Through the whole, Ken Robinson talked about ‘Education and creativity’. He stressed over and over how much the education is important because it takes us into the future that we can’t grasp. He told, however, now we are running national education system where mistakes are the worst thing we can make. So even though all children have creativity from the nature, the education kills it. In other words, through the education at school, children have become frightened of making mistakes and many of them lose creativity or capacity. He said ‘If you not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.’ I think it is true.

Of course he pointed out the education of the whole world, but to hear his words, I thought it was particulary true of Japanese education system. What I want to say is, in Japan, I feel almost all children are frightned of making mistakes. The reason is very simple. When we make mistakes, Japanese teachers point out very quickly and try to lead us to the right, only, absolute answer somehow. They hardly pay attention to the reason why students failed or how to improuve. There is only ‘one answer’ that we have to arrive. So naturally Japanese students became not to make a remark to avoid a wrong risk. As a result, they became very silent. It looks good because they don’t disturb the class, but at the same time, they lose very important thing. That is creativity.

I also had been studied in the atmosphere like that, but it changed at the high school. There, I leaned English by a native teacher. He always repeated, ‘Don’t be afraid of making mistakes because everyone makes mistakes, me too. Of course I help you to learn English, but DON’T BELIEVE ME ! ’ I was greatly shocked. In the elementary school and the junior high school, I believed that teachers know everything and always say right things. Thanks to my teacher in my high school, fortunately, I could make many, really many mistakes. He always lent an ear to my wrong English and explained me why it was wrong and how to express in English what I wanted to say. He never pushed us ‘one answer’ as teachers before.

From the mistakes, we can learn many important things, sometimes more than from one right answer. Or rather, we can learn fast when we make many mistakes especially in language. That’s what I learned through the study at the high school. I want many japanese teachers to create the atomosphere which allows the students to make more and more mistakes, to keep creativity inspite of killing it. So I think there are a lot of mistakes in this essay. But Ken also told ‘I don’t mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative’, so I’d like to continue the efforts to improve my English skills.

Summary

The title was ‘Research Links Addictive Social Media Behavior With Substance Abuse’.  Psychologists found those who use social media may be at great risk for impulse-issues like substance abuse.  The research, asked questions about social media use to 253 students, showed 10 % of users experience ‘disorderd social media use’.  One researcher, Hormes says that new notifications or the latest content acts as a reward, and the uncertainty of them encourages us to check back frequently. And the researchers hypothesize that disordered social media use is likely a symptom of poor emotion regulation skill. According to this, MRI data has shown that the brains of compulsive Internet users to exhibit similar changes to those in people with alchol and drag addiction.

Opinion

As researchers says,   it is difficult to regard disordered social media use as a full-blown addiction because the definition of ‘addiction’ depends on you. But when we think back on our behavior about SNS, it is clearly ‘addiction’, I think. When our class is over, on the train, even while we meet someone, we use our smartphones and check SNS. In the last class, we discussed how we give up these bad behaviors. One of our group members  who is very strict suggested me to read books or listen to music instead of checking SNS.  I thought it was very smart idea. So from now on, I’d like to do so to stop my addiction of SNS!

Summary

A canadian soldier, Cpt Harry Colebourn brought the bear across the Atlantic in 1914. When he went to war in France, however, he donated his bear named Winnie to London Zoo.  By the way, The story of  ‘Winnie the Pooh’ was made by Alan Alexander(AA), first appeared in the London. Winnie the Pooh is a character come from the real, Canadian bear  which AA’s son had seen in London Zoo. Christopher Robin was also modeled on AA’s son. Recently, the great-grand daughter of Cot Harry Colebourn, Lindsay  Mattick visited to the UK and she was introduced to Derek de Selincourt, the cousin of the late Christopher Robin Milne. Lindsay showed him extracts from Mr Coleborn’s diary including one  that showed when he bought Winnie.

Reaction

I had been thought that the stories of ‘Winnie the Pooh ‘was the original story of Disney because I had seldom seen the Pooh except as a character of Disney . The fact that Winnie the pooh was a real bear and other characters had their own models surprised me a lot. And I was also surprised at the miracle that two persons who are closely related to Pooh met and had a conversation. It means that two persons were brought together by one story. I think that is more dramatic than fiction story.  After reading this article, I became to want to read the original stories of ‘Winnie the Pooh’ written by Alan Alexander.

Summary

Today, the Ebola virus spreads only through direct contact, but some of the top infectious disease experts think  that  the Ebola could be infectious virus in the future. Altough they say the chances are so small, as a matter of fact, every time a new person gets Ebola, and more 7100 people got it and 3330 died according to the World Health Organization as of October 1.  In addition, thet says that the Ebola is an RNA virus. It means every time it copies itself, it makes one or two mutations.And some of them could be change the way the virus behaves in the humain body.

My opinion

Recently, we hear a lot of news on serious diseases, for example, the Ebola or the dengue fever. It isn’t so necessary to be anxious about them if we think only about our own country like Japan because we live in the medical developed nation. But  when we survey the whole world, it is one of the problems we shouldn’t disregard. As this article says, a virus is able to change its property so we had better pay attention to news about serious diseases at all times and understand what we need or need not to worry about. In any case, the first thing we have to recognize the situation correctly and not to be confused and scared more than we need.

I believe that we should play sports to make our lives rich.

I like playing sports very much and I have been playing many sports since I was a child. For example, swimming, the running high jump, a marathon, and so on. But tennis is a sport I like the best.

When I entered a junior high school, I somehow decided to join in a tennis club. At the first, training was too hard for me because I had to practice almost every day. In the rainy season, my coarch didin’t allow me to stop training in a little rain. And in summer vacation, I had few holidays. And I had little time to do other things. But I was really satisfied with my daily routine because my teams mates were so funny and I never got tired of. At the beginning, I knew few people and we weren’t good friends. However, through every day practice, we became close friends in an instant.

At the same time, little by little, I built up my physical strength. When I was an elementaly school child, I was, if anything, not so healty, apt to beome sick easily. But daily practice helped me to be healty.

Of course, it is not always pleasant to play sports. We sometimes go into slump or get injured. In such time, it is not clear anymore how we should continue. I have also went into slump many times and I felt I lost my way. I even thougt if I could continue it or not. But, at all times, my team mates encouraged me, so I could go on it so far.

In the univercity, now, I belong to a tennis circle and enjoy playnig tennis with my new members. We are so close, so even in the holidays, we sometimes travel or play together.

And still now, I see team mates in my junior high school and talk about some episodes those days.

Of course it is not always easy to continue to play sports, you may sometimes get lost. I hope, however, many people play sports, not only for their healths, but for priceless times with best friends.

SUMMARY

We discussed the article about Nigeria gunmen ‘Boko Haram’ who abducted 20 women in northeast Nigeria. On April 25, at the same place, they kidnapped more than 300 school girls.A member of the vigilante groups who resist Boko Haram’s attack testified that he saw the men  compelled the women to enter their vehicles and taken away. The group also kidnapped three young men who tried to prevent the kidnapping, and now they want to found an Islamic state in their country.

OPINION

Through this article, I found two points at issue that we should think seriously.  First, how the women treated all over the world.  In Nigeria, or in any other developing countries in Africa, the girls are often implicated the crime.  On the other hand, to our surprise, the discrimination against women still linger in the developed countries like Japan. We should grasp what is happening around the women all over the world. Second, how to stop the inhuman crimes as this case. I think it is necessary not to pass weapon  into the dangerous group. And of course, the highest priority is that the government gains power strong enough  to stop the groups having their own way in everything.

Summery

We talked about a french journalist who was killed in CAR(Central African Republic). Her body was found by a french police in the Bouar region. According to her last tweet, she was travelling with the anti-balaka militia by moterbike to a dangerous area where 150 people had been killed by Seleka rebels since March. And her killers have not been found yet. Besides, security in CAR is getting worse in recent months. Because of conflict erupted in March 2013 between mainly Muslim and Christian militia, a quaeter of CAR’s population have taken refuge.

Opinion

Of course I have no idea about who killed her , but this article made me to think how international criminal should be solved between the countries. Today, it is not rare to be implicated in a crime in a foreign country especially for journalist like her. Both countries have to cooperate with eath other in oder to inquire into the truth of the matter as soon as possible. And my friend and I noticed that not only this article but another one are related to an opposition between Muslim and Christian. It is a common problem all over the world, we discussed. And it sometimes brings about a dispute, so we have to understand correctly the backgraund of a dispute between defferent religions, and find a settlement, I thought.