avoid doing computer programming courses. Most have no curiosity at all about the subject area they are pursuing. They just want a degree and they are quite happy if you can give it to them. Some get quite upset if you refuse to tell them what's coming on the examinations. Those of us who require them to work for their degree are not very popular.

We are all born with tremendous natural capacities but, unfortunately, these deteriorate over time. As Einstein suggested, the irony is that this happens because of education and our education systems. The result is that too many people never connect with their true talents and therefore don't know what they are really capable of achieving.

Given the tremendous changes that technology has brought to society and to our lifestyles, and the fact that these changes are proceeding apace, it has become even more critical that we arrest this wastage of our human potential and prepare our children to live in a world that none of us can predict what it would be like in ten years time, much less fifty, when current secondary school students would be retiring. Given such uncertainty, those who can creatively adjust to a changing world are the ones who will survive.

In his book The Element, Ken Robinson tells the following story: Gillian was only eight years old, but her future was already at risk. Her schoolwork was a disaster. She turned in homework late, her handwriting was terrible, and she tested poorly. She was a disruption to the entire class, one minute fidgeting noisily, the next staring out the window, forcing the teacher to stop the class to pull Gillian's attention back, and the next doing something to disturb the other children around her. Gillian wasn't particularly concerned about any of this—she was used to being corrected by authority figures and really didn't see herself as a difficult child—but the school was very concerned.

They wrote her parents that they thought Gillian had a learning disorder of some sort and that it might be more appropriate for her to be in a school for children with special needs. All of this took place in the 1930s. Nowadays, they would have said she had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and they'd put her on Ritalin or some similar drug. But ADHD hadn't been invented yet. People didn't know they could have that and had to get by without it.

Fearing the worst, Gillian's parents decided to take her to a psychologist for assessment. Gillian told me that she remembers an imposing man in a tweed jacket. He sat her down on a huge leather sofa. Nervous about the impression she would make, she sat on her hands so that she wouldn't fidget. The psychologist went back to his desk, and for the next twenty minutes, he asked Gillian's mother about the difficulties Gillian was having at school and the problems the school said she was causing.

Gillian was extremely uneasy and confused. Even at this tender age, she knew that this man would have a significant role in her life. She knew what it meant to attend a "special school", and she didn't want anything to do with that. She genuinely didn't feel that she had any real problems, but everyone else seemed to believe she did.

Eventually, Gillian's mother and the psychologist stopped talking. The man rose from his desk, walked to the sofa, and sat next to the little girl. "Gillian, you've been very patient, and I thank you for that," he said. "But I'm afraid you'll have to be patient for a little longer. I need to speak to your mother privately now. We're going to go out of the room for a few minutes. Don't worry; we won't be very long."

Gillian nodded apprehensively, and the two adults left her sitting there on her own. But as he was leaving the room, the psychologist leaned across his desk and turned on the radio. As soon as they were in the corridor outside the room, the doctor said to Gillian's mother, "Just stand here for a moment, and watch what she does." There was a window into the room, and they stood to one side of it, where Gillian couldn't see them. Nearly immediately, Gillian was on her feet, moving around the room to the music. The two adults stood watching quietly for a few minutes, transfixed by the girl's grace. There was an expression of utter pleasure on her face. At last, the psychologist turned to Gillian's mother and said, "You know, Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick. She's a dancer. Take her to a dance school."

I asked Gillian what happened then. She said her mother did exactly what the psychologist suggested. "I can't tell you how wonderful it was," she told me. "I walked into this room, and it was full of people like me. People who couldn't sit still. People who had to move to think." She started going to the dance school every week, and she practiced at home every day. Eventually, she auditioned for the Royal Ballet School in London, and they accepted her. She went on to join the Royal Ballet Company itself, becoming a soloist and performing all over the world.

When that part of her career ended, she formed her own musical theater company and produced a series of highly successful shows in London and New York. Eventually, she met Andrew Lloyd Webber and created with him some of the most successful musical theater productions in history, including Cats and The Phantom of the Opera.

Little Gillian, the girl with the high-risk future, became known to the world as Gillian Lynne, one of the most accomplished choreographers of our time, someone who has brought pleasure to millions and earned millions of dollars. This happened because someone looked deep into her eyes—someone who had seen children like her before and knew how to read the signs. Someone else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down. But Gillian wasn't a problem child. She didn't need to go away to a special school. She just needed to be who she really was.

His name was Paul and he attended the Liverpool Institute in England. In school, he fooled around. He loved music but didn't enjoy music lessons. He applied to join the choir of the Liverpool Cathedral but was turned down because he wasn't a good enough singer. Outside of school, he spent most of his time listening to rock music and learning the guitar. At a bazaar one day, he met John. They impressed and liked each other and soon after, they formed a band with two others. Calling themselves The Beatles, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr revolutionized pop music. And the choir that rejected young McCartney because he couldn't sing? They ended up staging two of his classical pieces some years later.

These are just two examples of the many, many people who would have been considered failures by the school system, yet went on to become world leaders in their fields. We all know stories of people who became very successful without ever having had much formal schooling or who dropped out of school at an early age. When such stories are told, we tend to hear "they became successful despite not having a formal education". I believe the opposite is true: they became successful because they dropped out of school, before the school system had a chance to strangle their creativity.

Some months ago, I heard the Minister of Education mention that there were 4000 students "missing" from the school system, that we must find them and bring them back into the fold. Sure, we could try and find out what they are doing but I would suggest that, except in special cases like being involved in unsavoury activities, we let them be to pursue whatever they have figured out is best for them. Imagine the world's loss if the British educational authorities had found Gillian Lynne dancing and forced her to go back to regular school!

Many people blame the "school system" for a number of our ills, sometimes with good reason. Interestingly, the problem lies in the word "system" (singular). When we talk about the school system, the implication is that there is one system for all. Nobody can argue with the nobility of the vision of "school for all". What is terribly wrong with that notion is that we have interpreted it to mean "same school for all".

"School for all" is a worthy social and political goal but don't you think we were better off when fewer students actually went to high school? Don't misunderstand me. I believe that everyone should be given the opportunity to pursue their ambition. However, the mistake we've made is to believe that school (the way it is structured) is for everyone. The result is that large numbers of students are deemed qualified to attend high school, but once there, are literally forced to try to learn things for which they have neither the aptitude nor the inclination.

Imagine a whole class of Gillian Lynnes! Clearly, we would think we have a discipline problem when the issue is simply that these students are in the wrong place. Before "school for all" those who didn't make it to high school would find satisfactory employment learning to be mechanics, carpenters, masons, tailors, seamstresses, etc. The society was better off for it—we all know how difficult it is to find a good mechanic or plumber these days—and there were less indiscipline problems in schools.

I believe that many of these problems arise from the great disconnect between what the student is being asked to do and what he/she really wants to do or is capable of doing. No wonder we are wasting such a high proportion of our human capital. The major reason for this vast waste is what Robinson calls "academicism"—the preoccupation with developing certain sorts of academic ability to the exclusion of others, and its confusion with general intelligence.

Don't get me wrong. Many people do well in the school system as it is and love what the education system has to offer. But too many leave school unsure of their real talents and equally unsure of what direction to take next. Too many feel that what they're good at isn't valued or encouraged by schools. Too many are led to believe that they're not good at anything.

Each of us has distinctive talents and passions that can inspire us to achieve far more than we may think possible. Understanding this changes everything. It also offers us our best and perhaps our only promise for genuine and sustainable success in a very uncertain future. According to Robinson, "We are all born with extraordinary powers of imagination, intelligence, feeling, intuition and spirituality but, for the most part, we use only a fraction of them. We also tend to think that life is linear, that our capacities decline as we grow older, and that opportunities we have missed are gone forever. Many people simply do not understand their constant potential for renewal." Why is this? We need to look at our education system.

School systems across much of the world are very similar to each other. Firstly, there is the preoccupation with certain sorts of academic ability, with certain types of critical analysis and reasoning, particularly with words and numbers. Important as those skills are, there is much more to human intelligence than that. Secondly, there is the hierarchy of subjects. At the top are mathematics, science, and language skills. In the middle are the humanities. At the bottom are the arts. In the arts, music and visual arts normally have a higher status than theater and dance.

Yesterday I experienced a moment of serendipity (a happy accident) when I came across an article from April 2010 in the Queen's Hall News which stated, "Three students of Naparima Girls' High School and Naparima College were winners in the Queen's Hall 50th anniversary Secondary School Essay Competition... The students also received plaques for writing on the importance of the arts to the development of society." Very topical indeed.

Thirdly, there is the growing reliance on particular types of assessment. Children everywhere are under intense pressure to perform at higher and higher levels on a narrow range of standardized tests. This is the biggest destroyer of creativity.

This system was developed to meet economic interests in the 18th and 19th centuries, interests that were driven by the Industrial Revolution (roughly 1760-1850) in Europe and America. Math, science, and language skills were essential for jobs in the industrial economies. Of course, our education system is derived mainly from the British model.

While this system has worked well for the purpose for which it was intended, times have changed, and changed quite dramatically in the last twenty years. The one-size-fits-all approach to education stopped working a long time ago, yet we persist with it even as it becomes less relevant and effective.

How many schools teach dance and music every day as a formal part of the curriculum they way they teach math? Come to think of it, how many schools teach computer programming every day to all students they way they do science? I can make (and have made) a compelling case that all students, starting from elementary school, should learn computer programming.

I would wager that, in some of our schools, very many more students would be interested in dance and music than math. Interestingly, Gillian Lynne said that she did better in all of her subjects once she discovered dance. She was one of those people who had to "move to think". Unfortunately, most kids don't find someone to play the role the psychologist played in Gillian's life. When they fidget too much, they're drugged and told to calm down.

The role of education should be to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way in the world. Instead, it is stifling the individual talents and abilities of too many students and killing their motivation to learn. Our education system increasingly encourages teachers to teach students in a uniform manner. The result is that most students never get to explore the full range of their abilities and interests. Those students whose minds work differently become alienated from the whole culture of education, reducing their capacity for creative thinking.

The changes now sweeping the world have no historical precedent. No other period in human history could match the present one in the sheer scale, speed, and global complexity of technological change and innovation. In such a world, we will not succeed with "business as usual school systems".

We are preoccupied with preparing students for the world that existed two hundred years ago when we should be preparing them for the world of their future—a world in which many will have multiple careers over the course of their working lives and many will have jobs that haven't been conceived as yet. All we know is that the future will be radically different than it is now. Shouldn't we be encouraging our students to explore as many avenues as possible with an eye to discovering their true talents and passions?

At graduation time, you will hear many speeches exhorting you to follow your dreams and pursue your passions—all good advice. But one gets the impression that you are supposed to do this only after you have left the school system. I submit that we should change the way we view education and restructure our education system so that many more of our young people can begin to pursue their dreams and ambitions during their school years.

If we do that, we will produce happy people whose lives have meaning and purpose in and beyond the work that they do. If we do not, many of our children will be left behind, leading to more crime and violence among the young; we would not be able to produce the problem-solvers and creative thinkers this country so desperately needs, and our society would descend to a level of anarchy and chaos we cannot even begin to imagine.

Noel Kalicharan