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atsuko

My thought about education

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Every day I think this theme.
There is a person who I know has a great talent for music but can’t be interested in long winded lectures in the university. Therefore he is a far from honor student. But I think he is very smart and a warm hearted person. He is charming more than people who have no enthusiasm for anything and take credits moderately.
Intellect is mind. A person who has no mind can’t have real intellect. When he accomplishes things, he needs the balance of mind, brain and body. In this three items the most important thing is mind. If we lack mind, brain and body can’t work perfectly. Human try to know the structure of the object which he is interested in from the bottom of the heart. That’s the function of brain. Moreover he try to express in any form. I mean body has this role.
School education exists for raising obedient adults. People who were educated by such system can live peacefully when they lead ordinary lives. But they often don’t want to adventure. They dislike change. They escape from new world. Right from the beginning they don’t think they can change the world. Because they didn’t receive education by which they can have confidence in their original ability.
I had a piano lessons until I graduated from high school. When I was a student of a elementary school, I often received prizes at musical contests. I understood my teacher’s advice in the lessons. That was nearly intuition. But I didn’t know how to use this ability to study.
I attended a cram school to enter a private junior high school. Teachers of the cram school and my mother didn’t teach me how to do. No, I myself made a mistake. I should think more about my will. If I had had a strong will, I might have good results at entrance exam. But I couldn’t think so. I thought teachers and parents were absolute. That’s exactly experience children lose their gifts.
I agree with the speech very much. We need to think future education to develop children’s gifts. But I think what we can do is not only that. As I am so, I believe adults who received stereotype education can develop their original ability. To do it they need to find “the right “is not always right. Mind which doubt what many people say as the right makes us creative.

 

yhiroki

Audio essay about education

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What is the purpose of education? Nobody knows the correct answer and can find it, because there are as many answers as educators. I also have an answer, that is to make the base for innovation. Innovation is very important because it is the power that makes our future.

What is the base of innovation? I think innovation is composed of two sides, one is creativity and the other is knowledge. Both are important and we can’t make innovation with one side. Education should take balance between creativity and knowledge.

I think creativity is a kind of spices. Imagine the situation that you are cooking stakes. To make it delicious, you need to sprinkle salt and pepper on meat in harmony, don’t you? Same as it, you can make innovation by adding creativity on knowledge. However, creativity is not treated as equal as knowledge in modern education.

It is true that knowledge is very important because it is essential for innovation. I think innovation is not to make something from nothing but to find new combinations from many options. This option is knowledge. For example, smart-phone is one of the innovations but its idea is miniaturization of PC. In short, it isn’t able to make smart-phone without PC. PC is a invention in past , that is knowledge. Innovation named as ‘smart-phone’ was made from knowledge. As options are increased, its combination becomes various and diverse. Therefore, to have much knowledge makes many innovations.

However, we can’t make innovation only by knowledge, as we can’t cook steaks without pepper. We need to add creativity you have on it. Mr. Robinson says modern education kills creativity. I agreed his idea because I had such education. In school classes, we need to find correct answer. In short, we have to find one combination from many options. Even if you show your teacher another combination, you are scolded because it’s not correct combination. Education kills possibility of making innovation. That is ironic because what is needed in recent society is innovative person.

What is important is the balance between creativity and knowledge. Modern education attaches too much greater importance to give knowledge than train creativity. To give well-balanced education, ‘communication’ is an important element. To be concrete, I think schools have much more discussion or debating training because these training have many good points. In such class, you have to make your own opinion by using your creativity and your knowledge. And by listening to opinions of other people, you also can get new way of thinking and knowledge he has.

In conclusion, we must realize again the importance of training creativity. Innovation is interactive thing between creativity and knowledge, so it is nonsense to educate only one side. What modern education have to do is to combine two elements in harmony in its curriculum.

rina

Audio Essay about Education

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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.

 

hirotaka

Essence of education and change in education

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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)

rika

Audio essay (Autum 2014)

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He insisted that creativity is tremendously important in education in his speech. He said present education killed student’s creativity. I agree with his idea, and I think that is true especially in public education in Japan, because students are required to derive one determined correct answer, and also they make a habit to do that.

He said that now the purpose of public education was deeply attached to develop university professors. That is because, these are good things for students to get great scores in schools and to aim higher position in the industrial society. Currently, everyone who goes to high school in Japan can enter university without difficulties, as he said the inflation of university education has been occurred. Most children think that it is the goal of their lives to enter more intelligent high school, and then more intelligent and famous university. Actually, I also think that is the very right thing, being got such education from my parents and teachers. Definitely, from my point of view, in present society, getting higher position need to graduate some intelligent schools. And it also means that it is a good measure to make excellent grades in schools because of entrance examination systems in Japan.

Lately, however, it is reported that not intelligent but personality decides one’s school records, according to a new Australian study.

 Personality is a better predictor of success in school than intelligence as measured by traditional standardized tests. Specifically, students who were more open and conscientious performed better academically than those who were merely intelligent.

Australian researchers compared measurements of the “Big Five” personality traits to college students’ grades and test scores. The “Big Five” are extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience. They asked students to complete personality self-assessments, and also asked others who knew the students well to complete assessments of them. They found that the students’ self-assessments were as effective as intelligence in predicting academic performance, and that the reports from those who knew them well were nearly four times more accurate in predicting academic performance than intelligence. The researchers found that openness and conscientiousness factors exerted the largest influence on academic success. Studies have shown openness to experience to be the number-one predictor of creative achievement.

In other words, the findings told that children who may not be considered “smart” by traditional measures may still become highly successful, both by traditional measures and in their own right. And since personality may be more malleable than intellectual capability, helping struggling students to cultivate beneficial personality traits may be a powerful means of improving academic performance. In the field of education, I think all teachers should break away from admire only intelligent students, then give students their lessons which students themselves would really like to learn.

(459 words)

daiki, Uncategorized

My Opinion For Education

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I’d like to mention about both pros and cons for Mr. Robinson’s opinions.

 

Basically, I agree with his opinion that teachers should notice children’s talents and try to develop them. There is an idiom “what one likes, one will do best”. The story of Gillian Lynne who is a dancer he provided is a good example of it. So teachers should notice students’ curiosities and respect each imagination. And I also agree with the opinion that score isn’t everything of students.

 

However, I can’t agree with his opinions at mainly three points.

 

First, it’s about the role of a school. He said, “There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not?” Of course, I think “minor subject” called in Japan, such as arts and music should be respected as same as other subjects. But originally schools don’t set the motto to develop children’s specific abilities. I think public education is for all people so educations in the school should meet common needs. One of the common needs is to learn basic and universal knowledge to live. It is natural that reading, writing and arithmetic are focused on classes. In addition, students can enjoy club activities so there is an opportunity to develop their talents except studies.

 

Second, it’s about the way to find your talents. I don’t hope schools make an atmosphere that each talent is the most important. Because if you can’t notice your talents, you’ll spend too much time to find what your talent is. It’s a waste of time, isn’t it? Takashi Saito, a Japanese educator, writes as follows in his work “Lessons from Yukichi Fukuzawa”. “If you think about your talents, it must be difficult to challenge new things.” We can’t find own talents easily so we have to pile up much experience. After that, we can decide own way based on own abilities. Mr. Robinson says “all kids have tremendous talents” but his examples are rare cases so we shouldn’t expect that all kids have special talents.

 

Third, it’s about the kind of talents. “Talent” doesn’t mean only a talent of arts or sports. Mr. Robinson only focuses on them and he didn’t mention about the talent of studies. I think he missed to evaluate the big role of school which develops children’s curiosities for studies. As I said, the score has nothing to do with the worth as a human being. However, students study hard for the score and also find interests of each subject through studies. Hence, I think the system of score shouldn’t be abandoned.

 

As for me, I’ve been playing the piano and the cello, and I tried to be a musician when I was an elementary school student. But after I entered the junior high school, I became enthusiastic at studying history and became to want to be a scholar of history. If I had been provided musical professional education, the curiosity for history would have died for music. To educate them under the special situation at an early age would decide children’s course. It could kill other potential talents in children.

 

Therefore, I think the education which develops each talent is an ideal but extreme special educations would ruin children’s opportunity to study broadly. I expect schools and teachers to understand each student’s talents and respect it but they should let students do many activities including studies. They shouldn’t do special education from an early age. So I agree with keeping the education system in these days.

 

hiroki, Uncategorized

My audio essay

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http://www.podspress.com/spring14/

In the talk,Ken Robinson says that fear of failure embedded in education kills creativity.
So I propose some ideas to improve this bad situation of education.

First, with reducing time of denial, we should save more time of affirmation.
Ken Robinson say denial makes the fear of action . As a result of that , potential creativity in us is killed. In fact, in the modern education, there seems too much denial. For example, most of the modern exam requires us to give what is called the only right answer set by teachers. If we give a answer different from the answer set by teacher , the answer would be denied. I think, though indirect, these are typical denial. This way of education is not bad, but too much of the way of education seems to do harm to creativity.
So we should save more time of subjects not requesting the only right answer. specifically it is art, music , and so on that apply to the subject.
These subject not always requires the only right answer. Rather, these subject seems to put emphasis on the point of expressing one’s self. So basically, it can be said that these subject don’t deny us.
Therefore, I propose so.

Second, we should change the way of question.
Usually, when people give something as a question, the answer to the quesion always be one. For example, when a teacher gives a question of history, the teacher requires students to answer a word such as Nobunaga Oda , July revolution , World War Ⅱ.
However, the way of question can’t raise creativity. just memorising something don’t lead to raising creativity.
So, when we give something as question, we should avoid such a way to the extent you can, and devise the way of question. For example, we give a quesion of history, we should take the way ” why did the problem happen? and why was it a problem?” ”can you have an idea how the man came up with such a wonderful solution?” ” If you have to solve that situation, what way or policy do you take?” and so on. The point of these is not requesting people to answer what they know, but requesting people to answer the question with what they know.
In other words, I think, If we can teach even the way of coming up with ideas ,and so on, lectures of history will get more interesting , and ,at the same time,raise creativity.
In short, only with just taking note of a way of question, we can raise creativity well.
Therefore we should change the way of quesion in education.

This is all my suggestions.

Hiroki Suzuki

kryota

MY AUDIO ESSAY

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31304627 Ryota Kurosawa

 

My Opinion of “School kills creativity”

 

I’m impressed by Ken Robinson’s talk. Especially, I like his word that no mistakes make us creative. I think so too.

Japanese education tends to bring up sense of cooperation. That sometimes means it is bad to make differences from others. So, we are afraid of this proverb, “stand out from the crowd and you just invite trouble for yourself”. I heard that Japanese students were too negative against saying their opinion. Actually I don’t like that too. It is because I afraid of making mistakes. As he said, national education system taught us mistake is worst. So we can’t discuss freely. And the system has another harmful effect. It is that all creative mistakes are denied either. There are useful mistakes for the future in it, but the system regard it as evils.

In this talk, he introduce about Gillian Lynne who is a director of “the Phantom of the Opera”. He said she was regarded as learning disability, but she could flourish in other stage that it is not necessary for studying, because one doctor discovered her talent for dance.

In this way, prejudiced thinking focused on study may deprive many possibilities. It is not always good that we think educational background is the most important. Today, Japan is society that places emphasis on academic records, so if some people can’t study math, language and so on, they are turned adrift. This trend has a bad influence of talented children. In addition, almost people think educational background is important due to Japanese education system. So, even if the system is changed, the trend will be not changed soon. We must know there are more important things than study.

After I listened this talk, I thought about “a success of life”. Death is equal for all people, so it is important how they live in finite times. Well, what is a success? I think it is to earn much money. I can’t say whitewash. Some people say money can’t buy happiness, but there is nothing that it can’t buy. I think the success can’t be quantified with the exception of money. For convenience, we assume that earning much money is success of their life. So, we can say that to be a soccer player, artist, or famous director is success. So, only study is not the right way. We must acknowledge this reality and change our views which study is justice.

haruka

This I believe

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What I believe is  importance of life, especially small life.

One day, small grandmother woke up dragging the left leg which dosen’t move.

She walked slowly to a bait box  and ate breakfast. After a meal, she went back to her favorite place to sleep in  genial sun light.

When she was young, her body was covered with a fine coat of fur. She used to climb the trees and chase some mice. But now she never run free.

When I stroke her on the back, her warmth makes me smile. But I am complicated when I feel beat of heart and  her weaken body.

Pets are aging as well as human.

Dogs and cats now live in about 15 years because of pet food which is well-balanced in nutrition and advanced medical treatment. If they were human, they are about 80 years old. Every owner would want to live as long as possible with them. However, you should not forget there are some problems  caused by aging.

The big problem in a human society is also common in the animal kingdom, for example dementia.

In the case of dogs, if they cannot distinguish day or night,  they are barking all day in loud voice. It somtimes  become a neighborhood trouble.

In the case of large dogs, it is difficult to take them to the toilet if they get feeble in the legs.

To care aged pets is very tough. Therefore some owners bring them into a health center or, sad to say, throw them away.

I have grown up with my cat at since I was three years old.

She came in my house as a lost cat. We were friends and family. We used to sleep and play together. She was once my baby and I was an elder sister but now she is my grandmother.

Five months ago, I caught sad news with one photograph of her. She rested peacefully in heaven surrounded by flowers. Tears fell from my eyes, recalling her figure sleeping in the sunshine and dragging the left leg.

If she were wildness, the life would have been already completed several years before. Who expanded the span  of her life are us, human beings.

We have to do our best for them until the breath ceases, instead of taking away freedom and some various things from them.

When I thought that, closing my eyes, I seemed to hear her voice and see her smiling.

I hope all of animals passed away live peacefully somewhere.

ikumi

This I believe

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this i believe

Today I have an interesting motion: “which education is better for student’s growth, American or Japanese”. I believe that Japanese education is better than American one. I have four reasons about it. Then I’m going to talk about these reasons.

First of all, it is not necessary for American students to clean their own classroom after school. On the other hand, in Japan, students clean their own classroom by themselves after school. While this system of American school prevents them from getting into a habit of looking after themselves, the system of Japanese school encourages students grow step by step.
Second, Japanese schools have school festival and sport festival, but American schools don’t have them. These festivals give two good effects to Japanese students. The first effect is that the festival can make deep friendship between them. The second effect is that they can grow up to be cooperative, because they can have a feeling of achievement when they prepare and finish these festivals with classmates in order to success them.
Next, I’m going to talk you about summer vacation. American summer vacation has three months without homework. So, American students having nothing to do in summer vacation and have many time to do what they want to do, such as, learning their interesting things, doing volunteer and practicing sports or musical instruments. However, in fact, most of students idle every day. On the other hand, Japanese summer vacation has about a month with a lot of home works. They can become intelligent, because they have to study very hard. So I think Japanese education is better than American vacation.
Finally, American schools have a system of grade skipping. I think this system has an advantage, but it also has some weak point. The advantage is that students can study what they want to study regardless of their age, but there are two disadvantages. The disadvantage is that they can’t have deep relation with classmates, because their classmates can change each time if they skip the grade. The next disadvantage is that students grow up to be able to get good grades only, but that they can’t have good relations with others and can’t succeed in working. I think that it is very important for all classmates to study at the same level and learn various things in cooperation. So, I think schools should not adopt this system of grade skipping for students.

In conclusion, these reasons tell us that Japanese education is better than American one for students. Now I’m very proud of Japanese education.