A Different Look at Bullying

Sir Ken Rogers is one of the world's leading proponents for changing the way schools educate. I've seen dozens of his videos and never cease to be inspired and motivated to continue the work I've undertaken for the past 40 years, namely to change schools. Today, thanks to him, new research on empathy and two animations from the Royal Society of the Arts, I came away with a significantly different view of a subject bullying, something that I have been struggling with for years.

I've often put a lot of blame on schools for the frequency of bullying, but that blame has been because I felt that schools lacked a systemic approach to the problem. Today, after viewing these two animations, I believe it is not simply because we lack a systemic approach to dealing with bullying. I believe that our entire system of education is largely to blame and if we were to change it based on Sir Ken's model, there would be a significant drop in bullying without doing anything different to directly address the issue.

The first animation I watched, thanks to zefrank.com. dealt with new brain research on things called mirror neurons and their function. Like some of the great leaps in science, the cells and their functions were discovered accidentally. Watch it yourself and think about the kind of light this research throws on bullying.

After you watch that, watch the animation of Sir Ken making his case for school change. Keeping the previous animation in your mind as you watch, ask yourself how the first animation can inform us on how to make the changes Sir Ken outline. Envison the end product of that process and ask, "How we get there from here?"

Royal Society for the Arts Animation - Empathetic Civilisation



Sir Ken Rogers - Changing Education Paradigms