Ken Robinson

The new and fully updated edition of Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds has just been published. He explains how to learn to become much more creative. In Chapter 3, “The Trouble with Education,” he introduces what he characterizes as “The Septic Focus” when discussing his friend Dave, a 280-pound actor, who loved beer and regularly consumed 12 pints of Abbot’s Ale a day. (“This is a powerful drink. You could run a small car on Abbot Ale, or a large actor.”) Once, when Dave he felt ill, he met with his doctor who, in turn, referred him to kidney specialist. After examining him, the specialist said he had potentially very serious kidney problems and should stop drinking entirely or at least switch to spirits. Dave replied that he feared that drinking spirits would cause cirrhosis of the liver. “But you haven’t come to see me about your liver. I am concerned about your kidneys.”

Robinson’s response? “This is a clear example of septic focus. A holistic doctor would have recognized that the problem in Dave’s kidneys was a result of wider factors in his overall lifestyle. Solving one problem by causing another is no solution at all. The septic focus is clearly evident in the education reform movements like NCLB [No Child Left Behind] that focus on certain parts of the system while neglecting the system as a whole.”

I agree with Robinson that many (most?) of the problems in our society today are the result of septic focus. For example, the quality of public school education in the U.S. is ranked in the fifth (lowest) quintile among developed nations.  About 40% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. Meanwhile, countless college graduates are unemployed or under-employed and stagger under massive student loan debt. And about half of residences for sale are worth less tha n their mortgage debt.

Robinson suggests, “to realize our true creative potential – in our organizations, in our schools and in our communities – we need to think differently about ourselves and to act differently towards each other. We must learn to be creative.”

I urge you to check out Robinson’s The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything and Out of Our Minds; also, a wealth of resources at Robinson’s website by clicking here.