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:1st 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.
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