Creativity and Education

Creativity and Education

           Today, school education is very fixed and this fixed education kills children’s creativity. This is a brief summary of Sir Ken Robinson’s lecture in TED. I agree with him to. Education is killing children’s creativity by making children same with other children. Kids are taught to become a ‘smart’ person in the society. To become smart person, kids learn English, Math, Science, etcetera. I strongly agrees with Ken Robinson’s idea that is school education is killing kids’ creativity.

           Before I talk about why education is killing creativity, I would like to talk why we should focus on creativity. Throughout the long history, societies are changed dramatically. These societies are changed because of improved techniques, improved government policies, improved industries and so on. These improved things’ similarity is ‘new’ things which are hard to create. The importance of creativity is increased because of this reason: new things are essential for development of society. Then why development of society is so important? Isn’t it good enough to satisfy present and not struggling for developed future? Maybe it is good when every country has same thought and stop developing itself. However, unfortunately, every country is struggling to develop to win other countries. Thus, stop developing actually means deteriorating. For example, if USA is 100 now and Korea is 70 now, let’s assume that USA satisfied to the country’s situation and Korea didn’t. Then, Korea will strive to develop further and USA won’t. 1 year later, USA is still 100 and Korea is 110. Then, the situation is changed and the USA was actually deteriorating for 1 year. Thus, creativity is very important for living in this competitive world.

           As I mentioned above, creativity is very important. Therefore, if nowadays’ education system is killing creative kids, the education system should be revolutionized. Education system often gives proper solution to the kids. The solution means the best solution that teachers believe. Children learn and memorize that solution over and over again because teachers teach like that. Finally, kids become the best people that teachers satisfy. In some views, it can be interpreted as kids are growing to live in real life. However, this process is actually limiting children’s possibility. Kids are very pure and creative since they didn’t learn fixed facts much. Their imagination is limitless and this limitless imagination often leads ‘new’ revolution. However, as Sir Ken Robinson mentioned “every education system on earth has the same hierarchy subjects. At the top on Mathematics and languages, then the humanity is in the bottom at the art.” This means that every education on Earth is aiming same goals that are not related to creativity.

           Creativity is one of the most important factors that move the entire world to go forward. Also, education’s main purpose should be helping the entire world to go forward. Thus, education should not prevent kids from growing creativity. Nowadays education system is preventing children’s creativity so it should be revolutionized. Thus, I strongly agree to Sir Ken Robinson’s idea for better world.

Myself as a writer

Myself as a writer

10b1 Lee Kangbok

           A person can have a lot of diverse views. Because one person has lots of features that can be interpreted differently, he can have a lot of diverse views. I also have diverse views to be seen by others. One of those views is writer, and I personally think that I’m not really a good writer.

           It sounds like I’m very tentative toward writing. Unfortunately, it is true. When I was an elementary school student, I wrote many short writings such as poems, short novels, and diaries. I was young and I was creative enough to write that variety of writings. There were fewer restrictions in my writings because no one restricted me from writing freely. At that time, I was confident about my writing although its quality was low in the point of other people’s views. Confidence was my main strength as a writer.

           Next, I became a middle school student. From middle school, I started to go to academy to reinforce my math and English skills. As a middle school student, I didn’t have lots of opportunity to write some free writings. There were tremendous amount of homework that doesn’t need long writings, but only short answers. As a result, as time passes, I became more and more passive toward writing. In addition, in the English academy, English teachers who taught me TOEFL writing always said same writing format. Intro-body1-body2-body3-conclusion. Also, introduction includes hook and thesis statement, body includes opinion with details and examples, conclusion includes thesis statement again and conclude all things… This format is what I’ve learned. I was trained to write in this format. The result was I became very formal and not creative writer.

           The new type is maybe helpful to express my opinion in effective way. However, my only strength as a writer, confidence, was disappeared. From the first, I didn’t have good skills to write complicated sentences, choose appropriate words or write with good grammar. The only thing was confidence. However, by accommodating new writing type, I lost confidence and gained a few skills of writing sentences or choosing appropriate words. This was totally loss for me. This writing style was available only in TOEFL writing. In TOEFL writing, I got 30 out of 30 with this very strict writing style however, in real world; my essay was less than 25 out of 30. This phenomenon is vividly appeared in my KMLA life.

           When I entered in KMLA, necessity of writing essay increased very much since most homework should be done in essay. Especially Ms. Choi’s class at my 1^st semester was very harsh for me. She taught us writing and she gave us tremendous amount of homework. Also, she didn’t give good score for essays that are considered as without effort. It was very hard to complete all of the homework with good quality. Also, my writing style was impossible to make an essay with good quality. I’m struggling to change my writing style again in KMLA. “Write freely” is one of my goals for good writer.

           To conclude, now I’m not very good writer since I lost my creativity and I don’t have good skill in writing sentences or good vocabularies. However, I’m striving to regain my creativity and change writing style to write freely.