Come senior year, one question looms in every college student’s mind: What do I do with myself now? Opportunities to explore different fields in college may be varied, but sometimes they do not provide clarity for students seeking professional fulfillment and satisfaction. Sir Ken Robinson, a Peabody Medal-winning arts educator, lecturer and writer, will speak at the Hammer Museum this Wednesday to discuss his new book, “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.”
Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003, Robinson has advocated for greater arts education in order to encourage students to explore all forms of knowledge. Robinson spoke to the Daily Bruin’s Jenae Cohn about why the arts are important, how he would improve arts education and how UCLA students can find their life’s passion.
Daily Bruin: How did you get involved in theater and theater education?
Ken Robinson: When I was a student, I was in quite a few of plays, but I was quite interested in theater techniques of drama and improvisation as part of daily classroom practice. When I got into college, I got into the history of that and why it was. I realized that really all of the arts have been pretty poorly provided for in the disciplines and I felt strongly that this was wrong.
DB: Why were the arts so poorly represented in school?
KR: Well, they still are. Our education systems are built on what I think is sort of a dated idea of economic utility, and that’s a reason why the arts haven’t done very well and they aren’t very useful for getting a job, (unlike) science or mathematics. Another reason is that there’s a deep preoccupation in our culture (with) a certain sort of self-order academic work. Some subjects are thought to be more difficult or more important than others. I know the arts in Western culture have been associated with pleasure and relaxation and are, therefore, thought by some people to be not as hard as the sciences. I think that’s totally wrong on all these counts.
DB: How do you argue for greater funding for arts programs now when our economy’s really struggling and the first programs to be inevitably cut are arts programs?
KR: Well, you know, I’m not sure they always are inevitably, but they certainly are some of the first to go. People are still being lured into universities on the premise that if they get a college degree, they’ll have a safe and secure job for the rest of their lives. I’m sure there are thousands of students, maybe in the UC system, every year heading straight home again, not knowing what to do next, not going to graduate school, trying to work it out. The economic circumstances are completely different. The cultural circumstances are completely different.
We ought to make a better use of people’s talents than in the past and we must recognize, too, that economic success in the future will depend on much more than a narrow band of economic work. It will depend on creativity, the ability to communicate effectively, to think in teams, to use all of the various talents and skills that are represented not just in the arts, but in the sciences as well.
DB: In your new book, “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything,” you talk about finding your passion and finding integrity in your work and encouraging students to find their passion, so in which ways do you suggest teachers help students find their passion?
KR: What strikes me continually is that so many adults in every kind of walk of life have no idea of what their real talents might be. They get off doing this thing that they’ve done for a while or a job they’ve happened to wander into and have followed a profession because people expected they might, but so many people I meet don’t have any real conviction or genuine fulfillment of what they do and they just get on and do it. Yet I also meet people who have a passion for what they do and can’t imagine doing anything else because they would do it for free if they had to.
So I got very interested in what the difference is between those who love what they do and those who just tolerate what they do. And the title of the book comes from an observation that I kept hearing myself make, which is that people achieve their best when they do the thing they love: when they’re in the element.
DB: You talk in the book, too, about how college students, especially after they graduate, don’t have much direction and how a lot of them go home after college and don’t know what to do. Is there any advice you’d give to UCLA students about how to find their element in college and afterward?
KR: Yes, I think one of the strengths of the American undergraduate system … is that there is a four-year program. There is an opportunity for students to figure lots of things out before they make their minds up on things they want to focus on or major in. That’s a great strength. It’s also a big weakness in a way. Unless students understand the opportunity they have, there’s a terrible tendency to noodle around a bit and bounce from one thing to another one and to lose focus, and I really think that’s an issue.
DB: So how do you suggest students find their way in a system that depends on standardized tests and grading?
KR: You have to work with what you’ve got, and I don’t think being creative has to mean you’re free of restraints. In my experience, most students, particularly undergraduate students, have enough time in the week to do other things as well. I think people should enjoy time at college, but also take the opportunity seriously and don’t just fill your life up with the things that you have to do, but to explore other things that you might like to do. I think that it is a great strength that you have a couple of years in the university system in America to try things out. If it doesn’t work, try to keep track of what you’re learning from the things you enjoy and from the things you don’t enjoy and, in the end, it’s your life.
DB: Do you think that now that Obama’s in office, there will be any improvement in education policy in America?
KR: I really hope so, and so far all the things that he’s said and that Joe Biden has said in the campaign is that he understands what the problems are ““ and he seems committed to doing something about them. I think that at the moment, they’re not putting a high priority on education. They’re addressing the recession, the problems in the Middle East, and global warming, but I actually had a piece on The Huffington Post that they really shouldn’t put this off because in the end, it all comes back to education.
DB: If you were an adviser to Obama and Biden, what would you tell them to do in terms of educational policy?
KR: I’d ask them to do a couple of things. One is that I’d ask them to stop using phrases like “We need to promote math education.” When money is tight, people will start to think, “Oh, we should stop putting money in those things and start putting it into science and math.” Now, science and math are tremendously important, but the country will not succeed solely on the education of mathematicians and scientists. Great cities become great not just because of their economic opportunities, but because of their great cultural opportunities, their great universities and their vibrant subculture.