Reaction to TED talk given by Ken Robinson

Why is education important in our life? It is the question that I had been wondering for almost whole my life. Education means a process of learning skills, information, knowledge, or other common sense that you need in life. In the presentation of Ken Robinson, he stated that now a day’s educational system is not working well. I agree with his idea when looking at higher level of educational system in Japan. However, when I think back of the education I had taken so far, I feel quite satisfied with them.

First educational system was done in kindergarten. In kindergarten, children learn how to communicate with friends, how to manage their time, and how to build up relationship with others. There is not much of studying, but they mainly focus on teaching common sense and skills to live in each community they are belonging to. I remember spending my time drawing many pictures and playing around with friends in a playground.

Next educational system I got was in elementary school. Different from kindergarten, it mainly focused on studying. Teachers never told us which subjects are the most important ones, but I always had a feeling that I have to put more effort on mathematics and languages compare to other subjects. Even though there was some unbalance between each subject, I think the system of elementary school is well organized, because it has a good balance of studying and resting.

Middle school and high school are the next educational system. These two are known as the hardest period for most Japanese students. This is because; many students try to get into a good university in order to get a high ranked job. If you want to get into a well-known university, you need to have a high GPA in middle school and high school. Therefore many students start to go to a clam school and get extra hours of studying. At the same time, atmosphere of the class will start to change into more and more strict about studying. Sometimes, their GPA divides classes and students with higher grade are likely to get more pressure by their parents and teachers.

In the presentation given by Ken Robinson, he said there is less and less opportunity for students to make mistakes in their educational life. I believe it is true, because if you make any mistake you will be left out of the competition. If you don’t try to catch up with others, you will lose the game. As Ken Robinson mentioned, I believe this style of education will eventually kill creativity. The reason why creativity is so important is because creativity has no limit in it. If you have no creativity and have only knowledge, at some time, there will be a limit of knowledge you can gain. However, if you have creativity, even if you have no knowledge about certain thing, you can work with your creativity to solve problems.

As a conclusion, there is no way we can predict the future. Therefore, we never know what kind of knowledge is important in 50 years or 100 years from now. To avoid our descendant to suffer with their new world, I believe not only the education is important but also growing the creativity is as much important as that.

Summary:

In old days, humans were expected to live for around 20 years. However as the time went by the average life expectancy got much longer and now the world life expectancy is around 63 years. Moreover, if you are lucky enough to live in a developed country, there is a big chance of you to have a longer life. You may think long life is a result of luck and genes, but it is said that it is mainly depending on your life style. In your life style, there are mainly five factors that will depend you on how long you will live your life. They are genes, outlook, diet, exercise and active mind. Therefore, if you want a longer life, you should take care of those five factors!

Reaction:

“Life and death” is the topic that humans always discuss and worry about. There is no way of you to escape from the death, but still, people search for ways to get a longer life. When I was in middle school, I used to tell my family and friends that I only want to live until 40 or 50 years old. When I think about that, I feel like it is pretty short. Back then I didn’t have future plans. Therefore I never imagined how my life is going to be. However, now that I am in university and my future is becoming more and more solid, I would say that the life with only 40 or 50 years are too short.

You can never find out how much time you have left in your life time. However, I believe it is not the years that are important in your life. If you can live everyday with your best and no regret, then that is the best life you can get!

Summary:

In September 19^th, there was a big voting going on in Scotland. People in Scotland gathered together and spoke up to get more supporters. Many campaigners assembled in major cities and appealed their opinions. Because of this, many people who were never involved in a politics before also became a part of campaigners for their own country’s independence. However, the result of voting was “No” to the independence. Many campaigners were disappointed with this result and seemed to lose their attention toward their independence. Yet, it turned out to be that more and more Scots were willing to involve in their independent. Scottish National Party is the major party and it now has a member of 80,000 supporters.

Opinion:

In my opinion, it is always difficult to have a country independent after being a part of another country. It may lead a country to many disadvantages and challenges. Economy, culture, and relationships between people are the things you have to concern in order to have independence. However, in many cases people get too enthusiastic and loose their normal temper to think about these problems. In this article, it also described how people got together and acted so eagerly. I hope this will turn out successfully and have the country a peaceful place.

I believe accepting your decision in the past is always important in your life. In your lifetime there are the times when you want to rewind. There are times when you make huge mistake or the time you suffer because of your carelessness. Nevertheless, if you could change the past I think no one can improve himself or herself for the future.

When I look back into my past, I had always been following my intuition. They weren’t always the situations that I had first imagined; however I rarely regretted my decisions.

My life so far had so many decisions to make. My first big decision was made when I graduated elementary school. My father got a job in Pakistan. My parents were thinking of living separately, my father in Pakistan and my mother and I in Japan. However, when I first heard the news, I thought it’s a challenge that I have to go through. Then my family moved to Pakistan and spent three years there. There were times when I missed my friends in Japan and envied their life together in Tokyo. However, after 5 years, I am grad of myself for making the choice of going there. If I wasn’t deciding of going, I know that my life had been so boring and normal for lest of my life.

Second decision was made right after my stay in Pakistan. My parents and I often talked about which high school I will be attending to. My parents preferred me of going back to Japan and study Japanese culture and language in my home country. However, I was feeling myself uncompleted in my English skill. Therefore I told my parents that I want to continue my life in abroad during my high school life. My parents agreed to my decision, and together, we found the school in New York, which teaches both Japanese and English. The name of the school was Keio Academy of New York. When I first got in to the school, I regretted of coming to the school. Because every one in the school spoke Japanese, and there were no English at all. I thought there was no way I could improve my English. However, as the time went by, I noticed that whether it gets better or not is depending on my attitude. Since then, I tried to communicate with as many English teachers and supervisors at dormitory who can’t speak Japanese. By that, my speaking skill got much better compare to the time when I was in middle school.

From these two big events in my life, I learned that the life always have challenges and when you are in struggle, you might look for the way to escape or change your decisions that was made in the past. However, by following your first decisions will eventually mature ones self greatly. For the lest of my life, I will like to follow my intuition, and always accept myself in any moment.

Summary:

The main topic of this article was about the Brazilian airport not being completed by the time of the World Cup. Brazil is having many troubles to hold the World Cup even one week before the tournament. The work of improvements projects at Brazilian airports has only less than 50 percent being done. The analysts say that the work might be done by the time of the competition, but there will be many last-minutes solutions to hide their work. Therefore, the tourists might face some negative images of Brazil and leave the country with those thoughts.

Reaction:

My reaction towards this article was that I felt Brazil is being too irresponsibly. World Cup is held every four years and people from all around the world is looking forward for this event. This means that the country that is hosting the World Cup has responsibility to success the event without any troubles. However, in my opinion, so far Brazil is not completing this mission. Even if they could complete the construction work in time, they still have to take care of citizens who are against the World Cup. It is understandable that to be a venue for worldwide events are difficult for any countries. However, if the country was chosen, they should have the responsibility. For next few days we should keep our eyes on the Brazil’s future actions, and leverage them for Tokyo Olympic in 2020.