Ken Robinson Quotes

Learning is about much more than science and math. Doing theater, music, and art in school really helps children's minds grow because they're using different parts of their brains. Parents who care should insist on that.

All these children [who did not have music and art classes at school] go out into the world without knowing that there is anything other than what they have. Of course, children do look at TV, but what does it give them?

Our school education ignores, in a thousand ways, the rules of healthy development.

It's sad that arts are not part of the curriculum across the nation.

Arts education must be part of our education solution because it works for all students.

I'm proud that I've been able to work with other artists to make sure that the smallest voices - the voices of our children - have a chance to be heard. Artists can reach, inspire, and motivate young people and leaders in a powerful way.

Children should learn to draw as they learn to write, and such a mystery should not be made of it. They should be encouraged, not flattered... then [later in life] double the effort is required to get the facility which might have been gained insensibly.

My main goal, and it's a big one, is that every child has a chance to get close to music - as a right - that as they have access to food, health, and education, they get the chance to have art and culture - especially music.

When we treat children's play as seriously as it deserves, we are helping them feel the joy that's to be found in the creative spirit. We're helping ourselves stay in touch with that spirit, too. It's the things we play withand the people who help us play that make a great difference in our lives.

It is a monstrous thing to force a child to learn Latin or Greek or mathematics on the ground that they are an indispensable gymnastic for the mental powers. It would be monstrous even if it were true.

When we teach a child to sing or play the flute, we teach her how to listen. When we teach her to draw, we teach her to see. When we teach a child to dance, we teach him about his body and about space, and when he acts on a stage, he learns about character and motivation. When we teach a child design, we reveal the geometry of the world. When we teach children about the folk and traditional arts and the great masterpieces of the world, we teach them to celebrate their roots and find their own place in history.

Both of my parents are teachers. One is in the Waldorf school system in Louisville, Ky., and the other runs a music school. I grew up with loving, supportive, encouraging parents that let me make my own world, and I wish that for every single child.

Merely to stuff the child with a lot of information, making him pass examinations, is the most unintelligent form of education.

School curricula that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians

Most children are given far too much praise for their early drawings, so much so that they rarely learn the ability to refine their first crude efforts the way their early attempts at language are corrected.

Children should be given the chance to play instruments, to sing.

Music education can help spark a child's imagination or ignite a lifetime of passion. When you provide a child with new worlds to explore and challenges to tackle, the possibilities are endless. Music education should not be a privilege for a lucky few, it should be a part of every child's world of possiblity.

Those people that don't see the power in art maybe have never been a part of an art, in a real way. To experience it, and to see and witness how it affects people, we're not doing it just to create professionals. It's to add another dimension to the way that children think and the way they experience certain things. If you didn't have dance, music and singing, it just seems so odd to me.

Every day, through engagement in the arts, our children learn to open their imagination, to dream just a little bigger and to strive every day to reach those dreams.

Arts in education is especially important to me. Inspired teachers in our education system is crucial in developing inspired human beings.

I know how art has come in and really changed my life, so to give these children that opportunity just to come into contact with art - that's wonderful.

Education in the art of dance is education of the whole man − his physical, mental and emotional natures are disciplined and nourished simultaneously in dance.

Our aim is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his innermost core.

In trying to teach children a great deal in a short time, they are treated not as though the race they were to run was for life, but simply a three-mile heat.

I feel that we can't educate children who are not healthy, and we can't keep them healthy if they're not educated. There has to be a marriage between health and education. You can't learn if your mind is full of unhealthy images from daily life and confusion about right and wrong.