08 March 2012 / by Radmila Gurkova

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson recently challenged the way we educate our children and made a profound case stating that schools undermine rather than nurture.

He feels that ‘‘we are educating people out of their creativity,'' and that children today are ignored and stigmatized.

How can we predict education and the extraordinary capacity that children have? All kids have tremendous talent but we squander them. "If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original." he explains; stating that by the time you become adults you have lost certain capacities you learnt as a child and have become frightened of being wrong.

He feels that we run our companies in a frightened capacity, stigmatizing mistakes - educating people out of their creativity. Therefore is it wrong to be creative at work?

Picasso said "All children are born artists the problem is to remain an artist when we grow up"

The whole purpose seems to be to educate people throughout the world, to become a University Professor - most academic classes are designed to be at the top, whereas dance and music are pushed to the bottom. Why is this?

According to UNESCO within the next 30 years more people worldwide will be graduating through education than the beginning of history, all heading towards a more academic age.

Sir Ken tells us that we are shielding creativity and harbouring individual development. He thinks we should adopt a conception of human ecology and reconstitute our conception through the richness of human capacity - to re-think the fundamental principals in which we educate our children. ...Should we?

We should use the gift of education and create the capacities for the richness they are – and help children form the hope to create a better future.  Our job is to make them achieve this.

DEBATE



  • Should we re-educate our children in a fundamental way?

  • Is education equal amongst all professions?

  • Could we spend the next 30 years educating only the Arts?


KEYWORDS




































































Word Image Definition Example Listen
Taught Past of 'to teach' What were you TAUGHT today in English classes? Listen
Workplace   Any or all places where people are employed A bill to set safety standards for the workplace. Listen
Encourage To give support to someone. I try to encourage my children to do the right thing. Listen
Push To press upon or against (a thing) with force I'm going to push on your stomach. Listen
Nurture   To feed and protect Encourage the development of (a child). She wants to stay at home and nurture her children Listen
Squander To spend or use (money, time, etc.) extravagantly or wastefully I will squander all my money Listen
Undermine To try and make an argument or a believe look week. His authority was undermined by the president Listen
Frightened   Very scared The horror movie frightened him. Listen

12

June 2014
What makes a good ESL teacher. Preparation
by Radmila Gurkova
What are the qualities that make a good ESL teacher? When asked at a job interview what makes a good ESL teachers, candidates often praise personal traits such as patience, creativity, knowledge, skills, empathy, experience… But what if you have just finished your TEFL course and are not that experienced yet. Does that mean y...

30

May 2014
FM - Unifying format criteria for TEFL activities. The cherry on the cake!
by Radmila Gurkova
On debate: We need to unify format criteria when creating TEFL activities in order to create the perfect activity. The teachers creating activities and the ones correcting them have to use the same criteria. We agreed to: Creating st...

30

May 2014
TEFL classes by videoconference for elementary level students.
by Radmila Gurkova
TEFL classes by videoconference are often related to high level students. How should our teaching change in order to grant successful and exciting learning experience to our students? On debate: Elementary level stu...

16

May 2014
ESL activity lab. Creating functional beginners material - I play!
by Radmila Gurkova
The purpose of this piece of ESL activity belonging to our activities section for beginners is to introduce the verb 'play'. The previous ESL activity included the verb 'like' as well as 'play' so we removed the verb to like in order to simplify the activity. We introduced 4 Sports which all add something different to the ESL...

13

May 2014
ESL activities for beginners - a new ESL activity is born
by Radmila Gurkova
If you think these faces are too serious and concentrated, you are about right. The guys you are seeing in the picture, part of our Oxbridge TEFL teacher team in Madrid, are deeply engaged in creating ESL activities for beginners. Four teachers. One activity. An ESL activity for beginner learners of English t...

08

May 2014
How to teach beginners English as a foreign language- I want, I don't want
by Radmila Gurkova
How to teach beginners English as a foreign language in the target language only is sometimes a headache for ESL teachers. As it turned out, teaching the function I WANT in English without translating is not that easy. Students tend to confuse its meaning with I LIKE because this structure appears in similar contexts. How to teach beginners I...

20

March 2014
My favorite ESL class
by Radmila Gurkova
We asked different teachers about their favorite ESL class. We wanted them to explain what makes a great ESL class really memorable. We often hear teachers complaining about certain students and classes that were difficult. It's much more productive and rewarding to hear about TEFL teacher's favorite class...

14

March 2014
Positive learning environment: Learn from sports and apply to ESL classes to create the best environment for your students
by Radmila Gurkova
What is the best learning environment and how can we create a positive learning environment in our ESL classes? What can we learn from sports about positive learning environments? ...

07

March 2014
How to teach pronunciation through ESL activities. Say it clearer, not louder
by Radmila Gurkova
The OxbridgeTEFL community launched the project of how to teach pronunciation through ESL activities as a result of the necessity of creating specific tools -apart from the usual work on pronunciation through vocabulary activities- that would target Spanish learners' pronunciation. What moved us ...

27

February 2014
My Top 5 Reasons to do a TEFL course: featuring India Boddy
by Radmila Gurkova
Maki...