Fine talk with lots of ideas, not all I agree with though. Also a bit short on the practicalities. All very well saying we have the wrong concept of education and what it's for but how do we change it?
The business about divergent thinking being very high in young children but that reduces as they grow older. Is education the cause of that reduction? I see it as an indication that the children's internal self discipline is growing and their attention span is lengthening and not as a reduction in creativity.
Current modern teaching already holds divergent thinking as central and consequently believes discipline an anathema. By letting children behave as they did as toddlers schools turn out "adult children"; with a low attention span and incapable of doing anything but "play"
That's not to say schools shouldn't encourage creative thinking which anyway, as the talk pointed out, is not the same as divergent thinking. An example, divergent thinkers say that there are many uses for a paperclip, creative thinking holds that a paperclip has one use but that there are thousands of uses for a bit of easily bent wire.
I like the idea of not teaching teaching children in "years". Every child learns at a different pace and confining them to a particular curriculum based on age holds back the brighter and alienates the less able. Of course that would involve more streaming and selection so goes completely against current dogma.
