Where to now?

Standardization kills creativity. The Leaving Certificate is the leveller for secondary school students here in Ireland. Using it we rigorously examine our students each year in an effort to compare their academic ability. It rarely seeks opinion preferring to extract regurgitated ‘Cliff-Notes’ over original ideas. It affects the morale of not only the students but the teachers too. Ken Robinson says “The problem comes when these tests become more than simply a tool of education and turn into the focus of it”. (Robinson, K. 2009 p. 237). Personally speaking this element of our current education system hugely affects my morale. I find myself telling students to learn Irish essays off by heart because this is what it takes to succeed in the exam. I spend more time preparing for the exam, than I do on actual language skills and this is hugely frustrating. It’s also promoting the demise of the Irish language. What can we do?

“The most powerful method of improving education is to invest in the improvement of teaching and the status of great teachers”. (Robinson, K. 2009 p. 237). Time and again teachers complain about the inadequacies of the system, about how “The Leaving Cert is a test of memory and not of intellect”. But teachers are not the problem. Schools up and down the country are full of fabulous teachers working within an ailing and archaic system. Robinson suggests that we focus on personalization rather than standardization.

We need to discover the individual talents of each child, to create an environment where they want to learn and can discover their true passions. Lessons need to be student-centred and lessons should be what student interest dictates. Students should be able to interact, communicate and collaborate.

Robinson also asserts the notion that “school systems should base their curriculum not on the idea of separate subjects, but on the much more fertile idea of disciplines”. He feels that this would make a more “fluid” and “dynamic” system.

Finally education should be personal taking into account the individual learning styles and talents of each student.

Follow Your Dreams

Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent

When Susan Boyle stepped out onto the stage of Britain's Got Talent in April this year, she was asked "What's the dream?' She answered "I want to be a professional singer". Audience and panel alike were aghast that this dowdy strange woman could expect her dream to come true. Susan Boyle is proof that we should never give up on our dreams no matter how far-fetched they may seem.

Susan Jeffers 'Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway'

Susan Jeffers wrote a book about how fear was preventing her from taking responsibility for her own life. Fear can infiltrate our lives and inhibit our growth. This kind of fear would be especilly prevalent if we choose to take a less conventional path in life. Susan tells us that one of the things that finally evoked satisfaction in her life was recognising this fear for what it was and by not allowing it to influence her choices. The video below gives an overview of Jeffers' best-selling book.

Meerkats and Me!

Meerkats are very sociable animals and they survive by a sophisticated system of teamwork. Inspite of the fact that they are known to nod off on the job they are fairly dependable  and display tremendous support for one another. We humans form groups for the same primal reasons as the meerkat. However, being part of a group encourages uniformity of thought and behaviour. The desire we have to conform is very powerful and sometimes especially so in adolescence. Unfortunately for us creativity and conformity rarely mix. The psychologist Solomon Asch carried out a conformity experiment in 1951-The effects of 'groupthink'

"I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference"

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. 20

The biggest obstacle to achievement can be self-doubt. The decision to take the path of least resistance can prove irresistible especially if your own fears are compounded by those of your family and friends. It might seem rational for a parent not to want their child to study ceramics because you'd be much more likely to get a secure job  by studying commerce. But it can't only be about getting a job. Wouldn't it be much more sensible to seek employment that satisfies and inspires you rather than just securing employmet for employments sake.

Lady luck's a knocking, can you hear her?

In his book The Luck Factor, Richard Wiseman writes about his study of four hundred exceptionally 'lucky' people. He recognices that people who consider themselves lucky have four distinguishing characteristics:
1.They maximize chance opportunities - and are good at creating, noticing and acting upon these opportunities when they arise. 2.They are good at listenin to their intuition. 3.They expect to be lucky and anticipate a positive outcome. 4.They don't allow ill fortune to control them.

Wiseman conveys the notion that lucky people, those of us who have satisfying jobs, perfect partners etc, these people actively seek out their luck and remain optimistic that they will find it. We cannot sit back hoping that  luck will find us. Students should be actively encouraged to seek out a career that invigorates them. Richard Wiseman on luck

Presentation

Finding Your Tribe

Ken Robinson says that for most people who have found their 'Element' i.e. work which combines passion and talent, that connecting with other people who share their talents, feeds their creativity. Robinson refers to others in your field as your "tribe". Robinson introduces us to Helen Pilcher a scientist turned author/comedian. Helen says "Leaving the lab was scary but not as scary as the prospect of staying. My advice, should you be contmplating making that leap, is to make like a lemming and jump." (Robinson, K. 2009 p. 110). Therefore when you haven't found your tribe and you are not inspired by others in your field it's time to get out!

A Music Teacher! Is that a proper job?

On the ‘The Apprentice’ on TV3 on the 9th of November a music teacher, Sam Conroy was belittled for teaching “only music!” It was suggested to her that music wasn’t a real subject and “how could anybody teach, only music?” During a staff discussion on the topic the following day a colleague of mine said “That’s typical of what people think. You only have to look at parent-teacher meetings to know people don’t care about music, they never even make the effort to show up!” As a language teacher I was astonished at this. I always have a great turnout to parent-teacher meetings. This highlights the fact that parents place much more importance on languages than they do on the arts, a view that has to be altered, if students are to be true to their natural abilities and talents. Our jobs are the implementation of who we are and “Education is the system that’s supposed to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way in the world” (Robinson, K. 2009 p16). However, instead, we are educating people out of creativity, stifling their individual talents and “killing their motivation to learn” (Robinson, K. 2009 p 16).

Does Artistry lead to Anguish?

"Eat, Pray, Love" Author Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses. In the TEDtalks video below she explores negative attitudes towards creativity. She asks "Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they were put on this earth to do?" Gilbert suggests that we have "interanlised and accepted collectively the notion that creativity and suffering are inherently linked and that artistry will ultimately lead to anguish." The perpetuation of this negative assumption could be the reason why we persuade our kids to become involved in anything other than creativity. Gilbrt takes a look at ancient Rome and Greece in an effort to overcome this negativity. ELIZABETH GILBERT ON CREATIVITY

One Size Doesn't Fit All!

When people use a thinking style that's completely natural to them everything comes more easily. Visual people do not learn from dictation. Tony Buzan invented mind mapping as an educational aid for visual people. It allows you to create a visual representation of a concept or a piece of information. In order to be effective the education system needs to heighten awareness of different learning and thinking styles.

Searching for Meaning through Creativity

The power of human creativity is obvious everywhere, in the technologies we use, in the buildings we inhabit, in the clothes we wear and in the films we watch. But the reach of creativity is very much deeper. It affects not only what we put in the world, but also what we make of it – not only what we do, but also how we think and feel about the world. We spend much of our time trying to figure out what it all means. We don’t just see the world as it is. We view it from our own internal reference; that is we interpret the world through the particular ideas and beliefs that have shaped our own cultures and our personal outlook. All of this stands between us and the world acting as a filter on what we perceive and what we think. “What we think of ourselves and the world makes us who we are and what we can be” (Robinson, K.2009 p81).

However, if we can create our own world view then we can recreate it too by taking a different perspective and reframing our situation and this is where creativity has a huge part to play. In the preface to Man’s Search for Meaning, Gordon Allport manages to convey the capacity of the human spirit to triumph over it’s surroundings. “to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.” (Frankl, V. 1959, p. 9). The prisoners in Auschwitz and other concentration camps; by choosing to see their situation as an undertaking; that if overcome, would prove them worthwhile members of society, was ‘reframing’ at its most powerful. Frankl himself later in the novel says “without suffering and death life cannot be complete”. (Frankl, V. 1959, p. 76). It is a splendid account of the human spirit that people could look upon such extreme suffering as an addition to their experience of life and in doing so could transcend their physical environment.

Frankl also asserts the power of the imagination. “Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom”. (Frankl, V. 1959, p. 47). It is therefore of vital importance that we instil in our children the power of creativity and imagination.

I Could Have Danced All Night!

Activities that we love fill us with energy even when we are physically exhausted. Activities we don't like can drain us in minutes. "When you do something you love the rest of the world just slips away" (Robinson, K. 2009 p89). FUN MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE

'Mickey Mouse' Degrees

Ed Caesar wrote an article for the Sunday Times Magazine a couple of months ago entitled ‘Nice Little Learners’. In it he posed the question – which subject will get you the best job? A: English Literature or B: Golf Studies. As this blog has already suggested the conventionality of our current education system would lead students to English Literature every time, dismissing the latter as a ‘mickey mouse’ degree. Nevertheless, Caesar goes on to document the careers of some of the recipients of these so called ‘mickey mouse’ degrees.

Lucinda Davies, a 24 year old who graduated with a 2:1 in Golf Management Studies from the University of Birmingham, was poached by a resort in Egypt before she had even completed her studies. She is now back in England working as a coach and club pro. However, her ambitions stretch further. One day she would love to run the PGA tour.

Mhairi Mc Donald graduated from Heriot-Watt University in Edingburgh in 2007 with a first-class Msc in Brewing and Distilling. Not only is every person in her year employed but she has her “dream job” in brand development for Glenglassaugh Distillery in Aberdeenshire. Others qualify from courses such as; Stained-glass Studies, Surfing Studies and Computer-games Programming. Many arrive at college with three As at A-level. Proving that these graduates are not only academically intelligent, but are creatively intelligent too.

In a time when 40,000 young people graduating this year will be out of work students need to think more creatively about what kind of returns they are going to get from their qualifications.

Academic Inflation

 

Who is our current education system for? Who succeeds at it? If we were honest in answering these questions we'd have to admit that the purpose of the current education system is to produce university professors. Is this the pinnacle of all human achievement? Surely it's just a form of life. Ken Robinson tell us that the current education system came into being to meet the needs of industrialism and that the hierarchy of subjects is based on two ideas;

1. The most useful subjects for work are at the top. People are steered away from things at school; things that they like because "You would never get a job doing that!"

2. Academic ability, because universities designed the system in their image.

The consequences are that many highly intelligent, brilliant, creative people think they're not. We have to try to change this. According to UNESCO in the next thirty years more people will be graduating through education than ever before. Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything. Twenty years ago if you had a degree you had a job. But now many people with degrees are unemployed because a job that used to require a BA now requires an MA and so on. This process of academic inflation is indicative of the fact that the whole process of education is shifting beneath our feet. In my view we need to rethink our idea of intelligence.

Does our current education system work?

We are currently facing great challenges. We need the next generation to be smarter more adaptable and better prepared than any that have gone before. Our only chance is to improve our education systems; to find a way to make the most of our students' talents and a way to help them face the challenges of the modern world. One size no longer fits all. We need to prepare young people for the here and now and the emerging issues of our time.

AN INSIGHTFUL VIDEO ON THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATING FOR THE FUTURE

Ken Robinson-Creativity

In education creativity is as important now as literacy. We have to rethink the fundamental way we're educating our children. We should embrace the gift of human imagination and educate for the future.

Intuition matters too!

Robert Cooper in his book The Other 90%, speaks of the ‘heart’ brain and the ‘gut’ brain. He tells us that whenever we have a direct experience it does not go directly to the brain in our heads. The first place it goes is to the neurological networks of the intestinal tract and heart. This is why we often experience our first reaction to events as a ‘gut’ reaction. Whether or not we acknowledge them he says our gut reactions shape everything we do. I would like to deal with the importance of this ‘gut’ reaction and how it’s essential in the development of interpersonal and intrapersonal skills. The importance of which is diminished in our current education system.

Whistle while you work!

Behaviour therapy tells us that we are what we do. Our jobs are the implementation of who we are. It makes sense that we all engage in work that gives us meaning. We need to create an environment in our schools in which we nurture each child's individual talents and passions. Often parents steer their children away from their true talents because they think that they have to follow conventional paths in order to be successful. The goal here is to convey the benefits to everybody of connecting properly with our individual talents. I feel very passionately about this, as everyday in school I see students being forced into areas that do not inspire them and worse still do not make the best use of their natural abilities. It would be far more beneficial to see students doing things they love to do and being aware of their own particular talents. Ken Robinson, in his book, The Element, describes people who have achieved the balance between passion and talent, as those who; “have discovered their Element- the place where the things you love to do and the things that you are good at come together”. (Robinson, K. 2009, p.8).

 Our work must inspire us!

Intelligence is diverse!

Intelligence is diverse. We think about the world how we experience it; visually, sounds, kinesthetic, abstract terms and movement. Intelligence is also dynamic. Creativity, which is the process of having original thoughts and ideas that have value, more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeings things. We have to rethink the way we're educating our children to attend to their individual intelligences

Hierarchy of school subjects.

Every education system in the world has the same hierarchy of subjects. Maths and languages are at the top, humanities in the middle and at the bottom are the arts. There is even a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music have a higher status than drama and dance. Ken Robinson tells us "there isn't an education system in the world that teaches dance everyday to students the way it teaches them mathematics." Why? Maths is important but so is dance. If your talent lies in dance and not in mathematics then the education system is failing you!

Picasso once said, 'all Children are born artists!'

We are all  born with tremendous capabilities but we lose touch with them as we grow older. In essence I want this blog to reflect the concerns that parents have when they are trying to help their kids figure out their futures. Often parents steer their children away from their true talents because they think that they have to follow conventional paths in order to be successful. My goal here is to convey the benefits to everybody of connecting properly with our individual talents.

Allow children to be creative!

In his biography of Einstein, Walter Isaacson says “As a young student, he never did well at rote learning. And later, as a theorist, his success came not from the brute strength of his mental processing power but from his imagination and creativity. He could construct complex equations, but more important, he knew that math is the language nature uses to describe her wonders.”(Robinson, K. 2009 p. 50). As the sign below proves, we are continually trying to prevent children from experiencing the world creatively and hence are prohibiting their understanding of nature’s wonders. 

'Schooling' and 'External Control' prohibits learning

The main reason so many students are doing badly and even good students are not doing their best is that our schools, firmly supported by school boards, politicions and parents, all of whom follow external control pyschology, adhere rigidly to the idea that what is taught in school is right and that students who wont learn it should be punished. Glasser, 1998 P.237

A Vision of Students Today

This video depicts the importance of technology in today's classroom. The learners of today expect to be able to create, consume, remix and share information with one another. They text, blog and instant messsage one another on a daily basis. It’s our job to teach them to think, to create, to analyse, to evaluate and to apply. We need to use technology in an enaging way to help our students develop higher level thinking skills. Students need to be enabled to create digitally. Technology should be embraced as a central part of the education system. It is important to realise that technology will motivate our students. It will engage them and enhance their learning experience. It will also allow them the freedom to do well in today’s world.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH AN INSIGHTFUL VIDEO-A VISION OF STUDENTS TODAY