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.