There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why?

Ken Robinson posed this rhetorical question in the context of his critique of modern mass schooling, arguing that education systems privilege a narrow range of academic abilities—especially mathematics and language—while marginalizing the arts and embodied forms of intelligence. He often used dance as a vivid example of how schools treat physical and creative capacities as secondary, despite their importance to children’s development. The line is associated with Robinson’s widely circulated talks and writings from the 2000s–2010s, in which he linked curriculum priorities to industrial-era assumptions about standardization, testing, and “useful” knowledge, and urged a broader conception of human talent.

The quote challenges the taken-for-granted hierarchy of subjects in school. By contrasting daily mathematics instruction with the near-absence of daily dance, Robinson highlights how curricular choices reflect cultural values rather than neutral necessities. “Why?” presses the listener to recognize that what counts as “basic” education is historically contingent and politically shaped. The deeper claim is that creativity and bodily expression are not extracurricular luxuries but central modes of thinking and learning. Robinson’s provocation implies that sidelining such capacities can diminish engagement, exclude students whose strengths are non-academic, and impoverish a society’s understanding of intelligence.