Creativity

Question of the day. Does our current education system set all children up to learn? I believe we honestly have to answer that question with a "no". Sir Ken in the youtube clip that we watched brought up a very thought provoking statement. He claimed that the topmost goal of eduction was to create university professors. In other words, the world's education system is set up to engage only one side of children brains. More simply put, we are not encouraging children to be creative through school due to the subjects that students are required to take.

Now I do not believe that educators are squashing their students creativity as much as Sir Ken is proposing, however I do not believe schools are putting children in the best environment to learn. What I mean by that is children are not meant to sit in a desk for an extended period of time, and be expected to be attentive. Children are curious. Now all children are going to be different, that is obvious. However, I believe the best way to engage a child is to keep their bodies active. Just look at how children love playing outside. What if schools took the energy that was created on the playground and harnessed it into the classroom.

I'm getting this philosophy from something my mother implemented into her 2nd grade classroom two years ago.

My mother's 2nd grade class a few years back was an extremely "wild" class. She was always telling our family how fidgety they were, and what a hard time they had paying attention. Apparently my mother did some research and she found a new idea. This idea she read about was tailor to students who had a hard time sitting still and paying attention. (ADD, ADHD). She decided to take away all the chairs in her room and replace them with stability balls. No longer do any of her students sit in chairs. Instead, they all bounce continuously on stability balls behind their individual desks.

The first time I saw this in action I felt a little motion sickness coming on from all the children bouncing up and down. However, I soon realized how effective those balls really were. There was definitely energy in the room to the subject they were working on. Obviously, some strict rules had to be set up with the balls, and my mother would most likely not let her students break any of them without an immediate removal of the ball.

I know that personally I would have liked to be in that class when I was in elementary school, because I like to be active. Maybe more initiatives like stability balls are just what our education system needs.