Tagged: children

Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson really struck a chord with me. He posed the question; ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ I am passionate about education and more that likely think I will become a teacher and therefore found his idea’s intriguing.

One thing I picked up from his work was the idea that children do not have the fear of failure like we do. Nowhere is this more obvious than on the ski fields. I recently went to Queenstown, New Zealand. When hitting the slopes we judge them based on difficulty. Green? Black? Blue? However without hesitation children zoom down the slopes as fast as possible not aware that there run is one of the hardest and generally speaking, they have the most success.

Robinson also talked about the hierarchy of education. Languages and maths at the top and dance and drama at the bottom. Dance and drama require; confidence, hard work, communication, development, compromise and creativity. If these skills were to be of a greater importance in schools, would we have a generally happier, more accepting society.

One of my best friends once mused that she wishes she possessed a visible skill. Those that are good at drawing, painting or singing can share there talent. Wfor someone studying Classics and Religion to share there essays. In society we celebrate creativity and the arts, so why not in schools?

In VCE I studied; English, Psychology, History, Art and Music. I recognise the importance of these subjects. However what is frustrating is the system does not. Art is marked down. Despite the hours I spent developing my ideas it was marked down and ultimately not counted towards my final score. How could young people not see this hierarchy of education in a more concrete way?

 

Spotted: Another Speculative Activity

This time I am in Prep K. The kids were each given some newspaper and were told to make whatever they wanted.

There were faces, cars, fruit and furniture. It was simply a test of their creativity.

What I found most interesting was the total creative freedom of young children to undertake speculative activities. They did, probably because they were told to, or because its fun to play with newspaper but they did so with total willingness, not once questioning the task.

Unlike the children, uni students do question. Which on one level is good. It’s good to want to know why, to know the purpose, to look at a task as having importance. When this isn’t clear, quite often we get scared, we get angry or we get frustrated. We feel lost when things like education are changed or altered. We feel unsure when our scaffolding is taken away. I would know, I’ve written blogs about it.

However, watching these kids made me jealous. Their newspaper creations were not unlike our blogs. There was no clear framework or task, just “make something”. Unlike many Networked Media students, they could simply “do”, without asking why and their results were amazing.