Recently I have been using my Monday morning commute (and occasional afternoon) as an opportunity to listen to podcasts about educational topics that interest me. This time is easiest for me as I am relatively free of distractions (other than traffic).

Two podcasts of interest this week were from the TED talks website. The first was Sir Ken Robinson’s talk about education and the second was from Burt Rutan talking about space exploration. These seemingly random choices started with reading about why Math and Science Education are bad in the US from Creating Passionate Users which provided the link to Sir Ken Robinson’s presentation and continued when I subscribed to the TED Talks podcasts and discovered the Burt Rutan podcast Burt Rutan is an aviation and space pioneer. Space exploration is an interest of mine as I had followed the X-Prize competition last year.

Both podcasts mentioned mistakes. In both talks they mentioned that our society has grown to discourage mistakes and that this has resulted in a loss of creativity and innovation. In space travel there has been little in the way of innovation when compared to the initial innovations and creativity that occured when aviation was new (1908). In the field of education there has been little innovation in classroom education. What’s the common factor?

Both the space industry and education have been controlled by the government.

While government oversight is necessary to help insure an educated society, more local control and innovation is needed to help prepare our students for the world they will work in. Perhaps there needs to be an X-Prize sort of competition for classroom innovation.

What do you think?