In response to Robinson's video about schools killing creativity... I really think Robinson made some valid points in his arguments against the current state of education in many schools. Funding and pay raises distract teachers from seeing how many students need more than ways to pass tests and reach certain scores to promote a successful school. Success goes so much farther beyond standardized testing. It is hard for me to believe that students creativity is being diminished, but now that I watched this video, I realize how true it is. And I really hate how many students are labeled as ADD or ADHD. I am not saying this is not a real thing, but I do think that self-medication, like dancing and sports, is really a much simpler solution than prescribed medication. A more holistic approach to treating a child's behavioral problem is necessary more now than ever before. I think some parents and teachers try to excuse their child's behavior by labeling them as ADD or ADHD, when really all they might need is the ability to be creative with their bodies and not constantly restricted. But in all honesty, I don't think Robinson was completely realistic in some matters. I mean how many Jillian's can there really be in the world...? But the arts are so wonderful and it is such a shame that they are at the bottom of our "Important Subjects of Education Pyramid."
A Learning Revolution :) First, Sir Ken Robinson is extremely creative (hate to be Captain Obvious), but his metaphors really impress me. Anyway, I think everything he is saying is correct, but it just seems so unrealistic. I definitely see how education is linear and it is an "industrial model" instead of an "agricultural one" that is geared toward everyone, but how is it humanly possible to personalize every child's curriculum? This is very similar to the idea from The Big Picture Learning and I see how it can work on a smaller scale in those schools, but in a bigger school system, it just seems so unrealistic for teachers to be able to accomplish. Am I the only one who thinks this??
I think Ken Robinson just might be my new hero when it comes to putting it bluntly about education. After watching his video "Schools Killing Creativity," I am so glad that I am not the only person now in this society that thinks this. This has been a huge debate ever since I was in high school myself. So yes, I completely agree with Mr. Robinson when he says that schools are completely killing our children's imaginations and creativity. I agree with Brittany, these teachers that think that school and education is all about standardized testing need a wake up call. I got into a conversation with a student once, about how their class grade was solely based on test grades. This meant that the student had to spend hours every night buried in a book, reading for hours, and memorizing. While in reality, they were a very creative person who learned much better by "hands on" activities. But when they tried to express their creative side on the test in a short answer response, they were penalized. So the big question is, is Mr. Robinson right about creativity being killed in schools? Yes and No. Because in my opinion, it really depends on who the teacher is and if they are willing to go against the grain of the system and encourage their students to be creative. I was one of the lucky students who was blessed to have teachers who always wanted us to be creative in our projects in high school and college. I even had one teacher in high school who had us draw pictures to go with our vocabulary words when we studied them. Another teacher had us write a song to her "12 Rules of Writing." But then I also had those teachers who were like "no creative writing, just straight from the book, the end." So really, in my opinion, its not exactly the schools that kill the creativity, but the teachers who are willing to strictly adhere to the "rules." Teaching (to me) is about engaging with children. Any child can open up a book and read and memorize. Any child can take a test, but what I think Mr. Robinson is trying to get across, is that unless we (the teachers) do not encourage and engage the creativity in a child, then it will never flourish and it will never grow as it should, and in the end, it will die.
sorry that was really long and may not make much sense...it did in my head. haha.
"College begins in kindergarten...no it doesn't. Kindergarten starts in kindergarten. A three year old is not half a six year old." - Ken Robinson
The above statement just made me laugh so hard. Ken Robinson, in every way is creative and delivers these fine points about revolutionizing education.
One of the points that Mr. Robinson makes that really got me is when he finished his speech with the quote "personize education to people you are teaching" and to "customize" education so that you can have people create their own solution by following the guidelines of a curriculum but not a strict one. He is not talking about an evolution in education, but a revolution. He wants us (teachers) to not focus on the "model" teaching system, but to have freedom with it. If we reform it to appeal to those who we are teaching, then it will be more personal. It will make more of an impact.
Another thing I loved that Mr. Robinson said was to treat children the age they are. He was talking about how "college does not start in kindergarten...kindergarten starts in kindergarten." Schools these days expect children to come into a school and act about like, twice their age. Ever seen the movie Daddy Day Care? This message is really strong in that movie - yes it's a comedy - but it does have a great message. The point is, don't expect so much out of kids. If you do that, and you try to transform them into the "model" child, then they will never become their own individual. And then we are back at square one.
Do you think though that it is possible for us as teachers to start the revolution? Or have we already gone so far into the "model system" that we cannot back out now?
Creativity kills: Robinson says it really well, “We are educating people out of their creative capacities.” We should be fostering that capacity. As a child, I loved to color, draw, and paint. However, when we started to show the artwork in class, people had better pictures and they had been taking art classes; so, their work was pretty high quality in comparison. But, it was that day when the teacher said mine needed more effort that I can remember never really ever trying to better my art skills. Now, to this day I would consider myself a non-creative person in that particular area. I have friends who love to paint and doo arts and crafts, but I usually shy away from those things. Think of what a different outlook I might have now had I never started to look down on myself. Which then made me think of something else that is pivotal in Robinson’s speech. He said, “We start to educate children progressively from the waist up. Then, the neck up. And then to only one side of the brain.” Creativity is a part of the brain that has become less important in education than learning math, reading, history, and science. I would like to know, who makes these executive decisions? How was that person or group elected and why were we not allowed to sit in on that meeting? A child’s creativity is the foundation of learning. If we as teachers help to continuously broaden the box their minds are in, think of the places their minds can take them? But, instead we constrict those overly creative people to only be able to express themselves in a few choice ways. For example, I did a project for a class in Early College. We were trying to introduce them to autobiographies and why their stories are important. But, there was one boy in my group who didn’t look up or write anything. So, I went over to him and just chatted with him a bit until I could find something he was very interested in. Video Games. Not just playing them, but making up his own. Next, without a word he brought out a stuffed three ring binder of drawings. These were intricate drawing with dimensions of the characters, back stories on each one, who was each character’s nemesis and why. It was fantastic. Then, the girl next to him brought out her sketch book of anime comic strips she had been working on in her spare time. I was amazed. These students had to do this on their own time because they didn’t have a space for this kind of creativity in their school day. But, being able to create such stories and then illustrate those stories themselves was quite a feat and should be recognized; so, I showed the class and they loved it. Just this experience proved to me how important it is to identify the outlets that students can express themselves in and then try to incorporate those into the classroom and how they learn. If I had never asked him and just ignored the fact that he wasn’t participating, would he still be thinking his drawings were something to be kept to himself?
Creativity Kills pt. 2: Sometimes, I feel like we do things in a certain way because that’s just what is familiar and has always been done; however, the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Taking into account this definition, isn’t that setting a bad precedent for these students? The very ones we are trying to EDUCATE to be able to think critically and be creative to solve problems and make more effectual solutions. He also said a line I really liked: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. But children are fearless. And now big companies stigmatize mistakes. As well as national education now tells children that mistakes are the worst things you can make.” Wow. What a mind blowing thought to me. What is revision? I believe revision occurs multiple times before a piece is published. But, since they were prepared to be wrong and knew there would be a chance to make their idea better they were able to produce something original. Think if those writers were too afraid to put their ideas out there. Think of those inventors that would not have shared their ideas with the world and where we would be technologically without them. You know, maybe it’s just me but, I think Google and Apple have caught on to something. Sure, not everything they put out hits it off; but, when they get something that is creative and people really like it catches like wildfire and everybody wants it. That says to me that they welcome innovation and the need to be creative. They don’t stifle it or put it down. Instead, they tweak it.
Learning revolution: The continuance of reforming an already broken system is his main issue. Though reform is important, there needs to be a change a complete change and not just a modification which is really what it seems like is happening. I learned that people are doing what they’ve always done because it is what they know and that they are scared of the problems that implementing change might occur. Though there seems to be no guilt in keeping a messed up system that doesn’t work. It is a conundrum to say the very least. He makes such a good point that our minds are sometimes still set in the past century instead of moving into the next. Also, that if you do well in school you should be happy and successful. But, in every aspect there are new creations of different types of jobs today. There will always be something new and it doesn’t always require a college education for someone to succeed.Every person has different abilities and talents. So, we shouldn’t box all of the students into only responding and reacting to things in the same manner. I know when I was in school you always just wrote about whatever you felt. I want to give my students the space that they can express themselves in the way they feel the most comfortable.
Ken Robinson video 1: I want to make sure my students are fully engaged in education that will help them make connections. Since learning takes part in multiple areas of the brain and body at once it seems logical and beneficial to have students engage more than just their minds when they learn. Getting students to act out what they read when they read in class, even if they are only making gestures with their arms and hands, modulating their voices, and making eye-contact with their classmates not only encourages students to be fully present in the task at hand but also teaches them public speaking skills, banishes the fear of failure overtime with positive reinforcement, enlarges their vocabularies, reading comprehension, and personal investment in the plot and the characters. The mass-consumer educational system no longer resonates nor is effectively preparing students for the real world. The academic and economic purpose of education is to help students become independent, viable citizens. Lately “academic inflation” has made a BA practically useless in the job market; more and more people are getting MAs and PhD’s in order to get jobs that twenty years ago would have required no more than a Bachelors, if that. The traditional method of teaching has created a global hierarchy of academic value with the arts: art, music, drama, and dance listed as last and least important. The oft-repeated refrain “you can’t get a job doing [the arts]” has persisted from the Industrial Revolution to this day and in Mr. Robinson’s view what was once true in the early 19th century has become a modern fallacy. Creativity and arts are valued in today’s society (perhaps not as much as they should be), there are opportunities to excel but only if we stop trying to save the old academic system by focusing on test-scores and one-right-answer problems and encourage students to solve problems creatively with as many answers as they can possibly imagine. Failure can no longer be a social stigma. Creativity involves failure and the intersection of multiple disciplines to form solutions. The world is faced with new problems (social, economic, environmental, medical) and it will take a new education system to help a new generation find the solutions we need. Communities need to embrace mistakes and creative failures as a chance to continue learning rather than as terrible disasters. Students must be supportive of one another, especially in circumstances where teachers are critical of innovative thinking that seems to defy traditional one-answer responses. Teachers should encourage the creative process through physical and mental stimulation that involves holistic academic enrichment; arts programs need to be reinstated in schools as much as math and sciences.
I would like to personalize the standard curriculum to suit each individual student, their needs, unique learning pace, interests, and talents. By assigning individual readings or books in addition to class readings, allowing students to have creative authority when making their own presentations and projects, and making in-class connections between students’ lives, the world around them, and the literature they are reading each student can not only connect to the text but also glean from the lessons the particular information they need. Mr. Robinson is right; each person has their own distinct intellectual process and “fast-food education” cannot fulfill every student’s needs. Only by reexamining and challenging the effectiveness of the basic tenets of our education system can we hope to cut through the old tropes that sacrifice creativity for the “way thing have always been” and the academic obsession with immediate college enrollment straight from high school as the end-all be-all of intellectual achievement. Not every student is capable or inclined to enroll in college straight from high school. Learning is not a “linear” push from grade to grade according to a standardized set of intellectual objectives—students learn organically at their own pace and should not be rushed. Content-cramming for college does not and should not begin in kindergarten.
Question: What are your thoughts on the kindergarten-screening process for college-track children? Is it beneficial or harmful to student health? Does it open more academic and economic doors for students or does it make them feel pushed to succeed in a specific major or career?
To answer some of the questions about the practical application of personalized curriculums for each child--I think it would be possible to work within the education system to create little projects and personal readings for each student within the pre-approved curriculum that would speak to their talents and individual academic strengths. Rather than consider all the students at once as a body entire, if each teacher focused on each class, each student at a time throughout the day "personalized" curriculums would be possible. Maybe I'm an idealist, maybe I'm unrealistic. I don't have any classroom experience beyond being a student; no doubt I will feel differently when I teach. But sometimes focusing on the small steps of a task: this child, this class, makes it easier to complete a goal rather than looking at the whole thing all at once and becoming disheartened.
School Kills Creativity: I agree with Robinson in that the public school system eliminates creativity, but I do not feel that as a society we can rely solely on creative thinking. There is a hierarchy of academics but that hierarchy exists for a reason. What if it were to turn upside down? Would the human race exist if the majority of people were dancers and artists? I do not believe that a child should be dissuaded from pursuing a career in art if that is what he is interested in, but I feel that Robinson is overlooking the reality of how the world functions. Regardless, I want to teach without excluding the artists and dancers. I want to appeal to them just as much as the mathematicians and brain surgeons, for they are equally important if not equally prevalent. It is the community’s and the teacher’s responsibility to emphasize the significance and necessity of creativity. Rather than ruin lives by dissuading people from pursuing their passions, teachers should recognize all talents and encourage their growth.
Revolution: If I were to redesign education I would adopt Robinson’s objective of agricultural education. I would emphasize the organic rather than the linear lifestyle. The primary goal of educators should be to create an environment where human development can flourish. My schools would concentrate on passion. I want to focus on discovery and development of individual passions. As Robinson says “What excites your spirit?” I want to advocate an agricultural rather than mechanical education system.
In response to Robinson's video about schools killing creativity...
ReplyDeleteI really think Robinson made some valid points in his arguments against the current state of education in many schools. Funding and pay raises distract teachers from seeing how many students need more than ways to pass tests and reach certain scores to promote a successful school. Success goes so much farther beyond standardized testing. It is hard for me to believe that students creativity is being diminished, but now that I watched this video, I realize how true it is.
And I really hate how many students are labeled as ADD or ADHD. I am not saying this is not a real thing, but I do think that self-medication, like dancing and sports, is really a much simpler solution than prescribed medication. A more holistic approach to treating a child's behavioral problem is necessary more now than ever before. I think some parents and teachers try to excuse their child's behavior by labeling them as ADD or ADHD, when really all they might need is the ability to be creative with their bodies and not constantly restricted.
But in all honesty, I don't think Robinson was completely realistic in some matters. I mean how many Jillian's can there really be in the world...? But the arts are so wonderful and it is such a shame that they are at the bottom of our "Important Subjects of Education Pyramid."
A Learning Revolution :)
ReplyDeleteFirst, Sir Ken Robinson is extremely creative (hate to be Captain Obvious), but his metaphors really impress me. Anyway, I think everything he is saying is correct, but it just seems so unrealistic. I definitely see how education is linear and it is an "industrial model" instead of an "agricultural one" that is geared toward everyone, but how is it humanly possible to personalize every child's curriculum? This is very similar to the idea from The Big Picture Learning and I see how it can work on a smaller scale in those schools, but in a bigger school system, it just seems so unrealistic for teachers to be able to accomplish.
Am I the only one who thinks this??
I think Ken Robinson just might be my new hero when it comes to putting it bluntly about education. After watching his video "Schools Killing Creativity," I am so glad that I am not the only person now in this society that thinks this. This has been a huge debate ever since I was in high school myself. So yes, I completely agree with Mr. Robinson when he says that schools are completely killing our children's imaginations and creativity.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Brittany, these teachers that think that school and education is all about standardized testing need a wake up call. I got into a conversation with a student once, about how their class grade was solely based on test grades. This meant that the student had to spend hours every night buried in a book, reading for hours, and memorizing. While in reality, they were a very creative person who learned much better by "hands on" activities. But when they tried to express their creative side on the test in a short answer response, they were penalized.
So the big question is, is Mr. Robinson right about creativity being killed in schools? Yes and No. Because in my opinion, it really depends on who the teacher is and if they are willing to go against the grain of the system and encourage their students to be creative. I was one of the lucky students who was blessed to have teachers who always wanted us to be creative in our projects in high school and college. I even had one teacher in high school who had us draw pictures to go with our vocabulary words when we studied them. Another teacher had us write a song to her "12 Rules of Writing." But then I also had those teachers who were like "no creative writing, just straight from the book, the end."
So really, in my opinion, its not exactly the schools that kill the creativity, but the teachers who are willing to strictly adhere to the "rules." Teaching (to me) is about engaging with children. Any child can open up a book and read and memorize. Any child can take a test, but what I think Mr. Robinson is trying to get across, is that unless we (the teachers) do not encourage and engage the creativity in a child, then it will never flourish and it will never grow as it should, and in the end, it will die.
sorry that was really long and may not make much sense...it did in my head. haha.
"College begins in kindergarten...no it doesn't. Kindergarten starts in kindergarten. A three year old is not half a six year old." - Ken Robinson
ReplyDeleteThe above statement just made me laugh so hard. Ken Robinson, in every way is creative and delivers these fine points about revolutionizing education.
One of the points that Mr. Robinson makes that really got me is when he finished his speech with the quote "personize education to people you are teaching" and to "customize" education so that you can have people create their own solution by following the guidelines of a curriculum but not a strict one. He is not talking about an evolution in education, but a revolution. He wants us (teachers) to not focus on the "model" teaching system, but to have freedom with it. If we reform it to appeal to those who we are teaching, then it will be more personal. It will make more of an impact.
Another thing I loved that Mr. Robinson said was to treat children the age they are. He was talking about how "college does not start in kindergarten...kindergarten starts in kindergarten." Schools these days expect children to come into a school and act about like, twice their age. Ever seen the movie Daddy Day Care? This message is really strong in that movie - yes it's a comedy - but it does have a great message. The point is, don't expect so much out of kids. If you do that, and you try to transform them into the "model" child, then they will never become their own individual. And then we are back at square one.
Do you think though that it is possible for us as teachers to start the revolution? Or have we already gone so far into the "model system" that we cannot back out now?
Creativity kills:
ReplyDeleteRobinson says it really well, “We are educating people out of their creative capacities.” We should be fostering that capacity. As a child, I loved to color, draw, and paint. However, when we started to show the artwork in class, people had better pictures and they had been taking art classes; so, their work was pretty high quality in comparison. But, it was that day when the teacher said mine needed more effort that I can remember never really ever trying to better my art skills. Now, to this day I would consider myself a non-creative person in that particular area. I have friends who love to paint and doo arts and crafts, but I usually shy away from those things. Think of what a different outlook I might have now had I never started to look down on myself. Which then made me think of something else that is pivotal in Robinson’s speech. He said, “We start to educate children progressively from the waist up. Then, the neck up. And then to only one side of the brain.” Creativity is a part of the brain that has become less important in education than learning math, reading, history, and science. I would like to know, who makes these executive decisions? How was that person or group elected and why were we not allowed to sit in on that meeting? A child’s creativity is the foundation of learning. If we as teachers help to continuously broaden the box their minds are in, think of the places their minds can take them? But, instead we constrict those overly creative people to only be able to express themselves in a few choice ways. For example, I did a project for a class in Early College. We were trying to introduce them to autobiographies and why their stories are important. But, there was one boy in my group who didn’t look up or write anything. So, I went over to him and just chatted with him a bit until I could find something he was very interested in. Video Games. Not just playing them, but making up his own. Next, without a word he brought out a stuffed three ring binder of drawings. These were intricate drawing with dimensions of the characters, back stories on each one, who was each character’s nemesis and why. It was fantastic. Then, the girl next to him brought out her sketch book of anime comic strips she had been working on in her spare time. I was amazed. These students had to do this on their own time because they didn’t have a space for this kind of creativity in their school day. But, being able to create such stories and then illustrate those stories themselves was quite a feat and should be recognized; so, I showed the class and they loved it. Just this experience proved to me how important it is to identify the outlets that students can express themselves in and then try to incorporate those into the classroom and how they learn. If I had never asked him and just ignored the fact that he wasn’t participating, would he still be thinking his drawings were something to be kept to himself?
Creativity Kills pt. 2:
ReplyDeleteSometimes, I feel like we do things in a certain way because that’s just what is familiar and has always been done; however, the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Taking into account this definition, isn’t that setting a bad precedent for these students? The very ones we are trying to EDUCATE to be able to think critically and be creative to solve problems and make more effectual solutions. He also said a line I really liked: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. But children are fearless. And now big companies stigmatize mistakes. As well as national education now tells children that mistakes are the worst things you can make.” Wow. What a mind blowing thought to me. What is revision? I believe revision occurs multiple times before a piece is published. But, since they were prepared to be wrong and knew there would be a chance to make their idea better they were able to produce something original. Think if those writers were too afraid to put their ideas out there. Think of those inventors that would not have shared their ideas with the world and where we would be technologically without them. You know, maybe it’s just me but, I think Google and Apple have caught on to something. Sure, not everything they put out hits it off; but, when they get something that is creative and people really like it catches like wildfire and everybody wants it. That says to me that they welcome innovation and the need to be creative. They don’t stifle it or put it down. Instead, they tweak it.
Obviously I really loved this one :)
Learning revolution:
ReplyDeleteThe continuance of reforming an already broken system is his main issue. Though reform is important, there needs to be a change a complete change and not just a modification which is really what it seems like is happening. I learned that people are doing what they’ve always done because it is what they know and that they are scared of the problems that implementing change might occur. Though there seems to be no guilt in keeping a messed up system that doesn’t work. It is a conundrum to say the very least. He makes such a good point that our minds are sometimes still set in the past century instead of moving into the next. Also, that if you do well in school you should be happy and successful. But, in every aspect there are new creations of different types of jobs today. There will always be something new and it doesn’t always require a college education for someone to succeed.Every person has different abilities and talents. So, we shouldn’t box all of the students into only responding and reacting to things in the same manner. I know when I was in school you always just wrote about whatever you felt. I want to give my students the space that they can express themselves in the way they feel the most comfortable.
Ken Robinson video 1:
ReplyDeleteI want to make sure my students are fully engaged in education that will help them make connections. Since learning takes part in multiple areas of the brain and body at once it seems logical and beneficial to have students engage more than just their minds when they learn. Getting students to act out what they read when they read in class, even if they are only making gestures with their arms and hands, modulating their voices, and making eye-contact with their classmates not only encourages students to be fully present in the task at hand but also teaches them public speaking skills, banishes the fear of failure overtime with positive reinforcement, enlarges their vocabularies, reading comprehension, and personal investment in the plot and the characters.
The mass-consumer educational system no longer resonates nor is effectively preparing students for the real world. The academic and economic purpose of education is to help students become independent, viable citizens. Lately “academic inflation” has made a BA practically useless in the job market; more and more people are getting MAs and PhD’s in order to get jobs that twenty years ago would have required no more than a Bachelors, if that. The traditional method of teaching has created a global hierarchy of academic value with the arts: art, music, drama, and dance listed as last and least important. The oft-repeated refrain “you can’t get a job doing [the arts]” has persisted from the Industrial Revolution to this day and in Mr. Robinson’s view what was once true in the early 19th century has become a modern fallacy. Creativity and arts are valued in today’s society (perhaps not as much as they should be), there are opportunities to excel but only if we stop trying to save the old academic system by focusing on test-scores and one-right-answer problems and encourage students to solve problems creatively with as many answers as they can possibly imagine. Failure can no longer be a social stigma. Creativity involves failure and the intersection of multiple disciplines to form solutions. The world is faced with new problems (social, economic, environmental, medical) and it will take a new education system to help a new generation find the solutions we need.
Communities need to embrace mistakes and creative failures as a chance to continue learning rather than as terrible disasters. Students must be supportive of one another, especially in circumstances where teachers are critical of innovative thinking that seems to defy traditional one-answer responses. Teachers should encourage the creative process through physical and mental stimulation that involves holistic academic enrichment; arts programs need to be reinstated in schools as much as math and sciences.
I would like to personalize the standard curriculum to suit each individual student, their needs, unique learning pace, interests, and talents. By assigning individual readings or books in addition to class readings, allowing students to have creative authority when making their own presentations and projects, and making in-class connections between students’ lives, the world around them, and the literature they are reading each student can not only connect to the text but also glean from the lessons the particular information they need.
ReplyDeleteMr. Robinson is right; each person has their own distinct intellectual process and “fast-food education” cannot fulfill every student’s needs. Only by reexamining and challenging the effectiveness of the basic tenets of our education system can we hope to cut through the old tropes that sacrifice creativity for the “way thing have always been” and the academic obsession with immediate college enrollment straight from high school as the end-all be-all of intellectual achievement. Not every student is capable or inclined to enroll in college straight from high school. Learning is not a “linear” push from grade to grade according to a standardized set of intellectual objectives—students learn organically at their own pace and should not be rushed. Content-cramming for college does not and should not begin in kindergarten.
Question: What are your thoughts on the kindergarten-screening process for college-track children? Is it beneficial or harmful to student health? Does it open more academic and economic doors for students or does it make them feel pushed to succeed in a specific major or career?
To answer some of the questions about the practical application of personalized curriculums for each child--I think it would be possible to work within the education system to create little projects and personal readings for each student within the pre-approved curriculum that would speak to their talents and individual academic strengths. Rather than consider all the students at once as a body entire, if each teacher focused on each class, each student at a time throughout the day "personalized" curriculums would be possible. Maybe I'm an idealist, maybe I'm unrealistic. I don't have any classroom experience beyond being a student; no doubt I will feel differently when I teach. But sometimes focusing on the small steps of a task: this child, this class, makes it easier to complete a goal rather than looking at the whole thing all at once and becoming disheartened.
ReplyDeleteSchool Kills Creativity:
ReplyDeleteI agree with Robinson in that the public school system eliminates creativity, but I do not feel that as a society we can rely solely on creative thinking. There is a hierarchy of academics but that hierarchy exists for a reason. What if it were to turn upside down? Would the human race exist if the majority of people were dancers and artists? I do not believe that a child should be dissuaded from pursuing a career in art if that is what he is interested in, but I feel that Robinson is overlooking the reality of how the world functions. Regardless, I want to teach without excluding the artists and dancers. I want to appeal to them just as much as the mathematicians and brain surgeons, for they are equally important if not equally prevalent. It is the community’s and the teacher’s responsibility to emphasize the significance and necessity of creativity. Rather than ruin lives by dissuading people from pursuing their passions, teachers should recognize all talents and encourage their growth.
Revolution:
ReplyDeleteIf I were to redesign education I would adopt Robinson’s objective of agricultural education. I would emphasize the organic rather than the linear lifestyle. The primary goal of educators should be to create an environment where human development can flourish. My schools would concentrate on passion. I want to focus on discovery and development of individual passions. As Robinson says “What excites your spirit?” I want to advocate an agricultural rather than mechanical education system.