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Author Topic:   school crushes creativity
blue moon
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From: U.K
Registered: Apr 2009

posted November 11, 2009 12:35 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for blue moon     Edit/Delete Message
One of my offspring comes out with this comment, at parents' evening I mentioned it to his teacher but apparently she has been let know about this feeling. This is not a criticism of her work, there is not much she can do with the rigid structure she has to operate under, the clipboard phenonmenon of which has increased under our present (U.K) government.

There is something in what he is saying I do think. Though I am not saying he shouldn't have discipline instilled in any work he does including the artistic type.

p.s I think it was T mentioned on another thread about Neptune transiting through the 1st house and the effect on school. Well, this boy has this on the Ascendant (natal). Oddly enough he was a water birth. I also have 1st house Neptune (natal). So I can appreciate how sometimes the blackboard just doesn't grab the imagination. I often drift off in meetings as an adult, in a world of my own. Though generally I know what is going on.

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swirl-kitt
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posted November 11, 2009 12:44 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for swirl-kitt     Edit/Delete Message
I've always felt that way about education.

Then I realized perhaps that's the way schools should be.

If he wants to do something artistic, maybe you could hire a private teacher to teach him an instrument, or he could join some dancing or painting class after school.

If he enjoys writing or drawing cartoons or photography, he could put his stuff on the internet.

If there is one thing that's really great about the internet, it's the freedom it gives one to express themselves and that many people from all around the world can experience it too.

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DD
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posted November 11, 2009 01:35 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for DD     Edit/Delete Message
I think both is important; encouraging the creativity and also teaching the "dry matter".

It is just that it is not easy to have both in school. Not with the amount of organizing that comes BESIDE the lessons, the amount of times teachers spent in meetings, which drain their energy and make it hardly possible to even focus on the very thing they had picked this job: the teaching.

Also classes consist of 30 pupils and more, all creative individualists, and each one of them deserves to be seen and taught and assisted the way they need.

But I really would want someone to point out to me how this might be possible.

HOw can I give each one of them the assistance they need and deserve? The motivation and also the rules they need to learn. Yes I know "rules" are a No-no-word around most places here on LL, but if I am being realistic for one little moment, sometimes rules are necessary to make certain that people can co-exist rather peacefully.

Also, children need so much at that age (I can only speak for the 10 - 19 year old ones).
In a certain age they need the teacher to be a mother, an aunt, a friend, a teacher, a psychologist, a doctor and also an opponent, they can learn to carry out their conflicts with in a reasonable manner.

And on top of that, all these regulations, some of which are just nunsense in my own opinion.

There is too much to do everything and everyone really justice, and unfortunately the creativity is often suffering from all of this, even though there are good moments in school, too.

For example: when I am teaching a German class of 12 or 13 year olds and we are going to read a book (german novel), I often have presented them a picture, very artistic, of a black clothed man on a horse, riding along a beach.
And their first task is to look at that picture and do something with it.
With that I mean, write a story to that picture, or making a comic out of it, or draw a picture of where the man is riding to, or from where he is riding.

Often I am really floored by the results, how much fantasy, creativity and patience in most of the stories is being found. Okay, often they read a bit like Lord of the Rings. lol

I love that period in my lessons, as do most pupils (not all, some really like the dry matter more actually).
But I cannot do it everyday, as I have to teach them other things, too.

I think the best a teacher can do is somehow find a way in the middle; give the opportunity to do creative things as well as the other not so popular stuff.

Variety is the keyword I think.

But it is not easy, I can tell you.


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blue moon
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From: U.K
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posted November 11, 2009 01:48 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for blue moon     Edit/Delete Message
He is younger than your pupils, DD. Hopefully by that age he will have learned that sometimes you have to do things a set way for them to work best, and that someone who is 30 or 40 years older than him might have found out about it first.

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katatonic
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posted November 11, 2009 02:03 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
DD i can't imagine that you are anything but a very good teacher. the school system is another thing altogether.

the fact that we mostly survive it with some creativity intact is a tribute to our spirit and often the support of parents who know there is more to learn than what school can give you...

has anyone read john gatto? the man who invented the term "dumbing us down"? it was the title of a book he wrote some time ago. he has also written a "short history of american education" which illustrates WHY schools are the way they are...enlightening.

he was, by the way, "teacher of the year" in new york for something like 20 years, so his attitude is not due to failure or sour grapes...

i ended up taking my 12 year old out of school and putting her in a tutorial program that followed the state curriculum but only required her to spend about 4 hours with the teacher per week. she aced the graduating exams in half the time it took most of the people in the room...

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DD
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posted November 11, 2009 02:53 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for DD     Edit/Delete Message
BM,

if he is younger, say 4 - 9 years old I find the thing he said even more shocking.

In that young age it is an absolute MUST to give the pupils room for expressing their creativity. I mean it is always important, but in a higher age pupils can find ways themselves with just a little bit of help, but very young kids of course need more assistance in discovering their creativity. At least an open surrounding.

But I understand that also elementary schools have their firm regulations and are supposed to "train" kids for the other school-forms.

But I am judging from the German schoolsystem, which is totally different from the English one I think.

For example you apparently can choose to homeschool kids; there is no way to do something like this here.

We only have the public schools (and some private schools for "priviliged" kids, meaning, their parents are really rich).

Kat,

thanks.

I must say, I do my best, but I cannot be the teacher at all times, I want to be and know I could be, if some of the conditions were different. It´s pretty bitter at some times. And you relaly have to take care to not become a cynic.

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T
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posted November 11, 2009 09:22 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for T     Edit/Delete Message
Want to get back to this when I have more time. ..

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katatonic
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posted November 11, 2009 11:08 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
doesn't the german system have kids staying at home for the first 7 years? where did i hear that? i think it's absolutely brilliant if so, those are the years when you really learn so much from everything around you.

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blue moon
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From: U.K
Registered: Apr 2009

posted November 12, 2009 07:02 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for blue moon     Edit/Delete Message
Life seems to have become overly-regulated for children. It must be frustrating for teachers and I can sense how there is an automatic barrier between them and parents which I find particularly unfortunate. I feel like I have to make clear I want to work with them in the interests of the children.

Education is always going to be an ill-fitting shoe for some children, maybe they will go on to achieve in life in a less orthodox way. The entrepreneurial type, for example.

I do think things are made worse with the penchant for testing and measuring every level of achievement, to a suffocating level. Our current government does seem to have a particular liking for attaching performance indicators to every civic activity. How it helps is often questionable.

Just one example, 5 year-olds being tested on a list of 45 words, dictated by the Education department. Parents in the schoolyard agonised over who managed to achieve this target first. Unnecessarily stressful for such young children. Of course parental attitude is partly to blame but even so.

I actually enjoyed school but it was a long time ago and we had more freedom. I wouldn't want to be a child now as I think their lives seem quite restrictive.

Astrologers might have guessed here that I have a Sun/Uranus contact on my chart, also, so do both my children. (Also, me and the other boy have Mars/Uranus.)

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DD
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posted November 12, 2009 09:57 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for DD     Edit/Delete Message
Kata,

in Germany school (elementary school) starts at roughly the age of 6 years.
Usually children will visit a kindergarten before though (from the age of 3 years), but of course there will be no school-teaching there, or not until shortly before coming into school.

Usually they learn things like reading the clock, painting pictures, playing with others peacefully, live in coexistence with other children, making a lot of walks in free nature (if it is possible) and such things.

So yes, with the age of 6 or 7 school really starts. But it is actually supposed to start playfully and then increase the discipline slowly.
It doesn`t always work out that way unfortunately.

I think it had something to do with what BM mentioned, too much testing even in elementary school. It leads to competition that sometimes takes on very unhealthy forms including developing a low selfconfidence, cause everything seems to be measured into A, B, C etc.
ACtually our marks go from 1 - 6.

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katatonic
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posted November 12, 2009 12:14 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
yes, and it's been going on and getting worse and worse for as long as i can remember. my parents took me out of public school age 9 and with some friends started their own! it was heaven. my 6th grade class had only 6 kids, the whole school 24, and the teachers were SMART and INTERESTED. however the workload was ridiculous. i remember struggling to finish before 11pm with homework somedays...at age 10.

my grandson is in 2nd grade (7 years olds) and has been bringing home homework since kindergarten. they DO measure every little thing and their ex-military tenured teacher expects them to SIT in their seat at all times and maintain a military-style discipline. fortunately for him(GS) he is very bright and at least on the learning side he is doing extremely well. but being made to feel like a rebel because you stand up in your place at 6 is over the top to me....

this is what gatto is all about. he urges LESS time in school not more, and protests the whole system of teaching kids to answer to bells like pavlov's dogs, interrupting discussions to make it in time to the next class, and get used to doing everything piecemeal and without questioning...all a result of public schooling being training for following orders in the workplace, not thinking for yourself.

"dumbing us down" is a really short book and well worth the read especially for parents, and for teachers who want to work outside the box as much as possible. he worked in some of the roughest schools in nyc and did really well for the kids there...

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katatonic
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posted November 12, 2009 12:17 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
an interesting statistic ... since mandatory schooling started in massachussets in the 19th century the general literacy rate there has gone DOWN steadily from something like 90% to 60-something...

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Lara
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From: aspideronmars
Registered: Apr 2009

posted November 12, 2009 06:44 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Lara     Edit/Delete Message
I have just today taken the plunge and taken my boys out of school to home school them instead!!

It feels good. I'll keep you posted.

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SpooL
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From: Toronto/Ottawa,Canada
Registered: Apr 2009

posted November 16, 2009 09:34 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for SpooL     Edit/Delete Message
quote:
..and protests the whole system of teaching kids to answer to bells like pavlov's dogs

Thats how I feel at the University i'm at. I just got the marks back for my report and I was shocked to find out that the content of the report was worth less then the minor details.

I can understand there is a format you have to follow, but losing a quarter of my mark because the picture is too small is pushing it.

I wish I hadn't chosen this course as an elective. Its just to rigid.

I've already graduated from another college in Computer Science/Game Development and the atmosphere was diffrent.

It was all teach you the basics of how to program, but after that your free to code/program however style you like for the assignment, provided it meets all the requirments.

With this course and university its "I want this exactly like that".

With no room for improvment. Even the tests and quizes are exactly the same. I could go and memorize everything in the textbook without understanding anything and get a good mark, because the exact same programing problem will be exactly the same on the test.

That doesn't work in programing in the real world, every code is diffrent unless you want to get sued for copywrite.

Every problem is diffrent, it is a must that students be creative enought to solve every problem.

But, that can't happen with the same textbook problem from the textbook and on the tests.

I don't know what to think, I already have college and i was taught to be creative and solve problems while gaining practical skills, but its not a percieved as good as university since I have to prove myself.

So, I need university hence the reason why I am enrolled here because University graduates are perceived to be capable of everything and anything.

But aren't taught to be creative and to solve problems, so, I don't know what to think anymore.

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katatonic
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posted November 16, 2009 09:52 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
spool - did you know that steve jobs did about one year of college? for that matter i don't think bill gates finished either, tho i'm not sure about that. did you know einstein dropped out of school at 15?

i know the gig is rigged to make you think you have to have a university degree, but it might be worth looking into alternatives?

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SpooL
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posted November 16, 2009 09:57 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for SpooL     Edit/Delete Message
Yes, I'm aware of all three men and there level of education.

I loved the graduation speach Steave Jobs mentioned at Stanford.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

It was vary insprationable, essentially he mentioned how he connected everything he learned in his life and created apple.

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blue moon
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posted November 17, 2009 02:44 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for blue moon     Edit/Delete Message
SpooL. The child's father is in I.T and is someone I would describe as a creative problem-solver. The kind of situation you describe here is something he would find odious. He fits in much better in the world of work than the world of education. He is very successful in his profession (Sun CNJ Saturn in Aqua).

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SpooL
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From: Toronto/Ottawa,Canada
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posted November 17, 2009 03:04 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for SpooL     Edit/Delete Message
blue moon,

you have to be a creative thinker to survive in IT, otherwise your out.

Then you'll have to learn everything again because the job your in might be using a diffrent programing language or a diffrent technology then what you were trained with

See..

Especially in the IT field, there are so many things that can go wrong so you need to learn how to problem solve and that requires creativity.

There was an article published about how so many universities and colleges are teaching grads how to code/program.

But,are failing to address problem solving.

In the industry they will give you something to work on probibly doesn't run/compile and then expect you to have it running without crashing.

They'll pass you something to work on and it might "explode" when you open it and crash.

You can try to bug the person in the next cubicle beside you, but he/she has her own "explosions" to deal with.

So you have to be creative here.

The reality is anyone can learn programing, its problem solving thats always the biggest hurdle and figure out why its crashing.

I've been getting better at fixing problems not by school, but by practice and some

work experience(goverment) althought I don't exactly consider govemerment real IT.

----------------------------------------
Capircorn Rising
Gemini Sun, 5th House
Aries Moon
Mercury in Gemini
Venus In Taurus

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