Ken Robinson Quotes

I want to support the whole idea of the humanities and teaching the humanities as being something that - even if it can't be quantitatively measured as other subjects - it's as fundamental to all education.

A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.

Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half empty one are contained in that word.

A well-rounded education has always been an issue close to my heart.

One must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live.

Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

Only a well-rounded intellect, a spirit nourished in the eternal sources of intelligence and culture, of justice and wisdom, is a safeguard against both indifference and skepticism.

I do think that a general liberal arts education is very important, particularly in an uncertain changing world.

Many schools today are sacrificing social studies, the arts and physical education so children can cover basic subjects like math, English and science.

Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

We've got to dumb America up again.

In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how indispensable they are; and this means insisting on their vital role in the whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like some poor relation, they don't cost much to be housed.

Economists who have studied the relationship between education and economic growth confirm what common sense suggests: The number of college degrees is not nearly as important as how well students develop cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving ability.

We have not given science too big a place in our education, but we have made a perilous mistake in giving it too great a preponderance in method in every other branch of study.

The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it .... For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?

The importance of all education lies far more in the training of minds than in any facts which may be absorbed, for trained minds will ascertain the facts as they need to know them. Having learned to reason and to weigh the information they discover, people with such minds will be more nearly educated than any amount of cramming of definite facts into their heads will make them.

I can't say it enough that learning how to learn is one of the greatest skills anyone can have. It's why I advocate that everyone go to college.

A school that believes in the power of knowledge and learning will have reading at its core.

When you're educated, it allows you to be more worldly. It's more than just what happens in a classroom.

Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.

I'm not an educated man. I only know what I'm told, and I'm not told that much; I have no frame of reference for how to place things in history be a responsible leader. All I can do is be an artist.