Week+1

= Ideas Worth Spreading =

"**Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon**." E.M. Forster

This week we were introduced to Issues In Education with lecturer Greg Powell. The main topic for this week was Creativity in Education. An inspiring and very entertaining recorded speech by Sir Ken Robinson at a conference in Montreal, February 2006, was an excellent introduction to the main themes of this topic. OK, I am going to admit a small bias, I have come from a creative background. My first degree is a Bachelor of Creative Industries, and I have heard this speech before by Sir Ken. I am a dancer and participate weekly in improvisational dance. So I had a great affinity with Sir Ken and could strongly relate to what he was saying. I have also particpated in numerous workshops on creativity and how to maximise your child's creative energy while they still live in their creativity at an early age. Themes such as minimising TV viewing, maximising the availability of open-ended toys around the home and school, living in the moment with your child, and allowing them to play. These workshops were held by a Montessori School (Caboolture) and a Steiner school (Samford Valley) in QLD. I strongly believe that creativity is crucial to education and I know that this is one of the things that appeals to me about teaching- the limitless ways of using creativity for learning.

One of the themes of the Ken Robinson speech was the idea of the unpredictability of the future, and yet we are expected to educate our children, and our students to be prepared for this elusive future. It seems like an over-ambitious task. If we look back at our own educational years, could our teachers have possibly known what we are expected to know now? The technological advances are enormous and yet they are expected to be a part of our everyday lives. We are expected to be contactable via mobile phone or email when we apply for jobs. Yet how many of us were educated to do this in our school years? I run a business assisting people to achieve their career goals. Many of my clients have basic or no computer skills, yet some of them have extremely advanced technological skills, and have even been involved in creating technologies we use today such as SIM cards in mobile phones. It is not possible to know exactly what will be required for our students to make a meaningful contribution when they enter the work-force in the future.

My graduating class of 1995 was the very last one to be educated on how to type using a typewriter. Students after my year were educated in computers when the school purchased its first computers in 1992. But the students who learned these computer skills would be lost today if they had not kept updating their knowledge. So what does this teach us? It seems that the idea we need to foster in our students is that learning is, in fact, a life long process.


 * “Smart is an elusive concept,” Bill Gates.**

Bill Gates has always been committed to the concept of life-long learning. As educators, we need to foster this concept in ourselves as well as our students to ensure that we continue to progress and keep up with our changing world.“People always fear change,” says Bill Gates. “People feared electricity when it was invented…there will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear.” Learning takes many forms and there are many types of learners. In Ken Robinson's speech he mentions a very famous dancer/choreographer who created numerous musicals that we all enjoy today, such as "Cats". This person had difficulty fitting in to the schooling system as it was, and as it still largely is. She was a kinesthetic learner. Robinson believes that our education system has too long been focussed on educating from the waist up.**"We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says.**

The readings for this week have some view points that I would not have expected to see in a course for teachers who will be mainly working in a mainstream system. One of those readings was "Timeless Learning" (Miller 2006). This reading could really be considered a 'rebuttal' in the concept that we are educating our children for the future and therefore should be focussing our energy on ensuring they have skills for the future. Miller quotes Helen Keller, **"Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never taste or smell again. Make the most of each sense. Glory in the facets and pleasures and beauty which the world reveals to you."** Is this not how children live and learn naturally? Infants and toddlers are a classic example of people who truly live in the moment. Young children have this ability to live in the moment and be presen. As long as they are not inhibited by a disability or any threat to their survival, this makes it easy for them to learn what they need to.

I agree with Miller that education needs to be about both timeless and time bound learning, and that in the timeless learning, a deeper sense of well-being can take place for both the learner and the facilitator- child and adult. So get out there and let children make mud pies, grab some cardboard and slide down the hill with the kids, contemplate the beauty of a running stream, race some leaf boats down it, enjoy the wind and make a kite. My children have been fortunate to have attended a school that believes and bases its curriculum around the importance of creativity, and these activities are all part of the day. Also, timeless crafts such as knitting and sewing are incorporated weekly, as is music, dance and art. The curriculum does not rush a child, and yet my children have learned at a faster pace than children in mainstream systems.

The children's father was reluctant about sending them to this school, believing they needed to know the facts right from the beginning, and be challenged and tested and pushed. I offered him this quote, my favourite quote about creativity, from Albert Einstein, " **Imagination is more important than knowledge.**" In a future full of uncertainty, I believe that those of us who still remember how to use our creativity, will be much more prepared than those who know only facts and knowledge without hands-on expereince. I believe this is what we need to consider when educating our students, and for us at any age.


 * Kari O'Gorman**

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**Home** | Week 2 - Classroom Management | Week 3 - So You Want To Be A Teacher| Week 4 - Planning for Learning | Week 5 - Models of Teaching and Learning | Week 6 - Teacher Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct| Week 7 - Who Are Your Students? | Week 8 - Issues from the coalface - VIt and planning