TED Talks: Did Schools Kill Creativity

What do you think? Is school killing creativity?

I think it does, but I don't think it as big of a deal as he makes it. He describes the core subjects to be just as important as subjects such as dance. He also says that it will get you a job if you focus in those other areas. When I look at the United States jobs, I see more jobs in the areas of business and engineering than in dance and music. I think at the moment we have the perfect amount of musicians, artists and dancers. All of these careers are more for entertainment and expression which is not needed as much as other jobs such as engineering where we need to solve problems such as the energy crisis or in medical sciences were we can cure disease such as aids or cancer. The arts are a necessity, just not as great. 

What do you think about his idea that education creates particular kinds of people? What kinds of people do you see school producing? How did school affect who you are as a person? As a student? As a writer?

I think he is right about schools producing more core subject related students. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. I see schools producing a positive generation of bright minds. High schools today are emphasizing college more than ever and more kids are going to college then ever. High school did a very good job preparing me for college. I knew ever since I was little I am not a creative artsy person. This is good for me because since the economy decline the school systems have decided to cut more of the art programs in public schools. This is not okay for other kids who are better at those types of those classes, but I still feel it is necessary until the economy gets better.

What do you think of his solution? Is there another solution? Explain.

I think his solution is correct, but I think it is already happening in college. High school is a place for students to find their identity. College is where they start to actually learn and practice that identity. In college, dancers can major in dance, artists can major in art. He talks about how creativity and imagination paves the way for the future. Students are able to use the technology and resources provided in college to actually put these imaginations and creations into effect. High school is only the subsidiary to college.  

How do you define intelligence?

I would define intelligence with creativity and IQ level. Some people are very intelligent but do not work hard enough to show it, while others are not so intelligent but work very hard and it makes them seem more intelligent. Creativity sparks from intelligence and is needed badly today.   

How does this video relate to standardized testing?

I think that standardized testing tends to take creativity away. Students and teachers learn and teach based on a set curriculum and are not given much leeway. With multiple choice testing, instead of essay based, students just go through the motions instead of actually having to think for themselves. I see more essay based finals here in college, which further proves my point of creativity in college.  

Standardized Testing in Schools

    In class the other day, we had a discussion on standardized testing is schools based on the TED Talks. I listened the discussion but never gave my input. As the semester goes on I will try to talk more and contribute to discussions. I would like to put my input into this blog that I did not get to say in class. I think standardized tests are necessary in schools for multiple reasons.

    The first reason is content. If teachers weren't given standardized tests to follow, then they would focus only on what they liked to talk about. For example, in a history class about U.S. history, a teacher might really like and know a lot about the Civil War. He will teach a whole quarter on the Civil War if there was no standardized test instead of branching to all the other parts of U.S. history that are just as important to learn. Students will not be obtaining the full content of the course, but instead only the parts the teacher likes. This is taking away from the student and what the student will need to know for college classes.

    The second reason is to keep the GPA's even. In some schools and class rooms, the teachers can be pushovers who only expect the bare minimum. With the standardized tests, students are pushed to compete with other students across the nation. A student in one school with a push over teacher will get an A with only little effort, whereas a student in another school will be taking the same course with a rigorous teacher and will put forth lots of effort but still receives a B. A standardized test will even out these scores because the student in the second class will most likely receive a better grade on the standardized test boosting his grade and thus leveling out the overall grades when colleges look at them.    

My 54 Love Affair with the SAT

      Stanley Kaplan is an enormous supporter of the SAT and has helped many students achieve higher test scores with his SAT study guides and tutor programs across the country. The fist time he heard of the SAT was when he was tutoring a girl who was planning to take the test to have a better chance to get into college. Today the SAT is basically required to get into college. It is a test of knowledge and intellectual capacity. I think the SAT is a good way to test prospective students, because it doesn't just ask math and english questions. It tests the thinking process of the test takers, that take their mind for a loop. Since some schools are stricter then others, as the text mentioned, we need a standardized test to show if the GPA the student has actually reflects their intellectual capacity. A student in a upper class private school will most likely have to work harder to get an A than a student in a public school.

     One thing I disagree with the SAT is the time limits. A time limit makes me as an individual feel more pressured and therefor I am more likely to make mistakes. I think that this goes for other students too. Another problem with the time is the sheer length. Does it really need to contain 9 sections? The test takes so long that I start to get blurry vision from reading so long. The chairs are uncomfortable and even worse, it is on a saturday! I start to think about all the other things I could be doing on such a pretty saturday. The test takes about 6 hours altogether. I think this is way to long for any student to endure.

   Stanley Kaplan is a great man to care so much about students and their success. He has paved the way for students success and future by allowing them to get into college if they are willing to put the effort in. I bought one of Kaplan's books to prepare myself for the SAT. It was very helpful in understanding the content of the questions and how to read between the lines of what it is actually asking. It taught methods on how to finish each section on time with extra time to look over. Stanley Kaplan was instrumental to my SAT success and millions of others. For that, I say thank you.        

Writing History Response

Writing History Response

Ever since I was little, I have never really enjoyed writing. My parents pushed math and science more than the liberal arts. I first learned to write my name in preschool, but that is as far as I went. The first time I really started writing was in kindergarten. I had an excellent kindergarten teacher that was very understanding and helpful to me as a writer. In kindergarten I mixed up all my letters and numbers, by writing them backwards. My parents thought I was dyslectic because my writing was so atrocious. My teacher continued to tell them I wasn’t and that I was just developing and would get the hang of it. My teacher had the class writing in a journal once a week about what ever we wanted. My mother still has the journal. To this day I still cannot read on word from it, but you can see improvement from beginning to end. My teacher was right and I eventually was writing just like all the other kids. I still have messy handwriting but it is defiantly legible. This was the beginning of my writing career.

In elementary school, the next teacher that really made an impact in my writing was my second grade teacher. She pushed the subject of spelling, and was the first one to actually be strict about it. There was no more using phonics to spell everything. There were rules I had to follow, and I was a terrible speller. She also taught the elementary basics to sentence structure. Every morning when I came into class, I would sit down and there would be a piece of paper on the desk with a sentence or two on the board for me to copy onto the paper. After all of us copied the sentence she would explain the different parts of the sentence. Once I got further into the year, she would write sentences and intentionally put mistakes in them for me to catch and fix. They were not hard mistakes but they allowed me to focus more on the sentence structure at a young age. In third grade I had the writing test for the first time. My 3^rd grade teacher had to teach me about proper writing etiquette. She taught me what paragraphs were and how to start papers. At this time I was starting to read adventure series. I wanted to be as creative as all the authors I was reading. They inspired much of the work I created at the younger ages. All of the papers I wrote were rudimentary stories that I got to make up based on a prompt. I liked writing like this because I was able to be creative. When I finally took the test, I made a passing 3 out of 4 on it. I was so proud of myself because lots of people fail that first writing test in 3^rd grade. In 5^th grade I learned how to write more complex and non-fictitious papers. They were almost like mini research papers. I did not like these as much as the writing I had been doing in previous grades because it wasn’t as exciting. We all have to learn this style because it is the most used in life later.     

            In middle school I wrote my first full-length research paper with sources and everything. It was the biggest grade I have ever received I any class. It had to be on what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wrote about car designers. Its funny how my life has changed and I am nowhere close to that career choice. Now I am an accounting major, but I still have that dream in the back of my head of designing fast cars in Italy. I worked very hard, listening to the teacher tell me how to write it and I used any additional tips she had. She was the best teacher I have ever had in the subject of writing. She taught the language like no one else I have ever seen. I guess this is why she received the prestigious award teacher of the year in the county. I finished the 8 page paper and eagerly awaited my grade. What I got back shocked me. I had received a 107 out of 100. I celebrated and my writing esteem rose.

            Next came high school. I never had very good writing teachers in high school. All the teachers focused on was reading and analyzing books. Even though I was in all honors classes, the only teacher who taught me anything about writing in high school was my junior teacher. She was a good teacher, but she was a push over. She would give me a 100 if I showed effort in my writing but never really critiqued it to make me better. I also had a huge research paper that year. I was a minimum of 12 pages, analyzing a theme in any of the books we had read that semester. I worked very hard and made a very good grade on it. My senior teacher was the same way because it was his last year as a teacher and was already in retirement mode. All he did was tell facetious stories about students from previous years and stories about himself.

            In college this is my first English class and so far has proven to be a good one. I expect to learn much from my teacher Megan. She seems very enthusiastic and motivated to make me and everyone else in the class better writers.

            As a writer I have had much experience, but I do not think I am at the point I should be. I still have much to learn and there are many areas I need developing in. I am excited for this upcoming semester and I hope it proves well.    

January 14 - 

Writing Timeline and 

Schooling Trajectory

Writing Timeline

           

          Looking over my time line, I can see that most of my writing skills are directly related to the teachings of my 7th and 8th grade english teacher. She was phenomenal at showing new writing styles and techniques in our reading and how to incorporate them into our writing. She was voted best teacher in the county my 8th grade year. I have not had any good writing teachers since her. I would describe myself as an average writer because of this. Ms. Cooper has definitely impacted the writer I am today.

        Everyone has a certain environment that they excel best in. I show my best work when I am in a small room with nothing to distract me. I get off topic very easily and this causes me to get work done at a slow pace. If I have nothing interesting to look at, I can be more effective with my writing and stay focused. I also like the temperature to be cool. I hate hot temperatures because it will cause me to sweat when I am trying to think. I also like not having time limits, because I feel to pressured to finish rather than write a good paper.

       I like to write fiction the most because it is the easiest to me. I like writing about action and adventure. Writing with no boundaries is true writing to me. It is hard for me to write when given strict rules to follow because it limits my creative ability. I do not like research papers because I have to stay within certain specified guidelines.

      I think based on my best teacher, I chose the genre above. I think this is true for most writers  writing is because of the inspirations of someone else. I have a short attention span so I have to write about interesting things but not be distracted by other interesting things. 

Schooling Trajectory

       In my path through school I have discovered that I am a much better mathematician than a writer. I would make A's in math and B's in english. This was because of the people I looked up to, and the people that taught me. It is also just who I am as a person. I like the literal meaning of things, not the symbolical. I like to view things in a logical and analytical fashion.

       My parents are very good at math and science. My father majored in math in college, and my mother majored in biomedical engineering. They pushed my math and science skills much harder than my writing skills because of this. I think this is why I am better at math than I am at english.

      My parents obviously influenced me based on my last paragraph, but I was also influenced by some of my teachers. My 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Wilcox is the one who introduced me to writing. She taught the basics to me on structure and what writing is. My 7th and 8th grade teacher Ms. Cooper was the best english teacher I had in school. I mentioned her in my writing timeline section. All of my high school teachers were not very good writing teachers. They taught more literature than writing all 4 years. The best teacher in the school taught AP and I was only in honors.

    I think my parents had the biggest influence on my Schooling trajectory. They pushed me in the areas they saw fit and that is why I am an excellent mathematician and an average writer. I also did not have the best teachers in high school and I kept to honors instead of AP.