Uncategorized, yuka

Audio Essay

Leave a comment

Ken Robinson emphasizes creativity is essential citing many success stories, and repeatedly said that today’s education system ignore children’s potential. His speech totally illustrates creativity as good, and schools as absolute evil that deprive wonderful creativity from children.
But I believe this topic should be about neither whether creativity is necessary or not, nor whether schools are necessary or not. It is because both are indispensible and not mutual exclusive. It is more proper that schools play a complementary role in order to develop potential creativity.

Firstly, I’d like to begin with what is ‘creativity.’
He explains creativity as “the process of having original ideas that have value” but doesn’t define exactly what is creativity itself. Creativity is not the ability to generate something fantastic and new from zero bases. It is the ability to see the world in new perspectives, to find or make connections between apparently unrelated phenomena, and to apply pattern in other field that passed unnoticed. It is also significant that being creative is not equivalent to being imaginative. Being imaginative does not need to realize what you imagine, but being creative need to shape up images or ideas. Creativity consists of thinking and producing: spontaneous ideas and ability to embody them.

Secondly, in order to be creative, it is necessary to go to schools.
When it comes to his critics to schools, he just says conventional education systems are places where “mistakes are the worst thing you can make”, however, I do not agree with this statement. Since children need straightforward and clear criteria to learn morality or discipline, not repeating mistakes is a simple step to be socialized as community member.

In the first place, he totally ignores how schools give children highly competent communities.
Needless to say, children get basic knowledge and skills that are necessary to realize ideas through schools. But more importantly, what is unique to public education is, it is where the most diverse community that children can experience in their childhood. Schools help children to develop their potential creativity in this sense. Schools have varieties of children who have different background: regional, religious, racial, ethnic, cultural or financial. Schools are also where students having interest in other field are in the same classroom and share their schooldays. Attending a school and interacting with diverse students give them new viewpoints, thinking pattern and inspiration. Taking classes in various fields including ones of no interest also broadens perspective and cultivates children’s mind.

In conclusion, creativity is stimulated through interacting with diverse people because in the end, creativity is one of abilities that exercised for people’s good and makes everyone’s mind enrich.

rina

Audio Essay about Education

Audio Leave a comment

 

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.

 

kazuaki

audio essay about creativity

Leave a comment

I agree that creativity is important for education as he say. Dance and art is important. All students have to study dance and art like math and language. I think these days there are many university than before. Most students can learn math and language. So math and language is not so special. To make new things and new bland, only math and language is insufficient. I think the reason why iphone is more famous than any other mobile phone is not only good technology but also good look and good concept. People need person who can combine math with art or combine language with dance. Most people cannot understand difficult math and technology, so we have to make difficult things easy to understand. To do this, people need get creativity. Teacher let students do whatever they want to do.  I do not think a mistake is always necessary. But you cannot challenge if you are afraid of the mistake. If you cannot challenge, creative is not born. Unlike mathematics, even if you practice art, not always your ability of art grow. However, unless practice begin you cannot get creativity. If you miss, it is penalized. Evaluation of the deduction system should be stopped. Top university and high school should change the system.

But art have problem in that it is difficult for us to judge what is good and what is wrong in art. Math is easy in that teacher can score. Now there are no way to measure ability to make art. In addition art become useful for the first time mathematics ability improved. In developing country good people of mathematics is insufficient. Social infrastructure is often unstable. In such countries mathematics is important than Art. Unlike the United States and Japan mathematics are special. In developing countries, people who is able to mathematics is useful. To make house, phone, train math is needed. Appearance of things secondary. If things is none, it is impossible to improve the appearance. This means that there is a need to distinguish between developing countries and developed countries.

I have received a traditional Japanese education. Always I’ve been studying to take the points. So I cannot dance, and do not draw even picture, cannot make even videos. And it is true that enrolling in a good high school and a good university is good for me. But I have no idea what to do by utilizing the fact that i’ve learned in. I think what is not enough for me is creativity. The number of excellent mathematician and linguist in Japan is a lot. That’s why now I want to focus on art and dance in japan.

ryo

Essential change of Japanese education

Leave a comment

In Ken Robinson’s speech, he argued that the present education system in England and America robs children of their creativity. The education stresses rote learning and practical subjects like English and Mathematics. An ideal person in the education is a professor. This system doesn’t include a training to create something new and this deprives human beings of an only means to develop our society, “creativity”. I think his opinion is right to the point and the same problem exists in Japanese education system. However, Japanese education system is much worse than the ones in the West, and should be improved as soon as possible. I pick up 3 bad points of it.

 

First, rote learning is stressed in studying all subjects in Japan. In English class, every student repeat the same sentence loudly many times and doesn’t learn how to reply to a greeting. In mathematics, students only learn formulas by their hearts and apply them to questions. And, surprisingly, actual technique classes like physical education and music class put the importance on exams. In contrast, art classes that stimulate children’s creativity are few. Students are absorbed in rote learning and preparation for exams, so there is no room for creativity.

 

Second, students have to devote most of their school life to preparation for entrance exams. In Japan, to get a stable and high-salary job, entering universities keeping high deviation value is necessity. A lot of parents make their children go to cram schools and students have to struggle with much homework. Thus, they don’t have much time to enjoy classes in school, especially actual technique classes. At Keio University, a lot of my friends used to go to cram schools and had studied hard since they were elementary school students.

 

Third, in Japanese education, classes that teach students how to live are few. In a curriculum of compulsory education and public high schools, classes of home economics are sometimes done. However, most of the private schools, a lot of classes aim at entrance exams and students can’t learn how to cook, wash clothes and do needlework. Therefore, a lot of students can’t do any housework. Of course, I’m not good at housework. I took lessons of home economics in elementary school, but those classes are much less than classes of subjects used in entrance exams. These days, people say it is good for husbands to do housework. However, if this situation in home economics class continues, husbands can’t do any domestic chores.

 

Considering these 3 points, I think that all schools of compulsory education in Japan should be public and, in this 9 years classes that stimulate creativity and teaches how to live should be placed the importance on. In all public schools under the same curriculum, students take creative classes. For example, creative dance class in physical education and drawing pictures under a free theme in art class. In addition, home economics become a big part of the curriculum so that every student can live by himself. These curriculum cultivate children’s creativity and an ability to live.

 

As Robinson said, creativity is necessity for development of human beings. Only the weapon human beings have is creativity, so we will die if creativity dies. Therefore, to cultivate creativity is urgent business for us. To take the first step, we have to change Japanese education.

hdaiki

My Reation – TED Speech about Education

Leave a comment

“All children are born artists” (said by Picasso)

Ken Robinson, an expert of education, proposed his ideas about education during his TED speech. He put emphasis on the extraordinary evidence of human creativity, especially capacities that children have for their innovation. All kids have tremendous talents. They are not afraid of making mistakes, so that they can come up with something interesting and original. Although Mr. Robinson said that creativity is now as important in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status, current education systems sadly squander and kill children’s creativities. He said that they better grow into creativity, and not out of it.

“What’s it for, public education?” Mr. Robinson answered that whole system of public education is a protracted process of university entrance. Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects: at the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanity, and at the bottom is art. It focuses on only children’s heads, not the creativities. They also need to learn academic ability because it dominates their intelligence, and consequently people with creativity were less valued. Moreover, we are even facing an academic inflation. Students preferably study useful subjects for work, however, the degrees, that they have got, unfortunately have no meaning in future. We need to change this situation. Mr. Robinson gave an idea of adopting new conception of human ecology. While studying it, we have to rethink about intelligence, as it has diverse and also there are many elements to indicate one’s intelligence, in order to protect the future of our children and their gifted imagination and creativities.

In my opinion, we surely need to study the basics of academics because that build up our basis for developing ourselves. However, I agree with Mr. Robinson’s opinion, which we should not indicate one’s intelligence only by an academic ability. Each student has his or her specific talent, and adults are responsible to raise child in the best education. This education does not have to be just letting them entre good schools, but developing children’s talents and individualities. Parents need to make sure of children’s characteristics, and let them go to schools, which best fit for them. I think there are more things parents can do for education of children than those schools and teachers can. Therefore, we cannot just blame the general education systems.

One more thing that I concerned about is the fact that most children lose their creativities as they grow up, although they used to be not freighted to be wrong. One of the reasons for this is that our society teaches us not to make mistakes. Even national educational systems teach that mistakes are the worst thing we can make. Stigmatizing mistakes keeps people away from challenging and expressing themselves. I think it is very important to create a society where people are generous about making mistakes, which allows them to develop not only academic ability, but also capacities of creativity.

hirotaka

Essence of education and change in education

Audio Leave a comment

Nowadays, importance of education is rising increasingly. I will tell you about education. I have two themes; essence of education and change in education.
Firstly I have two opinions about essence of education. One is education should give children and youth clues for life. Another one is education should create wide variety of people.
I think education should give hints to students. People live in society and school is a small size of society. Children learn how to get along with others and youth learn logic of things. These things cannot divide into ordinary subjects like math arts science and so on, but they are very important when they become adults because they need communicate with many people, sometimes suppress their emotions, persuade others by concrete logic. Moreover, these things can only learn in school because a lot of kinds of people for example age-matched students, elder students, younger students, teachers, they are in school so they can learn how to deal with others. Well, so education should give a lot of useful information and hints for living in society and it is the best education.
Next, current education creates many types of people who like politics, economics, science and so on besides these people have different characters and the makings. A large variety is important for all creatures including humans. By the way, Mr. Robinson said children lost their creativity through education because of avoiding failure. A number of creative people are small and many people say creativity is most important thing. It is sure creativity invents new ideas and improves society. However, a situation which all people are creative is not good because those people tend to be self-assertive and collide with each other so people who are obedience or not creative are also need as creative people. Moreover, to avoid failure is not always unnecessary if anything it is usually crucial factors because to be able to avoid failure makes benefit at least.
However, of course I didn’t mean creativity is bad. I have two opinions in second theme; change in education too. I agree with Mr. Robinson’s opinion arts, music, dance these subjects are also important same as math and languages and focus on both brain and body. So school education should increase a number of those classes and regard them more important and teach children importance of arts, music, dance because they develop students’ creativity, personality, and diversity. In addition to when children become adults, knowledge of them makes their life richer.
Finally, I heard a very interesting system which students have a few years between graduating from senior high school and entering university in Scandinavia. I think school education should give students time before entering university. Because it makes students seek their end of life by thinking, reading, talking, traveling abroad, then students could grow up to be men or women. It is certain some students will be idle, but such students are lazy in any situation. I recommend this system especially in Japan. The reason is Japanese students tend to have few time to think about what they want to do or become before entrance into university. Besides, in university life, a lot of students focus on study, part-time job, play, sports, club activities, so they don’t have time neither after entrance nor before entrance.
In conclusion, I think essence of education should be clues for life, development of human personality. And school education should import more number of classes of arts, music, dance and a few years of free time before entering university.(593 words)

Uncategorized, yusuke

Final Audio Essay -“Thinking Class” is Necessary-

Leave a comment

Everybody has an interest in education. So do I and I think compulsory education in Japan is just worthless. My opinion is supported by my experience in India, where I saw totally different kind of education compared to the one in Japan. I would like to explain why the Japan’s education is not good for children.

The main problem of the education is that it doesn’t make the children to think and imagine. Ken Robinson said “creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” As everyone knows, what the school in Japan makes the students do are calculations and some readings. No group activities or student- led classes. Most of the teachers just talk and students rarely listen. How can children train their brain with such kind of class? I do not deny the importance of knowledge that can be taught only by the teachers. However, current education system sees group works too low. If the teachers are good enough to attract students’ attention with interesting topics, and their storytelling skills, I think that is the best way to stimulate students’ intellectual curiosity, but that is an ideal education. Even in Keio University, which is said to be one of the best universities in Japan, it is difficult to find such teachers. Therefore, a class where students can discuss, think, and create something, is needed. All what teachers have to do is motivate the students to think by stimulating their desire to learn.

The school I used to go when I was in India had a humanity class, and in that class, we have done a unique role-playing class activity. The main theme of the class was about imperialism in Africa. The students were separated into 5~6 groups, and each group represented the countries that they were assigned. (Britain, Germany, France, etc…) I will not go into the details, but students had to work together to gain their territories in Africa by constructing their armies, and growing their economy. Students also had to negotiate with other countries to agree about the border of their territories, trades, and many others. Each class, students worked to reinforce their country, and this activity lasted for a month. Students compared the size of the area in Africa by the end.

Through this activity, students earned some knowledge about economy, politics, diplomacy, and imperialism. Moreover, they learnt how to work together as a team, how to negotiate with other people, and how to create an idea to win the competition. These things cannot be learned from teachers. Students must work out and try in order to achieve those skills.

No elementary school or middle school in Japan has held such class. Every school tries to teach math, Japanese, science, art etcetera, but children would not learn because the class is not interesting, and it doesn’t allow children to work in activities. These days, English classes are becoming more important in elementary school, even though not all students can write Kanji.

As a conclusion, if the government doesn’t want to kill the creativity and talent of the children, they must change the whole curriculum right away. They should encourage more in-class activity, and give the chances for children to think about certain topics much more. This is what I thought after watching Ken Robinson’s speech, and I support his idea strongly.

naoki, Uncategorized

audio essay about education

Leave a comment

I watched Ken･Robinson’s speech “How schools kill creativity”. I knew education have both sides good and bad. There is bad side in schools. I think also “schools kill individual characters and diversity”. He suggest school education which regards exam results as important kills creativity, I think it kills individual characters. I agree with him that it is wrong entering good university is the most important. It seems that now children study harder and intelligent, but they are afraid of failure, negative and have little creativity. They act according to an economic decision and behave as similar to others. Then, why schools kill individual characters? I will talk about problems of school education.
The first, the problem is, as Ken･Robinson said, that schools don’t appreciate a gift except study because of an education regards exam results as important. The purpose of studying is only to enter a good university, so they consider the other ability is not good. In preparing for exam, only one answer is right and study is only learning answer by heart. So their creativity and individuals are denied. Besides, they are afraid of failure and don’t challenge because a correct answer is the most important. In an exam, we are required not our opinion, but correct answer. The exam kills creativity.
The second, cooperativeness in classes in a group kills children individuals more than necessary. There are good points in group lesson in school, we can learn teamwork and experience the community. But too many respects for cooperation lose diversity. I will show my experience in primary school. I have often gotten scolded by teacher. Because I have spoken answer whatever I want and scribble on my notes. The reason why is, the study was easy for me. Further, teachers have demanded me to behave to others. Behavior different from others is bad, but the same with others is good. I think this is wrong. We have not to correct their talents. A weak headed child, like Jillian, Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg, has also good gift, so don’t regard them as strange and　grow up it. Ken Robinson said children have various talents, so we have to educate them as they are.
Thus, schools lose our creativity and individuals. It’s necessary to learn mathematics, science, history and literacy for our life and to examine children to learn them. But current school education is inclined towards studying for exam. Well-balanced education is important. Education must regard not only studying but also originality as important. We need to find children’s talents and grow up their originality.

koichi, Uncategorized

My audio essay

Leave a comment

I agree with his idea about education. We should protect creativity and future of children. And now , as he said , teachers tell us not to make a mistake and math and English is more important than music and art.

 

10 or 20 years ago ,if we get good score in school and graduate from good university , we could enter a good company and earn more money than people only graduated from high school. But It is different now.  Even if we graduated from good university , for example Keio university , it is not guaranteed that we can enter a good company and earn more money than average people. And as he said ,in near future more people will get high level education, so more people will graduate from university. And value of people who graduated from university will go down. So now we don’t have to stick to graduating from university. We should give children other way to make their life.

 

Every child has wonderful talent. And limitless creativity of human makes our world more richer.  So they should use that talent and make own way to make their life. But schools still stick to have us enter universities and subjects that is needed to pass an entrance examination of university is regarded as important. If schools still stick to have us enter universities , and more and more people enter universities , many people will be not able to get job , and there will be more miserable people. Not to increase such a miserable people , we should develop their talent.

 

As he said in the speech , Gillian Lynne was not good at study in the school . But doctor told her mother to have her daughter go to dance school. And her talent flowered and she became a great choreographer. So , to develop talent of children , we should treat all subjects fairly. And if students find own favorite subject , we should let them do this subject thoroughly. And furthermore we must remember that subject one student is good at is not always his or her favorite subject. It is important that we let students do what they want to do and if needed , we support it kindly.

 

To develop talent of children , letting them make a mistake is important too. Now, teachers tell us not to make a mistake. But if we are afraid of making a mistake , our talent and creativity will not develop. Moreover if we are afraid of choosing wrong way in own life , most people choose ordinary way in own life for example graduating university , entering a company and so on. So to increase their choices in their life and to develop their talent , we should let them make a mistake.

 

People who make future world is now children. So children is our hope. And to make future world more richer , we have to let children do what they want to do.

koichi, Uncategorized

My reaction about oil price article

Leave a comment

Summary

The price of oil has gone down below ＄50 a barrel for the first time since May 2009.  　Going  down of the price is happened because of slowing global growth and increased supply of oil. CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said that if OPEC won’t do nothing about over production , the price of oil will declines towards ＄40 in the coming weeks. And oil industry insider said that it will takes one or two year to have prices return to around ＄80-＄90 per barrel.
Recently Saudi Arabia’s main oil company has stopped a major clean fuels plant and several new machines to stop going down of price.　　And now Iraq , Russia and Venezuela are suffering badly because they are  major oil producing countries.

Opinion

I have a driver’s license. But I don’t drive a car. So I don’t care about the price of oil usually , and I didn’t know this news. When I read this article’s title , I thought this is good because a bus fare will go down. But when I read whole article , I found that This is not good for everyone because there are some people and countries that is suffering badly , for example Iraq , Russia , Venezuela and so on. I learn that even if there are good things for us , these things may load us in long time view.