What is the unpredictability of education? (2:24)
1. We are educating students now for what they need to use in the future but we do not know what the world will be like in 40 years’ time.
2. Many schools and universities need to predict the no. of applicants for their programmes in the coming year in order to plan their allocation of resources.
3. It is hard to predict how well students will be able to absorb what we teach them.
4. Under rapid technological advancement, we never know whether we still need teachers to teach our students given the obvious alternative of teaching them with computers.
What did the girl mean in her reply to her teacher in the drawing lesson saying “They will in a minute.”(3:54)
1. She was prophesying that they would soon die and see God.
2. She believed she would get famous and people in the world would soon know how she drew God.
3. She was asking her teacher to wait till she had finished her drawing to see her idea of God.
4. She just imagined what was true in principle.
Why does Ken Robinson need to shut the kitchen door to concentrate on just frying an egg but his wife could do several things at the same time?
1. The women’s mind is structured to do several tasks at the same time but men’s is not.
2. His wife was too busy with many jobs to do to mind the door.
3. He cared more about his privacy than his wife did.
4. He was more mindful of kitchen safety than his wife.
Why does Ken Robinson think that people will never become creative if they are not prepared to be wrong?
1. Making mistakes is one form of being creative.
2. People need to have the courage to experiment with their creative ideas and suffer mistakes in order to create something useful in the end.
3. Breaking from tradition to be creative requires more courage than making mistakes.
4. Making mistakes is easier than creating something.
How do educators focus on children’s heads in children’s education (9:19)?
1. They give children a feather to wear on their cap if they perform well in the lesson.
2. Educators pay special attention to the size of children’s heads to make sure they are physically healthy.
3. Children are equipped with knowledge so that they can struggle to become heads of companies in their future career.
4. Educators seldom spend time and efforts on training the non-academic aspects of children.
What does Robinson consider to be the purpose of education at present (9:38)?
1. To teach students to dance.
2. To teach students to head a team of people in work.
3. To train students to become professors.
4. To train students’ creativity.
Why is it that man will not be wrong if he is speaking his mind in the forest? (14:47)
1. Women always find faults with men because they think differently by their gender.
2. If men speak their minds in the forest, they can say nasty things about women without fear.
3. The forest soul will hear and make a fair judgement on what the men say.
4. Being alone in the forest, men would speak with their conscience.
How do professors live in their heads and become disembodied? (10:11)
1. Many professors play the part of ghosts in horror films.
2. Many professors are chubby because they do not do any sports.
3. It is common to find that professors focus all their time and energy on academic subjects and neglect non-academic ones.
4. Robinson was talking about professors in Anatomy.
Why did Picasso say that children are born artists? (7:06)
1. He believed that all people are creative by birth.
2. He was talking about children living in 18th century Spain where Picasso’s art had a great influence on children’s behaviour.
3. Picasso came across some children who were gifted with creative talents.
4. He believed that all children could be easily taught to become artists.
Why is it annoying to think of Shakespeare as seven and attending somebody else’ English classes? (8:02)
1. There was no record of Shakespeare’s childhood in history and it was hard to imagine how it was like.
2. We commonly think of Shakespeare as an authority in English language and find it difficult to accept that he had to learn his English from somebody else.
3. Shakespeare had died for such a long time that it is annoying to waste efforts imagining what he was like when he was young.
4. Shakespeare was probably learning more French and Latin than English when he was a child.
Why is it that people in the past could automatically get a job when they had got a degree but this is not true anymore nowadays? (12:30)
1. University graduates were rare in the past.
2. Under the global economic recession of the present age, it is difficult to find a job even for well-educated people.
3. Employers nowadays are more selective than those in the past and they would only employ people with a strong power of creativity.
4. People nowadays are more demanding in their job selection.
By what criterion did Robinson say that the whole purpose of education was to produce professors? (13:08)
1. He said this by judging from the end results of the education system from primary school to university.
2. He said this by judging from the inputs, i.e., students sent to receive education at kindergarten and primary school.
3. He said this by following what the government had said about the aim of education.
4. He said this by judging from the school syllabus design which actually facilitated the production of professors.
What fundamental reform does Robinson think should be introduced to the educational system of the present world? (14:20)
1. More resources should be devoted to developing children’s sensitivity to art, in particular, modern art like Picasso’s work.
2. Children should be taught the gender difference in thinking from an early age.
3. The focus of education should be put on cultivating students’ creativity.
4. There should be fewer professors produced at the university.