Reflective Journal of What I have Learned in Class

Sir Ken Robinson's main point of his TED Talk is that school systems, worldwide, segregate the arts to a lower level of learning. This segregation of the arts in schools drains students of creativity.

Do Schools Kill Creativity? TED is a non-profit organization that serves to present ideas that are worth spreading through strong rhetoric and persuasive appeals. In his eminent Ted Talk, Sir Ken Robinson discusses how public education systems today disregard creativity as an important component within the academic growth of students. Robinson focuses on the importance of creativity by creating a variety of arguments, which persuades the audience to take action upon this heavily ignored issue. His use of pathos, ethos, and logos makes an entertaining case for creating an education system that nurtures rather than undermines creativity. Throughout his speech, Robinson emphasizes pathos by his use of humor and discussion of personal

There are many controversies that american public education system does more harm than good. In “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto and “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” by Jean Anyon, explains how school education destructively impacts us. Gatto states his experience as a public school teacher and why he “just can’t do it anymore”. He was tired how the schooling was programmed. He argues how school system are affecting students to be more like “childlike” citizens. Also, Anyon demonstrates her research on how there are many different kind of education depending what “class” you were. She informs us that there is an inequality in “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”. Both authors depicts the reality and truth, that some people are unable to see. As a student, I’ve also experience this and support how school depicts how we are in the future. Moreover, there are many representations that explains why the american public education systems does more harm than good.

Although both Greene (1995) and Freire (1998) subscribed to an existential philosophy of the individual, they differed on how said individual’s potential could be attained. In order to implement change, the need for out of the box thinking is paramount for both Greene (1995) and Freire (1998). For the latter, reflection of one’s activities would cause them to restructure that which they already know, leading them to try novel approaches in accordance with the amount of reflection they do. For the former however, no amount of reflection can enable us to think outside the knowledge that has been constructed for us, unless it involves imagination. Without it, we are doomed to reify the discourse that already exists, be it the general dominant discourse, or the discourse, now standardized, that tells us how to reflect ‘critically.’ Because of this, we need to tap into the creative and imaginative potential that resides within every one of us, allowing ourselves to become more attuned to creativity, to different ways of thinking. Once that is accomplished, we will be better suited, as educators, to foster our students’ creativity, creating a curriculum that embraces divergent thinking. This will then enable the students to realize their unique and unbounded potential, unfettered by the constraints of the dominant discourse (Peay,

The author compares today’s school system to that of the past, which concerned itself with teaching students,

“The antiquated educational model our schools stubbornly cling to was designed well over a century ago to meet the demands of an emerging industrial economy”(Mercogliano, 2005, p.2). In his article,

Education has tarnished the idea of an original thought and has caused us to “grow out of creativity.” An idea that I am now convinced is a possible reality due to the intellectual, thought-provoking argument made by Sir Ken Robinson that schools do restrain creativity. In Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” Robinson argues that schools do kill creativity by addressing his audience in a sophisticated yet playful tone that keeps the audience entertained and invested in what is being discussed. Robinson connects with the audience by telling jokes, using simple reasoning, facts, and personal stories that allows the audience to be emotionally moved by the argument. Robinson is able to open up the audience to a reasonable idea with only one reasonable solution, and it just so happens to be his. Obviously, a bit biased, Robinson steers clear of self-promotion by recalling stories of other’s accounts and relating to people as a professor instead of a person.

John Taylor Gatto, who was a teacher at the public school for twenty-six years, and the writer of the essay “Against School” that first appeared in Harper’s magazine in 2001, censures the American Educational System in his argumentative essay. Gatto argues that the demands of schooling are essential problems. Gatto shows some positive examples, and models of the ‘success without forced modern schooling’, and he insists that historically forced schooling is not related to intellectual and financial success. James Bryant Conant encourages reader has interests in modern schools, which is the result of the ‘industrial revolution in nineteenth-century’. Moreover, Alexander Inglis’s study of modern schooling in the Gatto’s essay supports and helps the idea of John Gatto’s writing. Gatto develops his idea compared with “schooling” and “educating” based on personal teacher experiences, and demonstrates why the American Educational System needs a better solution, which is “educating” for a bright future to children, and descendants.

Through the administration of non traditional forms of teaching, the individual is able to expand his or her horizons in compliance with the remainder of society. The involvement of the arts is crucial to schools across the nation because they "improve employability, eradicate inequality, and help prevent crime" (Furedi 15). In doing so, such lesson plans are insinuating a more beneficial approach to the decline of the developing generation. They not only denote an advantageous appeal to expanding one's intellect as well as "offer creativity, challenges, participation and engagement" that are promising to one's "personal growth and development" (Development Education. ie). Popular culture teachings go beyond promoting academic achievement through the endorsement of individual growth. Because scholars are instructed to think beyond the standards and associate key factors of modern life to education, they are even more motivated to strive in the pursuit of creativity and the search for self identity. Popular culture is critical to one's attainment of goals and dreams through personal experiences solicited in

IQ is defined as a measure of intelligence that shows the ratio of an individual’s mental age to their chronological age, this is then multiplied by 100 (Cattel 1972). Creativity cannot be measured by undertaking an IQ test, creativity is subjective and the simplest way of defining it is the ability to create original, useful and surprising new things. However, over the years pioneering research has inspired psychologists to devise tests to measure creativity. The most famous Divergent Thinking test is Guildfords Alternative Uses Task established in 1967. This test proposes that the individual involved should think of alternative uses for a common item such as a brick. This way of measuring Divergent Thinking is universally used in contemporary testing of creativity.

According to Ken Robinson, the current education system has yet to adapt to the modern world and it’s different modes of thinking, creating a stand still in curriculum success that is in desperate need of reform. After explaining how countries around the world want to reform education and carry on legacies, Robinson makes the case that our current education system is out dated. The current system was established during the 18th century during the Industrial Revolution, which was based largely on agricultural and urban advancements. As Robinson mentions, every community wants their children to be prepared for the current economic opportunities and carry a cultural legacy, but that’s hard to do when our current system isn’t cohesive to today’s circumstances. “People are trying to work out how we educate our children to their place in the economies of the 21st century.” (Robinson, RSAnimate)

Do schools kill creativity? This is the question speaker Ken Robinson asks during his speech. He explores how schools and education impact creativity in children and how if effects them later in life. He speaks of the extraordinary capability of human creativity, education, and the future. He does an excellent job of connecting with the audience, and capturing and holding the audiences attention throughout the speech. Ken Robinson is an excellent public speaker that grabs the audience in the introduction, carries them through the body, and keeps them until the conclusion.

According to Baird and colleagues, mind wandering can enhance creativity goals and problems that were encountered. Creativity finds solutions that are novel, and high quality (Matlin, 2009). J.P. Guilford researched how we measure creativity. Creativity should be measured by divergent production. This research demonstrates the number of different responses that are made for each test item (Matlin, 2009).

It was also the easiest and most economical way to teach literary skills on a large scale. Social efficiency theorists began to enact this system during the early 20th century in an endeavor to industrialize the educational process. Led by educators such as Ellwood Cubberley, they treated education as a means of social engineering. “Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life.” (Cubberley, 1917). Building upon the depersonalized monotony and rigorous hierarchy of the Prussian system, they formed an industrial education model devised to mass-produce millions of workers for America’s factories. These theorists believed that most of America’s students were destined for a life of menial, industrial labor. Thus, they designed a multi-track educational system intended to categorize pupils from an early age. While the best and brightest were tailored for leadership ranks, the preponderance was confined to a tedious education of rote learning and task

In “Do School’s Kill Creativity?” published on Ted.com on February 2016, speaker Ken Robinson questions the effectiveness of our education system to facilitate creativity. To support his position, first, Robinson explains how creative and talented every child is, and that the education system is “educating people out of that creativity”. Next, he explains how the world’s education systems place all the emphasis on subjects deemed as useful for employment and academic abilities; consequently, talented, creative individuals believe they are not due to the schools not valuing or stigmatizing their talents. Finally, he speaks of intelligence, how diverse, dynamic, and distinct it is. Robinson ends with a statement that educators need to recognize