Category Archives: rina

Audio Essay about Education

 

Ken Robinson says that creativity now is as important in education as literacy. I agree with his idea. In many developed countries, children are forced to study. Getting good score on the test is the most important in this education system. In the test, when children choose a right choice, they can get high score, so they are afraid of mistakes.

And also, every child do same things like going to school, studying Japanese, math, or English, playing, cleaning the classroom. It makes them try to be normal, and not to be different from other children. They can learn how they adapt to society, but they lose diversity in this lifestyle. The current education system is for getting a good job. Most students go to university in order to get high salary after graduate. They study not for curiosity about things, but for success in society.

In Japan, much more students go to cram schools than ever. They study at school and they go to the cram school after school. Most of them go there because they can’t catch up with the classes, and studying at school is not enough. I work part-time job at a cram school. A lot of students in the school don’t like studying. They come to the cram school, because they have to get a high grade and they have to enter the high school. They think it is natural to go to the high school because everyone goes there. There is no diversity.

 

Japanese club activities have big influence with losing diversity. Children can learn how to be polite to elder people and how to be a member of the community. However, in some schools, children learn the teacher is the greatest person. If he is angry, he might use the violence. They cannot say anything against him. They must obey the rules and teacher. They don’t have to think by themselves. The teacher control them by using violence. This is not education. Students who are controlled never have creativity.

Children have to think by themselves. It helps to make their creativity.Adults can only help to make opportunities and they must not take away children’s possibility. They have to give children interest, discovery, thought, concentration, and knowledge in education.

However, the current education system brings only memorization of grammar, rules, and history. Children are taught subjects in order to pass the entrance exam. I think that adults should tell children why the subject is needed, and why you have to know. They must not use power and they give children a chance to choose.

 

No dislike button for the Facebook

 

Facebook is thinking the way to express more appropriate emotions like “sad”. Mark Zuckerberg said that many user didn’t feel “like” button was appropriate for unfortunate incidents. However, user can comment on a post when they don’t want to use “like” button. And Facebook has no plan to make “dislike” button.

I think that Facebook should introduce another button, but “dislike” is not proper. It means “not like”. No one would push the button when he or she sees the post about death or illness. If people face unfortunate events, they will sympathize. So to express this emotion, “sad” button is better than “dislike” button.

Other social network services also use button to express feelings. LINE is the most famous SNS in Japan, and it has timeline. By using face fonts, user can express many kinds of feeling in timeline. There are six face fonts, love, very happy, good, wish, surprise, and sad. This way is very easy to express how he or she thinks. Not only letters button but face fonts is a good choice, I think.

The great-granddaughter of a Canadian soldier whose bear cub inspired the story of Winnie the Pooh has visited the UK to retrace his footsteps.

 
Cpt Harry Colebourn brought the bear in 1914. He went to war in France and he donated the bear, called Winnie, to London Zoo. Winnie the Pooh was written by Alan Alexander Milne for his family. At first, the story was called The Wrong Sort of Bees in the London Evening News. The boy in the stories, Cristopher Robin, was named after Milne’s son. He had a favorite teddy bear, which he called Winnie the Pooh. And also, he had other stuffed animals such as a kangaroo, a piglet and a donkey. The characters in the stories based on his toys.
 
I know Disney’s story but I didn’t know the origin of Winnie the Pooh. Disney has made a lot of movies based on fairy tales. The stories, made by Disney, are a little different from real stories. For example, in The Little Mermaid, the heroine throws herself into the sea. However, in the movie, Princess Ariel gets married to Prince Eric. Almost all of Disney films come to happy end and the good defeats the evil. I think it’s very easy to understand for children.

When I was little, I read the Winnie the Pooh, made by Disney. In the book, Pooh lives in the house which has a doorplate, Alexander.I’ve thought Pooh’s real name is Alexander since then. But I realized its name is author’s name last Tuesday.

First womb-transplant baby born

 

In Sweden, a woman has given to a baby using a transplanted womb. The donor was 61 years old and she had gone through menopause seven years earlier. The transplant operation was the first success.

I was surprised that the donor was the woman who had already reached menopause, but the womb still functioned like it used to. It might be reuse of womb. Until now, if women who cannot bear a child want their own child, their only option is surrogacy. However, no one can decide the real mother when surrogate mothers refuse giving up a baby.

Moreover, poor women often accept surrogate mother for money. It seems that life is made by money. And also, surrogacy isn’t admitted in Japan. So, Japanese women who have a baby through surrogacy, they cannot be a mother legally. Surrogacy remains a lot of problems.

Compared with it, I think womb transplant has fewer problems because womb transplant isn’t different from other organ transplant. By medical development, women who cannot bear a child get a new option. I hope that this technology is utilized all over the world.

I beleive

I believe sports make people strong. It doesn’t mean only physical but mental. I have played volleyball since I was an elementary school student. Of course, I play it better than who I use to be. And also, I have learned sportsmanship, politeness, friendship, and cooperation. Playing several sports is also a good experience. You can study many kinds of rule about sports. You can know the background or spirit about them.

I believe starting playing volleyball gradually made me become confident in myself. My coach asked me to talk to my team mates about what I wanted to do and what I was thinking about. Playing it gave me a lot of chances to communicate someone who was not relative. Before I joined volleyball club, I was very nervous of speaking to people in front of me, but playing volleyball made me so active that I could join a class activity and my classmates’ chat.

I believe team sports encourage you to improve your communication skills. You learn how to assert yourself and how to cooperate other team members. You come to know the adjustment between that. Team sports cannot do by yourself. This adjustment is also important in society. No one can do anything without help by other people. Team sports tell you not only how to make friends but also how to be in your community.

Individual sports like swimming are a little different to team sports in point that you don’t have any team mates when you play games. So, you have to fight alone. Individual sports make you train your mental. It is very important to be patient because you might face more difficult situations than playing games.

In conclusion, you can experience some troubles when you play sports, but they must be useful in your life. I believe sports make people strong, and I have thought I’m very happy to have an opportunity to play volleyball. Therefore, I recommend you to play sports seriously.

Somalia’s al-Shabab militants impose dress code.

Somalia’s al-Shabab militants have round up around 100 women and ordered them to comply with a strict Islamic dress code or risk being whipped. The women were told to wear a niqab, which covers all of their body and face, leaving just a small slit for their eyes. A UN-backed government,aided by African Union forces, has pushed al-Shabab out of the country’s main cities but it continues to stage deadly attacks there.

I beleive every woman has freedom of choice. It’s also freedom of choice that Musulim women voluntarily put on Islamic traditional clothes. However, even though men must protect women in Islamic doctorin, men cannot decide what wemen wear. In Europe, the separation of religion and politics is adopted. A lot of muslim women are uncomfortable about it, because they cannot wear what they want to wear. I think both insistences shold stopped, and I hope every women live happy to find their life-style.

EU raises its growth forecast for 2014

European debt crisis happened because of Greek debt crisis in 2010. The European Union helped Greece government pay its creditors. This made investors nervous about other nations, such as Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain. However, the European Commission has raised its growth forecast for the EU, saying that “the recovery has taken hold”.

Continued reform efforts by member nations and EU itself are succeeding. But I think that it takes so long time to solve this crisis entirely. Economic differentiation among EU member nations is very wide. For Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, it must be troublesome to help other states. On the other hand, in the nations which were forced to cutting in expenditures drastically, backlash against EU has become strong.

I think Euro is very wonderful currency. It connects the nations which had engaged with each other again and again, and it might become the key to avoid war. I hope EU economy recovers and cooperation with Asia also succeed.