Preaching Reason

On a Saturday afternoon, Grey’s Monument in Newcastle usually hosts Christian evangelists from different groups using various methods to indoctrinate passers-by with their religion; from the hell-and-damnation-type shouting preachers to the well organised and massively funded Alpha Course, who cleverly use the ‘Big Question’ type of rhetoric to encourage people to sign up for a ten week course on the Bible.

Today, handing out leaflets near a small table stacked with printed material, were two representatives from the North East Humanists. Many would argue that these people are trying to do a similar thing to the Christian evangelists, to bring people around to their world view. I would argue that as a registered charity they are there to campaign for secular interests: the abolishment of faith schools, the teaching of Science without the hindrance of religious sensitivity, and the promotion of the rather obvious idea that people can be good to one another without fearing the wrath of a supernatural entity.

At Newcastle University on the 11th of November – in a joint lecture with the North East Humanists to commemorate the forthcoming 200th Anniversary of Darwin’s birth – Professor Steve Jones will be giving a talk entitled ‘Is evolution over?’. It’s an astonishing fact that many millions of people in the UK believe evolution never even started. Anyway, I’ll be there.

Do schools kill creativity?

I believe our only hope for the future it to adopt a new conception of
human ecology, one in which we start we reconstitute our conception of
the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our
minds in the way that we have strip-mined the earth for a particular
commodity, and for the future it won’t service. We have to rethink the
fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children.

Sir Ken Robinson

In a stunning talk for the TED conference last year, Sir Ken Robinson argues that our education system is based on old fashioned ideas of achievement; that the goal of education is to put titles before and after our names, rather than equip children for a changing world. He argues that creativity is educated out of us, and creative subjects such Art, Drama and Dance are very much secondary to more ‘academic’ subjects such as Languages and Sciences.

I experienced this process as I progressed through the education system, and I’m seeing its effects in my current place of work, where productivity is blighted by a lack of creative thinking. Furthermore, I know many people for who School education did not work, yet I consider them to be incredibly intelligent people. Robinson talks about a spectrum of intelligence in our society, however it seems that only a small part of this spectrum is addressed in our schools.

A better quality version of the presentation is at the TED site.