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.