Modern American Themes: Facing the Future With Creativity
Teachers like me can get you (sometimes) to be a bit creative within the restrictive academic structure that is St. Mark's. Maybe you'll compose a sweet poem, write a whopper of a story, or do an Irish dance in front of your classmates (one little soph girl did!). But after your brief flight into the creative stratosphere, your prop plane sputters and you parachute safely into the safe rows and desks of the classroom, willing, like a circus animal, to jump through a hoop that I hold there for you while you are safely on the ground. And believe me, I'm NOT criticizing you.
During Wednesday's class, we heard Sir Kenneth Robinson speak on the need for a creativity revolution in education. Here are six things that he spoke about in his TED talk:
1. Kids will take a chance: e.g. the picture of God and “Frank sent this”
2. “All children are born artists” Pablo Picasso.
3. Robinson’s book Epiphany, and one of its subjects, Gillian Lynne, who became a famous choreographer.
4 . The present educational system is like strip mining, looking for academic excellence only and not creativity.
5 . There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said, "If all the insects were to disappear from the Earth, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish."
6. We should educate our children’s whole being so that they can face this future.
Normally, I ask three direct questions and ask you to respond to one. This time, however, I want YOU to think of your own prompt that is based on anything in Sir Ken's talk. I'd like to give you some suggestions, but I want you to think; I want you to respond to the talk in any way. Anything more than 100 words will do. With this assignment, I'm more interested in your original ideas or experiences than your ability to write.
So here's my story...
In 1974 I was a white and (not completely) nerdy senior at St. Elizabeth's High School, a decent basketball player and golfer, without a musical muscle in my body. But I was convinced by my friend Bobby Szczecinski to try out for the school musical, Once Upon a Mattress. I didn't get a part---I was "just" part of the chorus---but I'm glad I went through the experience. I was christened Sir John, had one memorable line that I "killed" (that's good), and wore purple tights (why do knights have to wear tights?) on stage in front of thous... well, a few hundred people. That was one time that I took a chance. It was my "picture of God" and "Frank sent this" moment.
No, I didn't become an actor, but if I break out in song or play a tune on Youtube once in a while during class, you know that it's because I have a love of music that includes cheesy show tunes. And I encourage ALL of you to become part of a stage production one day. You might discover a new "love" of the limelight and the smell of greasepaint.
posted by JTF @ 10:45 PM
20 comments
20 Comments:
As I sit here and think about what original prompt to come up with for this assignment, I can’t help but feel that my lack of creative thought is a result of the very problem Sir Ken Robinson addressed in his TED Talk. I like to believe I am a creative person but maybe the theory is true, perhaps as I've grown older I’ve simply grown less creative, more focused on factual, black and white details. Although, as I re-read this prompt I cannot help but think my explanation of why I am not creative, is creative in itself, for this was most definitely a unique post.
Jonas Salk's quote "If all the insects were to disappear from the Earth, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish," is actually very accurate despite many counter beliefs. Humans rely on insects for survival. Most of our food is insect-dependant, meaning that insects provide us with our food. Without insects, animals would disappear because there would be no fruit or plant energy sources for them to consume due to lack of pollination. Yes, there would be some benefits if insects were to dissapear, the biggest being money saved from insecticide use, but the positives outwiegh the negatives. Many dont realize the key role that insects play in the world. Without them, there would be a domino effect and we would not survive.
Creativity seems to be a thing of the past. It’s a shame; new ideas are being replaced by regulation and parameters. Kids are creative, obviously, but nowadays there’s no nurturing for this creative “gene.” Those that spend days day dreaming are labeled with mental diseases. Not everyone is able to break from this oppressive shell and show what they’re really good at, whether it be creating music, art, or anything. I wish and I hope that teachers and educators of all varieties realize that controlling creativity will not help children grow as individuals. I yearn for people to see this. Call me crazy but I feel like this will help everyone in the long run.
During the summer I go to a camp in Minnesota called Lac du Bois (translated as Lake of the Woods, not Lake of Boys, as my mom thought). It is a French immersion camp where we sing, dance, and converse in French. At St. Mark’s High School I am known as the shy, quiet girl but at French camp I am the complete opposite, completely myself. There is one day during my four week stay called La Journee Internationale (translated as International Day). This is the day where all of the language immersion camps come together and have one big festival. There are twelve different languages in total and some languages have more than one campsite. During La Journee Internationale, each camp has a select number of their villagers present a skit or dance in front those thousands of people. Of course, I volunteered to be one of the villagers for Lac du Bois. I danced my heart out in front of those thousands (yes thousands…not hundreds) of people and I absolutely loved it. (There is a video of me dancing on the stage on YouTube but no one knows about it…until now.) It was that moment when I realized that I loved being in front of people without the fear of not being accepted.
When I was eight years old, all I ever wanted to was to play the violin. I thought that it was such a cool instrument and I was dying to learn how to play it. For Christmas when I was ten, my parents bought me a beautiful acoustic guitar. I instantly fell in love with the instrument. When I played the entire world fell silent. It was like everything else didn't matter, just me and my guitar. I tried and tried and learned to play it well. As I started highschool, playing the guitar became my escape. When I was sad, I played. When I was angry, I played. No matter what was going on, music became my escape from all of the bad things in the world. Music helped me hide from my own demons. To this day, I now play 7 instruments (Guitar, bass guitar, drums, piano, ukulele, alto saxophone, and tenor saxophone) and whenever I need to get away I just pick up and instrument and play. I don't really know what I would have become without music, because it really shaped me to be the person that I am today.
Today, schools are suppressing the creative minds of children. Even St. Mark’s is cutting the foods and nutrition and sewing programs. How are we supposed to learn life skills if all we do is sit in class and try to learn math or listen to science or literature lectures all day (no offense)? The school systems are only preparing us for jobs sitting at a desk for the rest of our lives. Most high schoolers don’t know how to cook. Part of the reason that I can cook now is because of those two semesters of foods and nutrition. We can’t keep sending these kids off to college if all they know how to make is ramen or a sandwich. I also never knew how to sew before this year. We can’t continue to call our parents when we’re in our 30s, living on our own, and ask them to come stitch up our clothes. Learning how to find the area under a curve or studying Shakespeare is not going to prepare us for the real world.
It was 5th grade and I was considered part of the “cool kid” group at my school, Corpus Christi. I was smart, athletic, and had the traditional bowl cut. The true definition of a so-called “stud.” The only thing I didn’t have a girlfriend. There was one girl I had a small crush on so I thought why not ask her to be my girlfriend? I decided to write a note and put it in her desk. I “took a chance.” It was my “frank sent this” moment. She actually said yes. I was now the coolest kid in the grade. I had a girlfriend. We would say hi to each other, text at night, and if I was lucky, I would get an occasional hug. We had a typical middle school relationship. All my friends were so jealous of me. Looking back I’m jealous of my 5th grade self because I had a girlfriend then and haven’t had one since.
Prompt: Students are more worried about their grades than actually learning
As we get older, from preschool to high school, we become much more worried about our grades and passing a course rather than actually learning about the information being taught to us. Young children do not get graded with As, Bs, or Cs; they get graded with Ps and Gs which show their level of effort. I feel that when we were graded by our levels of effort, we were more able to express our creativity, not having to worry about if something was right or wrong. Now, especially in high school, everything is determined by our GPA and test scores. This dramatically takes away from our chances to express our thoughts and ideas since everyone is solely focused on having the right answer. I think teachers should allow their students to express a little more creativity, this way, the student can express themselves, like through a project for example, and the teacher could even learn a little something about their students.
"The present educational system is like strip mining, looking for academic excellence only and not creativity. " This quote from Ken Robinson really made me think. I know that there are things in life that are essential to learn, but why do school's only seem to reward the academically talented? The occasional artist in our grade gets recognized and if a chorus or band member wins an award they get a tweet in support, but they are unable to challenge themselves further. A student is always able to challenge themselves academically. You can go from CP to honors and from honors to AP, but what about the kids that specialize in creativity? Why does our school not have different levels of band, or chances for the dance team to get one on one time with an instructor. Why are the ones who excel in creativity not the ones who are idolized, but instead someone who can get straight A's. Education is important, but so is being able to flourish with your talents. High school prepares you to further your education, and college prepares you for a job. Why is the education system not preparing you to showcase your talents to the world?
In Sir Ken Robinson’s talk he says that “..all kids have tremendous talents. And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.” When I was about 11 years old, all I wanted was to be a runway model. I would watch the TV show America’s Next Top Model religiously, walk in my two-inch heels all around the house, and beg my sister to do my hair and makeup “like the pretty girls.” My mom initially thought that my behavior was cute, but after a couple weeks of my obsession she sat me down for a talk. She asked me if I was serious about wanting to be a model, and when I answered yes she looked me in the eyes and said, “There’s no way you can be a model Christina, you’re short and you’re not skinny enough.” I was immediately heart-broken after having my own mother crush my dreams, and that was the last day I ever walked around in my heels. I’ve long grown out of that stage, but I wonder now if my mom hadn’t said what she did, would I still want that for myself? Probably not, so maybe mothers do know best.
Every assignment in school is given with a strict set of directions that must be followed in order to achieve a decent grade. For prompts, it’s the typical, “Answer one of these three direct questions in a minimum of 200 words.” Normally, writing a response to a prompt seems like a small assignment that will take minimal time, but when there are no prompts to answer, no directions to follow, no information to base your response on, the assignment seems tedious and impossible. I have grown up in an academic setting that only wanted conformity and the one correct answer. Teachers were never looking for originality and students were rarely given the freedom to write about personal experiences. For me, this was a wonderful thing. Being creative and original never came easy to be as I was not an “artsy” or “theatrical” student. I hated when teachers let you do whatever you wanted on an assignment. I liked strict rules and a rubric that explained exactly how to achieve the highest grade possible. There was never a “Frank sent this” moment of courage to be creative with my work, instead I wanted to ensure that failure wasn’t a possibility at all so creativity was never used.
I struggled to remember a childhood moment where I took a chance. And I couldn’t. I realized it isn’t until the fall that I will be stepping out of my comfort zone and doing something very few of my friends will be doing. I am going away to college. The moment I decided to continue my education at the University of Alabama, one thousand miles away from home, I understood what taking a chance was all about. I can count on my fingers the number of people I know there (it’s six). I know that I would have a great time spending four more years with my best friends at UD and I am going to miss them every day but I know that I need my “Frank sent this” moment and going to Alabama has been my goal ever since the day I stepped foot on campus. I decided on Alabama because I want to experience a new and different lifestyle. One where I can meet new people, experience a hundred thousand fans tailgating and cheering at every football game, and getting a good education. College is the perfect opportunity to try something new and I can’t wait to start my “Frank sent this” journey. Unlike my childhood where I did not take many chances, I am happy that I made the decision to attend Alabama and I am ready to take on my chance.
Some people might say taking risks can lead to original ideas or creativeness. Maybe that these new experiences are so intriguing and eye opening from what we originally know, it might open new things. Sounds appealing right? However, it’s not. My new experiences have only led to breakdowns and failure. In order to find my creativeness I search for old things in my life and make those better. I find the faults in my life and turn them into new, original ideas to better them. Taking risks have never turned out into an original idea. The only thing taking risks has done for me is led me down the path to breaking the rules and changing my values away from my gut feeling.
During his TED talk Sir Kenneth Robinson put a huge emphasis on the present education system and its affect on a student's creativity. He talked about how as we grow older and come up through the education system creativity is essentially washed out. We are drilled to focus on obtaining the facts and everything is cut and dry, right and wrong. Core subjects like math and science are force fed to us to the point that come the high school years all we know is academic excellence. We no longer have the imaginations and creative passions that we once had when we were young children starting our first days of school.
In my child psychology class, the fourth quarter project is to research a certain age of a child and bring a child of that age in to class and have them perform tasks in the classroom. Recently, children have been coming in, and at first they were cute and energetic, but as the presentations go on, I notice something different about each child. One thing they all have in common is that they are goofy and creative. They run to the trashcan instead of walking. They say funny things that make no sense. They are always happy. It makes me believe that Sir Kenneth Robinson’s TED talk was accurate in saying that the present educational system is like strip mining, looking for academic excellence only and not creativity. Seeing these young children in lower grades reminds me of when I was young and did not care about what others would think about me and I was able to be myself, no matter how silly I was acting. When the rigor of classes increases as grade levels increase, children lose their spunk; they become robots. To see such creative children that are excited to navigate life makes me sad because I know that by the end of high school, they will be worn down and tired. I have found myself falling into a routine state where I spend no time focusing on my relationships with others because I am consumed with school and running. Through high school, it is easy to lose yourself, but as I sit in this child psychology class and ponder what is was like to be young and carefree and what these children will become in high school, I am proud that I have stayed true to myself and maintained who I am, and I hope that in college, I am able to discover who I am even more, to get back some of my child-like characteristics and be able to have fun.
In Sir Kenneth Robinson's talk, he mentioned that the current educational system seems to favor academic ability over creativity. I am inclined to disagree. Recently, most of us went through the arduous process of applying to college. I myself applied to 11 different universities, and was tasked with writing a unique essay for each of these institutions. What I found was this: While many colleges do ask similar questions (e.g. "why did you choose to apply here?", "What sets you apart from other students?", etc.), there were also a good deal of prompts which not only encouraged creativity, but in fact required it. A good example would be the University of Chicago. This year, applicants were allowed to choose from over 250 unique prompts, almost all of which were vague in some way and demanded a very clever response from the students. One of the prompts simply asked "Find x." It also allowed the applicant to create his or her own creative prompt and answer it. Furthermore, at top schools such as Ivy League universities, where some 80% of applicants have identical academic records, creativity is perhaps the most crucial aspect in an applicant. In conclusion, I would disagree with Sir Kenneth Robinson on this point, as in my experience, creativity has been a large part of my education.
Creativity can be found in taking risks. Last year in Aquinas, we had to make a project detailing the life of a randomly assigned president. The project was to be a documentary, which included music, pictures, and voiceovers. I decided to use Jacques Offenbach’s “Can-can” as background music, due to the fact that I was at a loss for good documentary music. After I presented my project, the biggest criticism that lost me the most points was my choice in music, saying that it was “very distracting” and took away from the content. I honestly thought that losing points due to the “Can-can” was pretty dumb, so when we were assigned our third project, I decided to take a risk. The next project was supposed to connect two seemingly dissimilar objects with the same name. Still disgruntled over the fact that I lost points over music, I decided to center the project around the “Can-can” itself so that I could still use it as background music while remaining project-appropriate and without losing points. Needless to say, I felt pretty good about getting an A on a project that was based on the dissatisfaction of a previous project. Taking that risk in Aquinas has taught me how to approach projects in a more creative, out-of-the-box way. Taking risks has fostered a stronger creativity.
I was not aware of this blog and when it was due because the day it was assigned I was on the human cadaver field trip. Anyway, I usually just write my blog and post it but I decided to read through some of my fellow classmates blogs first. What I've noticed is with a blog that's trying to promote creativeness- people are still following an underlying structure. A majority of the blogs follow this pattern- They tell a story about when they had a "Frank sent this" moment and end with how they used to be creative but are not now. Or the other way around, about a particular memory when they fostered creativity for just one lonely moment. I think this accurately portrays what Sir Kenneth Robinson was saying. We are so wired to follow a guide that we have to put a great deal of effort into being free, "fun."I'm sure I have plenty of moments when I was younger where I took a chance. (7th grade spelling bee- I was one of the two finalists and was asked to spell 'yacht.'If I spelled it right I'd be the winner. I spelled 'yatt' with more confidence than a congressman running for president telling the people what he'll do for our country) As we get older maybe we just rein in the creativeness. It's still there somewhere in the back of our minds, we just have to remember to use it more than just for a blogpost.
For anyone who knows me or may have met me, I don’t readily talk to people I’m not familiar with and I typically remain reserved. I think it may be that first impressions mean a lot to me and I don’t want to give a poor one. However, I’ve found that there’s an exception to my social complacency. As a member of the Boy Scouts for seven years, I’ve gone to numerous outings and when I return from them, I’ve found that I have no problem coming up with things to talk about. I can carry a conversation as easily as it is to breathe. This phenomenon is fleeting as it only lasts for about the day after I come back. My theory as to why this happens is because I am exposed to people I don’t know or haven’t seen in awhile for extended periods of time and I become accustomed to being creative. In relation to Sir Kenneth Robinson’s idea, I believe that since we don’t have to be creative, we aren’t. I believe that adults aren’t creative because they don’t have to be, and when they need to be, they aren’t accustomed to it, therefore they aren’t.
I disagree on the entire idea from the ted talk. I do not think school kills creativity. Many schools provide artistic classes at least once a week. It could be music, art class, potter, theater, or baking. I think that if all students were forced to focus on these classes then maybe "the not so creative" students would do poorly and the class would become a drag. And when I say not so creative, that just means artistic. Also, there is creativity involved in the core classes of math, science, and language. There is definitely creativity involved in language and writing. The core classes teach you the skills necessary for your adult life. With out these skills, you could not be creative in your adult life. People use math and science to create new technologies, people use the language classes to deliver powerful speeches or maybe woo someone in an enticing conversation. What I'm getting at is that their will always be creativity involved in any situation, just because its not art does not mean it is not creative. Do not get me wrong because I love music and movies, but what are the more important skills in life? The ability to do art, or the concepts taught in schools to build and improve society? What has a better chance to solve the energy crisis- kids learning to finger paint? or kids learning math and sciences?
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