My Newest Inspiration for Parenting and Education

              This is my son doing what he loves. When he is playing baseball he could literally do it for hours.  His attention is so focused and time seems to go by so fast. Human beings can only be GREAT at doing the things they love. As a parent it's important we find the 'element' that makes out kids tick and support them in this journey. 

                    My newest inspiration for both my current theories on education and parenting come from Sir Ken Robinson, the author of The Element. It mainly talks about the importance if finding out the huge importance at finding out what each child is great at and focusing on them to help them reach a fulfilling existence. This goes far beyond JUST being academically successful, but it's more about about feeling successful in life and getting there doing something you love. 

                    Below I have included some quotes from Ken Robinson's speeches and books just to give you a taste of what he is all about. I absolutely recommend the books to all parents, hands down. 

Ken Robinson Quotes

“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything 

Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it's the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardizing in the way we educate our children and ourselves.”
― Ken Robinson

“Our task is to educate their (our students) whole being so they can face the future. We may not see the future, but they will and our job is to help them make something of it.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our concept of the richness in human capacity.” 

― Ken Robinson

“Human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they're not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.”
― Ken Robinson

“We have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education, and it's impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.”
― Ken Robinson

“We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”
― Ken Robinson

“You cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do is like a farmer create the conditions under which it will begin to flourish.” 

― Ken Robinson

“Human communities depend upon a diversity of talent not a singular conception of ability”
― Ken Robinson

“If you're not prepared to be wrong ,you'll never come up with any thing original”
― Ken Robinson

“The arts especially address the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak; when you’re present in the current moment; when you’re resonating with the excitement of this thing that you’re experiencing; when you are fully alive.”
― Ken Robinson

“If all you had was academic ability, you wouldn't have been able to get out of bed this morning. In fact, there wouldn't have been a bad to get out of. No one could have made one. You could have written about possibility of one, but not have constructed it.”
― Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative