After class this week I was thinking about how to weave the different themes of my 800-word paper into a coherent, interesting, told-in-plain-language piece. I still haven't found an elegant way to do this, but in thinking about one of the themes -- how our educational systems often stifle creativity -- I remembered a great talk by British educator Ken Robinson that I heard on TED awhile back.TED is a non-profit whose self proclaimed mission is "spreading ideas." TED began as a conference held each year in Long Beach, Calif., where folks get together to discuss new ideas in science, business, arts and global issues. Each presenter is allowed an eighteen minute (or less) speech on their topic. Beginning in 2007 the conference was recorded and made available on the World Wide Web.
Here's what TED has to say about TED:
"Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter pieces of content, including music, performance and comedy. There are no breakout groups. Everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn't work, but it does. It works because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole."
I don't know how you all feel about the education you received -- for the most part I'm satisfied with mine (minus the gaps in proper writing skills) -- but I often dream about how much more we could achieve if we could find a way to allow for more encouragement of creativity in our curricula.
Ken Robinson said it much better than I ever could when he said, "If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything creative . . . we are educating people out of their creativity"
Please sit back and enjoy this short clip of Ken Robinson on TED. Apparently it is one of the most watched clips on their Website. And that says a lot. Consider yourself warned: TED is addictive.
Hi Leesa,
ReplyDeleteI love that TED talk. It made the rounds of homeschooling circles when it came out. The standard kind of school does tend to discourage experimentation. Students feel they have to play it safe and create an 'A' product, and get more wrapped up in getting A's than learning. I'm glad my kids have had a chance to do something different. They've had a lot of unstructured time to learn in their areas of interest, and they all still enjoy learning for its own sake.
Hi Leesa,
ReplyDeleteI love that TED talk. It made the rounds of homeschooling circles when it came out. The standard kind of school does tend to discourage experimentation. Students feel they have to play it safe and create an 'A' product, and get more wrapped up in getting A's than learning. I'm glad my kids have had a chance to do something different. They've had a lot of unstructured time to learn in their areas of interest, and they all still enjoy learning for its own sake.