Research - 500-700 words

Throughout the last 3 weeks since the Educator started I feel that my thoughts towards the education process whether it was in a school for example setting up workshops for a range of abilities, educating any age group or just outside of the school environment, they have changed. 

The talks that both Elle and Clair have done introducing me to different opinions and facts about education have been so eye opening, along with my own research. One example is Ken Robinson on talking on the subject of do schools kill creativity, one thing that stuck with me on this is he said "all children are born artists, we are educated out of it." This resonated with me because I have a better understanding of my education and how little the creative subject were valued. The video motivated me to want to do something about this as creative subject do so much for young children let alone young adults. Another piece of research was Jack Ma's video at the World Economic Forum in 2018 Jack says that education needs a big change, the way we teach our children is all knowledge biased and we cannot compete with the machine they can do it better. This video just backed up my feeling of annoyance about the system because many people can see these problems but very little is being done. These videos also made me realize that there was a problem with the academic system, I agree that things need to change, education cannot be something we recite, not everyone learns that way, it has to be something that we will learn and will stay with us throughout lives.

I have also come across a video of a kinder garden school in Tokyo (Refer: research post, 14.03). This video was so eye opening because the architecture of the school was made solely with the children in mind and they looked at how children are and how they behave in certain spaces. Also it put the point across more about letting the children learn on their own but also the areas in which they learn can aid the child in learning, for example in the video Takaharu talks about the lack of boundaries in the classroom spaces and how the openness brings the children together.

Also during this time I have participated in some workshops that have been held in the Educator group and have taught and showed me many different things. In particular (refer: mini workshop, 14.03). What I had taken from that day was to always question what you’re measuring something against, for example, we did a failure workshop and at first we were told to make the item we were given EXACTLY out of wire “impossible”. Then we were asked to draw the wire pieces in many ways; in different hands and different amounts of time “easy”. Finally we have to make 3 drawings out of wire “easy”. I won with the majority vote of ‘the worst’. It made me feel sad and a little uncomfortable but then I realized it didn’t look like it to start with and I was happy with my final outcomes. My peers were then asked why has it fail and the replies where it looks nothing like the object ect. the reply from Elle was but what are you classing as a fail, Elle gave no parameters or notion towards what was a fail, everyone had assumed.  

I have also done my own workshops while I have been on this unit (refer:1^st workshop) and the more I have learnt about how to create and structure a workshop and the education process itself, it has changed how I think of activities for the children to do, for example, instead of having paint everywhere to get messy, I need small and easy 10 minute ish activities that the child can get enjoyment out of and potentially get adults involved too. After the health and safety lecture I have needed to think about that side of my workshops differently, even though I have to parents there, there was more to consider than I thought. It has made me more worried but work aware that I need to save my own back for example if I need to wash a child’s hands I make sure the child’s parent is present or know.

One thing that has surprised me during this research is how much art can actually help people. It is frustrating to see that many people think very little of creative subjects when my research has shown it does so much. I knew that people can become art therapists but when I went to the Arc centre in Stockport and had a guest speaker who had been working in the arts for health sector for years, when these people spoke about the people they have helped it is just amazing to hear how they have helped people, the different disabilities, illnesses and mental illness. It made me appreciate art a lot more knowing it doesn’t have to be a personal skill.