Alternative models of education are gaining relevance. The academic system needs to be renewed in order to be compatible with the sustainable vision that the planet demands of us. With these ideas we pay tribute to the recently deceased Ken Robinson, a British writer and lecturer who dedicated his life to rethinking learning.

This is a good time to reflection on education. Did you notice the mistake in the previous sentence? Did you just go back to the beginning to notice it? I'm sure you did. And that's how it works: we are always ready to stigmatize the error. The education we receive pursues and punishes wrong answers. Evaluation methods and the cult of qualifications shape our fear of being wrong and perpetuate, in most labor cultures, the focus on productivity. Fear is the great adversary of creativity.

These foundations were the basis of Sir Ken Robinson's (1950-2020) speech. From his tribune, besides giving us powerful reflections, he managed to get us to laugh with his particular sense of humor. In the most watched TED talk in history: Do schools kill creativity?, Robinson tells the story of a girl who, while drawing, said she was making a portrait of God. The teacher responded that no one knew what God looked like, to which the girl said, "In a few minutes they're going to know.”

In that spirit, Robinson pointed out the wrong direction that the conventional academic system still points us to. "Children have extraordinary potential that we are wasting. Why? Because, they are not afraid of being wrong.”

In his book The Element, translated into more than 23 languages, Robinson delved into that vital concept that lies at the intersection of talent and passion, that activity that can be done with skill and that is gestated from the most genuine interest. The existence of this Holy Grail implies an arduous search, but it is also the key to happiness.

Robinson's own element revolved around the inclusion of disciplines such as music, theater and dance in the basic school structure. His proposals attracted the attention of the British government and he was entrusted with the report "All our futures: creativity, culture and education", also called the "Robinson Report". This research led him to advise Northern Ireland on its peace process and the authorities in Singapore to be a creative hub in Southeast Asia. The relevance of his contribution was recognized with a noble title granted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003.

In another of his ultra-popular TED talks: How to escape education's death valley, Robinson highlights how different we are as individuals. We do need a kind of standardization to discover our talents and interests, but the range of exploration our formal education uses is very limited. The sciences and humanities do not encompass the broad landscape where that key variable of our element might be. In that exploration, stimulating creativity should be as important as a class in the biology lab. Physical development should have the same academic weight as mathematical intelligence. Dance should be as relevant as the periodic table.

What was chosen to be part of the syllabus seems arbitrary, but it is not. The system, designed after the industrial revolution, responded to the needs of the labor market at that time. Robinson warned that we are educating children under outdated parameters, which will give them very few tools to face the future.

The concept of prosperity is being replaced by that of welfare. We increasingly understand that it is not a matter of exploiting resources to have more things, but of meeting the needs of all while maintaining the harmony of the planet. Sir Ken Robinson left us his legacy in the form of certainty: this world needs new ways to learn. And these new ways might begin with two questions: How much of who we are is a product of the education we receive? How different would our history - the personal and the species' - have been with other alternatives available? All kinds of answers are worthwhile, especially the wrong ones.