Creating The Right Conditions

This week’s video was really interesting and the speaker Ken Robinson made some points that I agree with. The arts, Ken Robinson talked about how important the arts are to children. I could not agree more. He stated that arts should be a part of the mainstream education. It should be a part of the writing, reading, mathematics, and science. He went on to make a statement that really stuck with me, “We are taking the power of imagination for granted, and we are destroying it in children.” For me this related to what Seth Godin talked about in his book, that we are creating a society that wants instructions instead of creative. Lego recreated their product instead of the all-purpose kits, to predefined kits. What really got to me was the caption that was under the picture. “It failed because it required too much risk on the part of parents and kids-the risk of making something that wasn’t perfect or expected.” (Godin, 77). I don’t understand why this is such a bad thing. I thought that the old approach to Lego’s helped developed the children’s creative side. It allows them to build and create whatever they want. In the all-purpose set can allow them to think outside of the box. They are just limiting them to just one way of thinking, with the pre-set boxes. Like Ken Robinson said, “people do their best when they are doing something they love or when they are in their element.” If we can find ways to make the mandated materials more interesting if we could try and find ways try so it can related to our student lives. I wonder if it would make for a more interesting classroom? Unlike the teacher in stop stealing dreams, I thought did teaching the wrong way, “she intentionally humiliated him, for one clear reason. The message was obvious: I am in charge, and my instruction matter. You will conform and you will meet the quality standards or you will be punished.” This to me is the wrong way to teach, it should not be my way or the high way. There was a line in stop stealing dreams that I liked, “we can rebuild the entire system around passion instead of fear.” I feel that this would make for a great learning environment, where we are not instilling fear into our students. Why put fear about not passing test.Why are we instilling fear into our students and add that extra pressure on them, just so we can show that our test scores are better than different states. School should be a place where plant the seed of growth in our students. Ken made a good point about, “if we create the right conditions growth will happen in our students. It that it is important to find creative way to engage the students, we need to stop putting some much pressure on them, and give them more creative room. Ken also stated that, “we should not be putting them to sleep, but we should be waking them up.” Today we are teaching to the test, which does not allow for creative freedom. We need to allow the students to think outside of the box, give them more room to explore and ask questions that get them more engaged in what they are learning. Get them too ask questions that get them thinking deeply about they are learning in, so they want to learn more.