February
6
Blog #59 – Reforming Education
You need to watch this twelve minute video in order to answer this blog.
Answer the following questions:
1.Where do you put yourself on Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic people” or “non-academic people”? Why?
2. Do you agree w/ Dr. Robinson that American kids are over-medicated w/ Ritalin, etc. in such a stimulating time period? Why or why not?
3. Discuss Dr. Robinson’s claim that American schools are based on an old industrialization model (production-line mentality).
4. Why does our “divergent thinking” ability decrease as we get more educated? Do you think your ability has decreased or increased? Why?
5. What changes would you make in our school calendar, classes, etc. after watching this video? Why?
I would put myself, according to Sir Ken Robinson’s scale, as an academic person. Of course, I don’t mean I think I’m smart, even though I do, I believe that this scale is unfair due to the fact that not everybody is good at school. And that’s all that really matters in the American educational system. Being smart is related to having better than average grades, which is totally unfair, since I’ve had awful grades in the past, and I’m smart! Right? I agree with Sir Ken that kids are being over medicated with all sorts of drugs. After a while, they must develop a dependency on these drugs to focus, and that can become a big problem! I think that, in this ultra-stimulating time period, we should use these so called distractions as learning tools, and start to wean our students off of possibly harmful drugs. I believe everybody has ADHD, in one form or another, but that doesn’t give the right to make it into an epidemic. Now, the way American education works is, you plop down on a subject and move forward. You can’t skip around and explore and be creative in an educational model where you are forced to study something you might think is boring or useless, and therefore, you drift away. Then, you are given medication for a so called “Attention Deficit Disorder” .With this production-line style of learning; it is reasonable and logical to think that divergent thinking decreases as we become older and mature. As children get older, especially as they enter their teenage years, there is this need to conform to social norms, and creative thoughts are suppressed in order to fit in. I think my ability to think divergently has decreased slightly over the years. I do a lot of theatre, and that keeps me creative and makes me think outside of the box, but I realize I don’t have creativity when drawing or even writing papers. If I could make any changes to classes, school calendars, etc.…, it would be that there were less obligatory classes and that students would be able to take the courses that suited them best, so they didn’t have to learn things that didn’t interest them or that they would never use later on.
I would put myself on the on the ‘academic’ side of Dr. Robinson’s scale. I’ve always had high grades, and I’ve been taught and had it ingrained into me over the course of my years in school that grades are the only thing that matters. It sounds terrible to say it but it’s stuck with me and now I don’t know what it’s like to not conform to the system’s version of success.
I do agree with Dr. Robinson that kids are being over-medicated. I respect the fact that some kids do need more time to focus on material, but medicine shouldn’t be the first and only option. If we were able to better modify the way children are taught, we could wean kids off of these drugs that could have harmful side effects or are not even working effectively.
I also agree with Dr. Robinson’s claim that American schools are based off of an old industrial model. We are being prepared for jobs that are slowly disappearing from society and are being replaced with jobs that require a completely different skill set. It is one of my biggest fears that my education won’t prepare me in the right ways when I enter the work force.
Our ‘divergent thinking’ ability decreases as we get older because the educational system rewires the way we think. As a kindergartener, kids are full of energy and potential and see the world through much different eyes than an adult. When we continue to pass through the educational system, we don’t settle into the ‘achieving’ category if we don’t fit our ideas into the mold the American educational system has set out for us. If we were allowed to explore ideas in a more natural way, I’m sure our divergent thinking ability would increase over time.
One of the changes I would make would be to stop dividing school into categories so that students are able to see how the bigger picture of the world fits together. For example, you might be studying the life of Einstein during one part of the day, reading works inspired by him during the next, and testing his theories and principals next. Essentially, an Excel type system but with all subjects integrated. It would also make more sense to get rid of such a long summer break and move to year round schooling. The first month of every school year is wasted by having to reteach students all of the material they had forgotten over the summer. It’s hard to keep up when you don’t understand the concepts. One last change I would make would be to change the classes that are considered the most important. Different students excel in different areas of study, so it doesn’t make sense to, for example, look down upon a student who is great at drawing but terrible at chemistry.
1. On the scale of academics according to Dr. Ken, I would categorize myself as more of a “Academic people” because I feel that I am smart but sometimes I slack in striving for that A on a test and sometimes I try so hard that I fail but that’s okay because it is not written anywhere that smart people have ever failed I mean it took Einstein a while to perfect his light bulb. I also agree with the 2 posts above mine that everyone isn’t good at school but is it because they don’t want to put forth the effort or they’re just not capable. Americans, especially our educational system competes with foreign countries because many feel that foreigners are taking jobs from us, but have our standards lowered of our education.
2. Yes I do agree with Dr. Robinson’s statement that kids are being over-medicated with Ritalin in a stimulating time period because it seems like people in my generation are more socially oppressed, for example I knew a kid that went to my middle school that had ADHD and when they took their medicine it seemed liked the world had stopped moving but when they didn’t they were as lively as Disney on Ice, its weird because were taught to express ourselves,be respectful, speak our kind, and be successful . Living in a stimulating time period is difficult because friendships begin to come down to who has the most expensive shoes, who gets better grades, who gets invited to the most parties, etc. and because of that kids miss out on forming true bonds with people that may very well be the next Bill Gates or Oprah.
3.The Doctor is right. Our school system is based on a old industrialization model because is so strongly expressed through our parents, peers, instructors that we should go to school, get good grades, go to a good college, and be successful. That is not always possible because there will always be obstacles in life that doesn’t guarantee success.
4. It decreases because as we get more educated we begin to base our reasonings on facts which is what we our basically educationally taught. We begin to think in a series of steps instead of open mindedness which is proved in a television show I like to watch known as “Brain Games”. To a certain extent do I believe our divergent thinking decreases, I believe it depends on if you’re interested in the subject or not.
5. I’ve been waiting to be asked this question for months. I think we should go to school for nine whole months, without breaks because I feel that it would better help us obtain the information that we learn.
Blog #59
On Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic people” to “non-academic people”, I would say I am neither. I think I am in the middle of the scale, but in the video it seems that there are only academic people or non-academic people. If being academic means that a person is knowledgeable in all studied (classic literature, history, math), then no I would say I am more non-academic, but if academic is based on grades in school then I would say that I’m more on the academic side. In a way I do agree with Dr. Robinson’s idea that kids are overmedicated in such a stimulating time period. I think that if we medicate kids to regulate their brain functions in a way that makes them calm done, it makes it hard for kids to pay attention in classes. But on the contrary I think that some times it is better and more beneficial for the student to take these medications to help them study or pay attention better. A lot of of these drugs are anesthetics that shut off your sense and deaden yourself to what is happening, when really we should have aesthetic experience where our brains are fully alive. Dr. Robinson’s claim that American school systems are based on an old industrial model, means that we are producing “classes” in batches assuming that everyone is as smart as everyone else since they are in the same grade. We are taught different things separated, and for certain times. There is an assumption that they only thing that keeps people in school in common is their age. Our “divergent thinking” decreases as we get more educated because we have spent 10 years of our life being told that there is only one right answer and not to copy or look at other people’s ideas. After watching this video I think that my divergent thinking has decreased because my time in school when teachers tell me the answers could be right but pick the best one. I don’t think you can have a best answer if they all technically could be right. From watching this video, I think that it is important that we start reforming out education system to what is best for the students, not what’s easiest or traditional. We have no information, statistics that we should be using to our advantage not disregarding. Studies about student’s sleeping patterns and what learning conditions we pay attention the best in should all be considered.
I think I put myself in the middle of the scale of “academic people” and “non-academic” people because there are things that I am good at, and know how to do, but there are also some things that I don’t know how to do. There are certain subjects in school that I am good at, and can do very easily, but there are others that don’t interest me, and it takes me a while to understand the material. I agree with the thought that American kids are over-medicated because of personal experiences. I’ve noticed with my focus, the subjects that I like I will focus on and actually listen to what the teachers are saying because I like the information. Other subjects that I don’t find interesting will bore me, and I often find myself zoning out in class. I think there are kids with have ADD and ADHD, and medication is needed to help them focus, but there are also cases in which the student is just not interested in the subject, and gets distracted because they aren’t even trying to focus. I think Dr. Robinson’s idea that American schools are based on the production-line mentality is very true. Sometimes kids are more interested when a subject that they might not find stimulating, will become stimulating if they combine it with another subject, and vice versa. For example, I’ve always liked the thought of chemistry and chemical reactions, but when math is involved, I don’t like it very much. I like to figure out the new products made from reactants, but I don’t like having to find the number of moles or grams, because math doesn’t interest me. I also think that kids shouldn’t be split up by their age groups. There are kids who are much smarter than their “age group”, and there are kids who aren’t. You often see in schools that kids from all different grades are friends, so why separate them into grades? As kids we have a stronger imagination, because the teachers aren’t giving you as much to do and as much to think about, so we can go into our imagination and think of whatever we can. As kids, we have the freedom to be as creative as we want and often kids will pretend that ordinary objects are greater than they actually are. My ability has decreased because I don’t think in that mindset anymore. I focus on other things and rarely go into my imagination. I would change a lot. First, I’d make it so that grades aren’t as big a deal as they are. Also, I’d make it so that kids can choose their classes, and not have as many required classes.
1. I would put myself on the scale of an academic person, although I don’t believe I am smart from a perspective of things that I could truly understand and take with me in life. I have been learning that to be smart you memorize facts and use them on a test, only to forget them a week, a month, a year later. This type of learning doesn’t make me smarter or help me later in life but it is what we are told to do and is one of the only ways to get a degree.
2. I believe that many kids are stunted with ADHD medicines that don’t allow them to reach their full potential. With all these advances in technology, it opens many doors to all the opportunities of kids to think outside of the box. Kids want to use all this technology available to them (video games, computers) to become more knowledgeable. All this stimulation makes them hyper and excited about it so when they have to sit in school eight hours a day with teachers boring their heads off, they are bouncing off the walls. Adults try to stop their genius by giving them drugs that force them to conform to standard education and this will hurt these kids with ‘ADHD’ in the long run.
3. Dr. Robinson believes that schools are based on Industrialism. The school system use bells to call us and dismiss us, they separate math, science, ect. into their own separate categories. They put us through school in groups according to our age, disregarding that each individual learns, functions, and advances at a different rate.
4. Our divergent thinking decreases as we get more educated because school teaches us that every thing only has a straightforward question and answer and there is no in-between. I defiantly think my divergent thinking has decreased. When Dr. Robinson was explaining his paperclip example, I thought to myself, ‘it’s a paperclip. It clips papers’. Then he was explaining that you could come up with thousands of uses, including that a paperclip might be huge and not made out of metal, I was shocked and almost scared that I couldn’t think of any. I paused the video and actually tried to think of additional ways to use a paperclip (if you want to know I thought of a sword for dolls and a way to unclog holes such as glue bottles or salt shakers) but it was really hard.
5. I wouldn’t change the school calendar necessarily but I believe that schools should be tailored to individual children’s needs. I think we should get rid of all standardized tests (I’ve actually thought that for a while) and we should have counselors that evaluate kids and create an individualized program for kids including what they learn, how fast they learn, and how they learn. Schools should also be specialized to interests of the children and base curriculum around it and not force kids that hate math to take calculus. Schools should also discourage homework to allow kids to explore things outside of school, such as job and intern opportunities, sports, and other things that interest them and then have time to get enough sleep at night so they can learn the next day.
I consider myself to be an “academic person”. I enjoy school and I usually do pretty well on tests and in school in general. I plan to go to college and find a career involving some sort of math. In regards to medication of kids, I couldn’t agree more. These days, if a kid has behavioral issues, then there is something clinically wrong with them. I do not think that means, however, that kids should be excused for not trying because they are distracted by things like social media. They just shouldn’t be treated like there is something wrong with them. I also agree that if a student is struggling to focus that he or she should get some help, but should not be medicated all the time. I also agree with the production-line mentality. The goal of many if not most high schools is to get the students in and out in four years. The ability to do “divergent thinking” decreases because when kids are young, they have nothing to limit their imagination. Once they start doing serious school they start focusing on grades and homework and standardized tests and lose some of that ability to seek multiple answers. I think my ability to think divergently has probably decreased. I’m not sure but I couldn’t think of many ways to use a paper clip off the top of my head. After watching this video, I would change school such that it’s more open-ended so it allows for thinking and not just memorizing facts. I would still require things like math and english and social studies so that students are not only knowledgeable in one area of learning. But I would change classes to be more exciting and interactive so that people can bounce ideas off of each other. I’m not sure about changing the system to not be based off of the age of students because while I do not think the production-line style is beneficial, logistically, it is difficult to treat each student individually on a scale as large as the population of the United States.
I would definitely consider myself an “academic person” mostly because of the fact that everything I’m good at things that are measurable. From standardized test scores, to GPA, to cross country times (non-academic but measurable). I totally agree with Dr. Robinson that American kids are over-medicated. It seems like every month of so when my mom suspects another case of ADD or other “medical” educational issues. It’s hard to believe that THAT many kids in one grade, one team of teachers, all have ADD. Dr. Robinson’s production line idea made complete sense to me. Especially, when he talked about the grade levels. I never quite understood why students are split up by age of graduation year. In 2nd grade I had the opportunity to move up and take 3rd Grade Language Arts, since I’d understood the 2nd grade material. It went really well and I only wish I could’ve continued, but no matter the reason (maybe my next teacher wasn’t interested) the next year I was in 3rd grade writing. My mom had always advocated for a 4th/5th Grade multiage class at Beverly Elementary, though I was not there to reap the benefits, Beverly now has a multiage classroom that helps the kids to not only blend grades but to learn more advanced material. Also, creativity isn’t seen as a place for jobs or a future. We don’t care enough for the future actors and artists, school is for geometry and US histories, which though are important shouldn’t be mandatory. The Divergent thinking is your creativity. When we are younger we are told anything is possible and we have a totally different mindset. Why do you think 4 year olds ask so many questions? My ability has definitely decreased, when I was little I thought of many, many ways to solve now a problem, now I think of a single way something can be solved, because other ideas are too risky or wouldn’t make any sense. Finally I would run school year round, with breaks for 2 weeks every 10 (Our family friends go to year round school and it’s a great idea). Classes should be set you me not my councilors. There shouldn’t be American Literature requirements for kids interested in Engineering and vice versa. I don’t see how either would relate/help the other. I also think that school should be divided by ability, with possible movement of grades with hard work. Lastly, on a side note, this video was one of the most interesting, and thought provoking things I’ve ever seen. Just wanted to point that out.
If I had to categorize myself between academic or non-academic people I would put myself into the academic section of the scale. In the day and age we live in it is very rare that a person is categorized as an academic person unless he/she strives in school. I do well in school so using that as a basis I would say I fit the bill for an academic person, I mean, I’m writing a blog for an AP class right now.
On the issue of over medication I would definitely agree with Dr. Robinson. I understand that everybody’s different and some get distracted easier than others but just because some people can’t sit down and work for hours on end doesn’t mean that they need medication to fix their “problems”, I think it’s more rare to find somebody who can work hard for 7 hours a day at school at home then come home, sit in their room and do homework for 4 or 5 more hours. This 11 or 12 hours of work a day is what society expects if a teenager wants to grow up into something successful, but this much work is unnatural and supplying medication to make this happen isn’t the answer.
On the issue of education based off of an old industrialization model I definitely agree with Dr. Robinson. The jobs that are becoming available are moving farther away from the required chemistry and English classes. Consider the class of chemistry. There are only a few chemist jobs out there and only few people will be skilled enough at chemistry to get them. With that being said it is still required as well as other science classes all through high school. Even though our society is shifting more into a computer driven one the only required class is computer tech which is widely considered a blow off class people take to get HW done in the “more important” core classes.
The skill of divergent thinking decreases as we get older and more educated due to the fact that we are told there is only one specific way to do something. There is only one answer to mathematics, one chemical compound is the answer to number 13 on the chemistry quiz, one date to when Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. We’ve grown up answering these questions everyday and these types of questions which require memory more so than thinking for yourself deteriorates your creativity the older you get. Think of the cavemen before any education, to us rocks are everyday objects scattering the ground, but to the creative cavemen rocks could be used as everything they need to keep them alive.
If I could change classes I would minimize the core classes that are hardly used in the future. I mean who uses algebraic expressions in everyday life anyway? And instead require more computer classes as well as specific classes for specific jobs so kids can see what they might want to do for a career in the future at a younger age.
1.Where do you put yourself on Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic people” or “non-academic people”? Why?
I put myself in-between both scales at above average. I think my ability to retain and regurgitate information which is basically our education system is not very hard and I can do fairly well. I also can think outside the box and be creative when I need to.
2. Do you agree w/ Dr. Robinson that American kids are over-medicated w/ Ritalin, etc. in such a stimulating time period? Why or why not?
This point that Dr. Robinson made about American kids being overly-medicated for “ADHD” is something I agree with strongly. I do believe is ADHD and its possible everyone has some form of it because everyone can become distracted at one point or another but to take medicine to help focus is pathetic in my opinion. If people have focusing problems and absolutly need something to calm their nerves that is understandable but its not reasonable for the percentage of the U.S. youth to take that much of Ritalin is awful. I think we should cut back on the use of medicine to focus because it shuts off other senses and doesn’t help kids learn just absorb whats being taught.
3. Discuss Dr. Robinson’s claim that American schools are based on an old industrialization model (production-line mentality).
Dr. Robinson breaks down the idea of our school system being a industrialization based school system. Like a factory we are broken up by sections such as Science, Math, History, ect. We also are run by a factory bell or in school the dismissal bell. The production-line is how we are grouped by age and sent through the system as a group age similar peers. His argument that age doesn’t really set a good foundation for similarities and learning skills because some students work at a slower pace, with younger/older peers, or smaller/bigger groups.
4. Why does our “divergent thinking” ability decrease as we get more educated? Do you think your ability has decreased or increased? Why?
Our ability to tap into our divergent thinking decreases as we get older because we are more educated and lose the ability to think outside the box. Our ability to take something and see it in many perspectives decreases with our new knowledge of information. I’d say my divergent thinking skills have decreased some as I’ve grown older.
5. What changes would you make in our school calendar, classes, etc. after watching this video? Why?
After Dr. Robinson’s video I’d say our school system needs some educational reform. I’d add an elective class for specifically divergent thinking to open the minds of those who have lost that ability. I’d lower standardized testing because it doesn’t measure anything except how well someone can do process of elimination. Our school system needs work but those would be my first couple steps to help that.
I see myself on the academic side of the scale because I go to one of the top schools in the state and, I don’t want to sound pretentious but ever since I was little I was told I was smart. And that was probably the worst thing you could tell me because the second I don’t excel at something I think I’m a failure. Granted, I know that I’m not that good a lot of things and I’ve come to accept that. There’s such a huge gap between the academic kids and the non-academic kids, even when you’re little. In elementary school they separate you into different reading groups and all the smart kids read the advanced books and everyone else reads the normal books. I labeled as a smart kid, but I didn’t like it. I tried to get out of the special programs they put me in, which eventually worked. The whole system of separating kids into groups of “gifted” and “not gifted” seems so stupid to me, even when I was little.
I kind of agree with Dr. Robinson that kids are overmedicated. However, there are a lot of kids out there that need that medication. If more and more kids keep getting higher doses of medication then the one kid who actually needs the medication might not get it. Kids are told that if they work hard they can go to college and get a job, but that’s not really true. You might not get a job and you’re in mountains of debt. So, what’s the point of trying? Furthermore, I agree that we shouldn’t give kids such high doses of these drugs because they can be very dangerous and addictive. Kids might not want to concentrate in school because, sorry to all the teachers out there, but it’s boring. And that’s no reason to hype them up with drugs to make them concentrate. Maybe they don’t need drugs. Maybe they just need something to get them interested in learning.
I agree with Dr. Robinson that American schools are like a factory. He makes a good point when he questions why kids are separated by grades. Age isn’t the only thing that separates a freshman from a senior. Some kids do better in groups or by themselves. Some kids need a bit more help before they get it, and others don’t. There’s a million factors that influence education so why is age the only thing that defines us?
I think out “divergent thinking” decreases as we grow older because you become educated. One kid might be a really great divergent thinker when he/she is little but their teacher, the one who controls their grade, will tell them that their way of thinking is wrong. There’s only one answer and this is it. There’s no other way to do it. So, when that kid is told his/her way of thinking is wrong, he/she probably won’t think that way anymore. And overtime, his/her ability to do that will decrease. Just because one person says something wrong, doesn’t mean they’re right.
If I could change something about our school I would make it more individualized. You should be able to take classes that will apply to whatever you want to do. And if you don’t know what you want to do, then you’ll get a ton of help figuring that out. Of course, there will be classes that every student has to take. Also, the standard classes should actually apply to real life. They should teach you finance how to read legal documents, and other things that people should know how to do when they go out into the real world.
I’d like to think that I am an academic person, I feel like school is just something that I feel the need to do; it pushes me to think “Alright, time to work hard” and keeps me from slipping. I like the way stuff like standardized testing works, for no real reason, I just kind of like the format. I feel like I am an academic student not by choice but because that’s where I’m supposed to be.
Yes, I agree that people are overmedicated, but some people actually do need to be medicated, I feel like we are just overmedicating in terms of people being medicated, not in terms of dosage. People feel like “oh, I am failing school, I probably have a learning disorder” and then their doctor goes “yeah sure, take 1 milligram of Ritalin”, it doesn’t solve anything, it just makes everybody a little more oblivious and unreactive.
I completely agree that schools are based on a worn out model of a long time ago. They do not have any real pull for kids now a days because schools just cause us agony, it’s not enough that who even knows if there will be jobs available when I graduate, what about when my kids graduate? The education system is just a used template that repeats every year with no real progress, and now it’s even harder because school moves faster making it harder to grasp subjects.
I think that divergent thinking decreases as we age because school is causing us to be oppressed and shaken of our creativity, and schools combat that by saying “But…but…but… we have art classes” and it’s like “well yeah but they are for a grade and we draw what teacher says to draw. It just keeps us from being ourselves and helps us develop a camouflage to wear in the real world to hide out true selves.
I think that I am from now on going to draw pictures and stuff, I will draw stuff all over the place to help me think and focus and express myself to be truly me, I am going to also drop out of school and start a post-surf punk ska tribute band. But maybe not, I will probably just draw more.
For my entire life I was lucky enough to be able to receive an extraordinary education and I think I would credit that to me being a fairly academic person. Sure ,I don’t enjoy all subjects that we are taught in school ( specifically chemistry) but I’m not one of those people who finds school unbearable. What else would I do with my time if I wasn’t in school anyway. Id actually be so bored. I guess I consider myself academic because I care about school and my grades. I don’t really think being academic necessarily means you are brilliant or in all honors and AP classes. It’s a part of it because you have to care about what you do in school but if you are trying really hard in regular classes and getting Bs or Cs I think you would still be able to say that you are academic. I don’t know I guess it depends on who you ask.
As far as ADHD meds like Ritalin I think that they have become way to accessible to people who don’t really need them. Like I know a ton of really hyper ADD people and I understand why they need it because like if I were them Id actually never get anything done but I personally know a lot of people ( specifically juniors) who are under so much stress that they feel like in order to do well they need the meds to help them even if they don’t actually need it. Also I feel like a lot of people take advantage of the meds for their side effects because I know that it makes you not want to eat so people use it to lose weight also which really isn’t okay. So I feel like doctors need to be more careful about who they give the medication too. I also feel like there must be someway to help people learn without drugs when they have ADHD but no one really knows how yet.
The Guy from the video compares public schools to the assembly line basically. He mentioned the fact that we go by bells, have separate facilities and have separated subjects that we go by. I guess I kind of see how that makes sense but I feel like schools today try their best to help students customize their schedules to appeal to them so there is some purpose to their years in school. Like yeah everything is really organized and there are certain criteria that everyone needs to meet in order to pass a class or graduate but I don’t see anything wrong with that.
Our divergent think abilities decrease as we get older and go through school because we are commonly told what the right answer is or how to do something “the right way” instead of figuring it out ourselves. So we train our brains to see everything in one way, the most efficient way, the quickest way, the easiest way.
One change I think would be good to make in school is lower the amount a final is worth in a class. I don’t think that’s is fair you work hard all trimester to do well or whatever when basically your whole grade really depends on one test. And people will say well if your grade changes that much from a final then you should have done better in the class before but today in school we have such a high standard that maintaining a 97% in our classes is not realistic. How can you use one test to determine your grade. Maybe you are just having an off day or something. So yeah I think that is annoying.
On Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic people” or “non academic people” I would probably place myself as an academic person only because I am generally interested in school and have always been like that. Academics haven’t always come easily nessecarily but school has been something that I have both enjoyed and worked through throught the years.
I think that in society today there are so many distractions everywhere that can’t be escaped, especially with so much technology and access to social media. I also think that ADD and ADHD are definitely real problems that people have but also I think it had become mainstream to take drugs that help kids focus and the problem is more widespread than it should be. There definitely are downfalls of having to be medicated and unless students really can’t do well without them I think there should be other ways to cut distractions and help focus aside from medication.
When I think about it. schools definitely are formed into a very orderly, production-line model, which works for some people and doesn’t work for others. The system is good because it guarantees everyone equal opportunity but also not everyone can strive in a classroom, textbook setting and sometimes the education system doesn’t bring out people’s best skills.
When you’re younger your imagination is definitely bigger and more creative and the world seems to have less limits. Once kids go through years of school learning and being told what to and what not to do it can limit creativity and divergent thinking goes away.
Changes that I would make to the school system are probably just things that would reduce stress like better preparation and emphasis on tests and also more discussion and application to real life scenarios. Schools would also teach and require more usefel life skills like financing and problem solving.
Whether I like it or not, at this point, I think I’m an academic person. I put a lot of personal value behind school, assignments, and personal completion. All I know is that “Look, everything you’re learning is valuable,” and when I’m told that, I can try to apply myself, whether I find a lot of personal value in what I’m studying or not, but typically, I do.
I think parents could be overreacting with the Ritalin and Adderall medicating of their children, I think it’s generally wrongly placed misunderstanding of what being a child is like, a time of excitement, especially in such a stimulating time. Although, I think some parents just might not be able to handle or keep up with their children, or the kids are having a genuinely hard time focusing on things, which could be a serious problem. If it’s not, then I hope kids aren’t medicated by behavior-controlling drugs anymore.
I’d say that the claim that American schools are based on an old industrial idea is somewhat accurate. The children go into a big building, they have scheduled hours in specific subjects (most of the time), and the big offense to children in that system is that they’re separated in packages by age, not skill. Although this is probably true for a majority of schools, schools like Groves allow kids to take academic subjects like Math and Science slower or faster than the average student, so that makes the system a little more progressive here.
The divergent thinking ability likely decreases with becoming educated because before we’re educated, at a kindergarten age for example, we don’t understand how the world works. Every day we’d learn something new, and back then, anything new was absolutely mind-shattering. “ALL bugs start as eggs?” “We have HOW MANY bones?” “They built WHAT for WHAT purpose back then?” We didn’t understand the fundamental laws that govern the universe, and because of that, absolutely anything was possible to us back then. As we become more educated, we tend to follow a path, BasisNew ConceptNew ConceptEtc. We can always trace things to some fundamental rule or reasoning that we learned in the Basis. If you don’t stay curious and continue to seek out new discoveries and that excitement of learning something for the first time, I think you tend to become a less divergent thinker.
If I were to make a change in the educational system, I would probably introduce children to a test after kindergarten that would examine their interests, level of interest in the standard educational system (Linear or Non-Linear or somewhere in-between). They would then be recommended to go to a school specialized for their results, but they wouldn’t have to, and they could switch any time during their educational career. This would help kids learn at their own pace, pursue their personal interests, and get an education that they’re interested in exploring, making school more interesting.
1. On Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of academic people and non academic people I would say I am an academic person because I believe that I am smart and work hard to achieve good grades in school and keep up my GPA. Even though all the classes, work and test taking can be challenging I push on to achieve the best I can and get into a good college and have a good job.
2. For Dr. Robinsons statement that American kids are getting over medicated with different drugs to keep them focused in school, I partly agree. I do think that some parents will give their kids medication In order for them to focus in school thinking that it will help them concentrate more, but also some kids will go through school focused or unfocused without using medication.
3. Dr. Robinson thinks that education is modeled on the interests of industrialism. He stated that schools are still based off of factory lines because of the ringing bells, separate facilities, separate subjects and separating children’s grade level by age group. Instead of standard testing and conformity we should be moving in the opposite direction into standardization.
4. Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. Divergent thinking is the essential capacity for creativity. Our divergent thinking ability has decreased as we’ve gotten more educated because we’ve gotten older and in school we are taught there is only one answer, not multiple. This happens because we have to think different about human capacity, we are taught that the best learning is done in groups (collaboration is growth), and everyone is focused on the habits of our institutions and the habits they occupy.
5. After watching this video changes I would make for the schools is the way finals are set up. I don’t think everyone should have to take them if they most likely are going to lower the student’s grade and GPA, or the schools should set them up where if the student gets a certain grade they shouldn’t have to take them. I also think it would be helpful if the teachers can accommodate the students and help them learn in a way they’re most comfortable with rather than one standard way. I think incorporating more classes on life skills and what the students want to do in life will be more helpful and prepare them for college and working a job.
Based on Dr. Ken Robinson’s analysis of modern education, I place myself towards the “academic” side instead of the “Non-academic” (whatever that means). Of course, I live in Birmingham, Michigan and go to Birmingham Public Schools which are some of the best in state, meaning I don’t have a great scope of the teachings of other school districts like those in the inner city. I think Dr. Robinson brings up many valid points, including the simple fact that the educational system in place today was created during the industrial revolution, meaning the old ways of teaching/testing should have evolved with the economy and ways of the times, but simply hasn’t. Although this is true, I do not agree with whatever he means by “Non-academic” people; every person has their chances to strive for excellence, but granted many try and put forth much more effort than others towards this. With this said, the profiling of “Non-academic” has no value; every person has knowledge from their life, disregarding their grades as some may have put more effort into what they believed was important to them during times of high school and college. The only reason I put myself into the “academic” category was because every person is academic in their own way. I have received good grades throughout my years of schooling, which I guess makes me ‘smart’ by todays standards of standardization.
I believe today’s kids are over medicated by dangerous drugs like Adderall/Ritalin/X*nax. My belief is that the minds of these kids who believe they need pills to concentrate on work have been twisted at a young age to become dependent on others for help or the hope that these drugs would be able to settle their erratic thoughts of anxiety and attention deficits. Of course, a teenagers mind is different than all other ages, but pills are not the way to control the situation.
I agree with Dr. Robinson’s theory that todays schools are based off the industrial periods schools which makes no sense, as the world has evolved dramatically since, but education hasn’t. Kids are grouped together based on age to perform at their level that they’re supposed to. Obviously, if age determined knowledge, this system wouldn’t be so flawed. I believe that a basis of knowledge that we have today of a variety of subjects is a great way to set up opportunity for kids, but the way that all are expected the strive in every subject is ridiculous. Teenagers should be able to choose interests while also gathering a basic knowledge of a wide variety of subjects, which would help them find what interests them. This isn’t as excuse to slack off, but instead a different way to gain what you can out of each person as every mind is different.
The ideas of divergent thinking have been proved thoroughly. A basic example is the mind of a toddler. If a child is taught how to play an instrument or speak two languages at a very young age, they will learn it much more quickly as their minds aren’t flooded with the worries of the outside world or testing. Learning Spanish and English while growing up around the age 2-8 would have benefitted more than trying to learn now, as I have a base that I am an English speaker. it has also been proven that music opens up the mind at a young age and helps the development of a young mind. When I have children, I hope to speak to them in English and French while they are very young as it is easier to learn while your mind is not yet flooded. With this said, I believe my divergent thinking has decreased over the years, and this goes side by side with the word creativity. As a kindergartener, anything is possible. You could be in a spaceship in your backyard and it would be real, but if an adult thought they were in a spaceship in their backyard, they would be crazy. Divergent thinking has decreased due to the judgement of society.
If it were up to me, I would start school at 9 and end at around 4 or 4:15. This way, the student would be fully awake in the morning and able to have lunch at a normal time, along with giving their full attention during their classes. This would still leave time for extra curricular activities and homework after school.
As I agree with some of Dr. Ken Robinson’s theories, I have my own opinions about the classifications of educated people.
1.I would see myself on the academic side, but honestly the reason for this is a little complex. I would have never considered myself an academic person before freshman year. This is because i was cognizant of how the schooling system worked and how i could use it to my advantage. Before high school i slacked off and had fun because i knew that this would be my last chance for that before everything became standardized and all future deciding like it has. I knew how the system worked because my brother, 3 years my senior, had told me in great detail, maybe too much for an 11 year old, but eventually i got it.
2, I am forced to answer the second question vicariously because i have never been tested or thought to have ADHD. Friends of mine do and i feel that it calms them in some cases but thats not always a good thing during school hours. During school i feel like it would be more of a disadvantage to be on a drug that makes you lackadaisical. In many cases when friends of mine have told me that they have ADHD i was very surprised. This is because I always thought that the diagnosis of the ailment would only be applicable to people who entirely can’t function in a classroom. Clearly i was wrong or the disease is just a by product of over critical parents and money hungry drug makers.
3. I think that Dr. Robinsons claim hits the nail on the head. We are shipped out of high school like produce. Grade to grade we move through stages of production until we are deemed as ripe enough to continue. Then we go into further processing and conformation during college until we are finally thrust into the world to be eaten up by industries and businesses or left on the shelves to be thrown away. Its sad but thats how life is and i don’t have any faith that that will change soon. I agree completely we are assembled like cars on an assembly line but instead of adding new parts, creativity and divergent thinking ability is stripped away.
4. I think that the divergent thinking ability is peeled away because of the way tests are administered. We can learn so much about a subject and the history of it but once we are tested on our knowledge there is only one answer. Some teachers even have us tested on what is the “more right” answer and i don’t like that at all. Each person could have their own opinion on how right or wrong an answer is and you can’t expect anyone to have the same view point as you. Im aware of my divergent thinking being taken away somewhat and i think it has decreased substantially since i was in kindergarden. But some classes give me a little time to show my creativity. Classes like english and some electives really give students a chance to showcase their opinions and creativeness.
5. the only thing i would change is the content of the classes and the teaching strategies. i think that that would solve a multitude of problems. i think that the classes could be shorter and that we could fit more hours in a day. With more hours there would be smaller class size and more one on one time with teachers. Teaching strategy would also change with that. Finally the content of the classes could be more applicable to getting a job and becoming a functioning member of society in later life. For instance, how is Stoichiometry going to help me in the future? All I am saying is classes could have more useful things being taught than certain core classes.
Blog #59
On Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic people” to “non academic people” I would put myself in the middle. I believe that I am a “smart” person but my grades have never matched up to my ability. For me its hard to learn something that I ma no interested in at all, thats one of the main reasons my grades fluctuate so much depending on a chapter or concept we are learning. Based on his scale I guess I would be towards the “non academic person” side. I believe in this day and age that kids are very dependent on drugs like adderall for their “ADHD”. Now having ADHD is one of the easiest things to pass off that you have, because you can’t pay attention so you need help to pay attention. Most of the time you can’t pay attention its for the reason that you are completely uninterested in the topic, not because you just can’t focus on anything in general. The things that we learn in school I think is pushing kids to say they have ADHD, if we didn’t learn things that you don’t use in the future or you would never need for your personal job profession Adderall and other drugs would be less abused and so common. The way schools teach kids makes no sense to me, through out school besides college we learn four basic subjects, going through the books and chapters, with each year it gets a little bit harder of the same overall idea. When by high school most kids have a pretty good idea on which subjects they like and don’t and that will further tell the which form of job they will get. If I completely hate math, why should I learn it? There will be a zero percent chance that I will go into a profession that will need above algebra math because it just would not be logical for me. With this production line style of learning you can’t go off and express yourself in any type of way, you learn the material from the book, then move on, never further learning what you want to know just what the book wants you to know. I 100% believe that my divergent thinking has increased, as my “education” increases. I used to be far more creative and generate ideas so much easier, but when you are learning things that only a book tells you and not learning the ideas you want to further go upon it stops the creative juices. When a creative project comes up (once in a blue moon) in a class I find it very hard to do something because they are not providing me with a set topic from a set book. Some changes I would make is that first of all I would keep everything the same before high school, but when you get to high school it should be about what you want to learn to get the career you want. If you want to be a scientists on research for cancer or something like that there is no need to take a social studies class, and you probably wouldn’t enjoy it either. Just like if you wanna become a lawyer, there is no need what so ever to take a science class because one it wouldn’t interest you at all, and two it would never be used. Are mind is filled up with useless information that we won’t need for the future when it could just as easily be filled up with things that will further ourselves in the future to live a comfortable and happy life.
I consider myself an academic person because I work hard at the classes and activities I do and I do well in them. In my family, grades reflect how hard you work not how smart you are. So I would be considered an academic person because I work hard and take time to learn and understand everything I do, not because I am naturally smart (which I’m most certainly not).
I do agree that kids are over-medicated. Doctors and parents give their children medicines to help them focus, it seems like they are trying to make their students smarter. They label the act of distraction and procrastination as a disorder. Like Dr. Robinson said I do agree some kids actually have disorders like ADHD, but I believe most are just diagnosed as an excuse as the reason some kids don’t do well in school and are too distracted. I get distracted a lot, but the only reason I’m considered not to have a disorder is because when I do get my work done, and I end up doing it well and get good grades. The kids taking the medicines are the ones that get distracted, end up finishing the homework later, but they unfortunately get a bad grade on it because maybe they don’t really understand the subject. Drugs should not be the answer for this so-called “epidemic” because then these kids will become dependent on them for the rest of their lives. We need to figure out a different solution.
American schools are definitely made on the old production-line mentality. Schools require these core subjects and certain electives to graduate. We have to take a language and a certain number of years of math, language, history, and science; then we have to take art, business, and gym classes. We all have to take these classes in order to graduate and get into college, but not everyone is good in every single one of those classes. I’m very good in math and science classes and I enjoy English and history, but I’m terrible at art, gym, and engineering classes. My friend, on the other hand, is great at English and art classes, but hates and struggles sometimes in math and science. Unfortunately for her the school requires her to take those classes she hates and makes me take the class I would fail at if the teachers weren’t so forgiving. By the end, we took tons of classes that will be useless to us in the future.
Our “divergent thinking” decreases because instead of thinking about all the possible ways, we think about the certain way we learned it in class and the way that will be marked right on test. We are told in school that there is only one (possibly two) right answer and the rest are wrong. My ability has certainly decreased because when Dr. Robinson asked to think of all the ways to use a paper clip, I only came up with five (a little sad I know) because I am used to the one-right answer rule.
In my opinion, the school calendar is fine so far, but I would change what and how we learn. I think we should be able to choose the classes we want to understand what we like and focus on that. If we want two science classes, we get two science classes and forget the art. If we want three art classes, we forget the history. I also think we should learn more of real world problems with multiple outcomes and solutions instead of the one question and one answer rule because we would then be better prepared for our jobs in the real world.
On Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of academic and non-academic people, I would put myself leaning towards the academic people side. I would be classified as an academic person because I put in effort in school and see the importance of getting good grades in order to get into a good college. Also the way I see the definition of academic is, not just how smart someone is, but how much you want to be educated. If you are truly seeking education and want to be academic, you can be. The good grades you get from being well-educated and academic, is what really counts in school, and I think I would classify myself as someone who obtains good grades. I would sort of agree with Dr. Robinson that kids in America are over-medicated with drugs like Ritalin that speeds up your system in order for you to be on task and more focused. I don’t think that many people are in the process of doing this stimulant drug because it seems pointless if you could make yourself work harder without being over-medicated. But I do think that some kids would take Ritalin in order to get rid of their social anxiety or other internal issues they might have. Dr. Robinson talks about the idea of the American school systems being like industrialization based system, such as production lines. It actually relates to a factory very well. We are broken up into age groups, the ability of our knowledge (honors or advanced classes), and also broken up into different classes such as math, science, English, etc. Robinson’s argument about this statement is that we should not being grouped by our age, but by the way we learn and educate ourselves. I would have to agree with him because if they way we were split up into groups were different, it might have a better impact on the way we learn. The reason our divergent thinking decreases as we get older is because we learn from teachers exact and straight forward answers to questions. This sort of makes us not want to think outside the box and into more detail of how things work and the questions that we are being asked. I think my divergent thinking actually increased only because I still like to have my own views on things and I like to have opinions. I also think outside the box when being asked questions and try to back up my answers with knowledge that I didn’t get from textbooks and what not. The only major changes I would make to the American school systems is filtering out things that we NEED to know vs. the things that they WANT us to know. Some things that we are being taught have no relevance to what we need to know in the future. All these irrelevant things that we are being taught are only being taught to test on our skill of remembering what we learned and understanding the concepts. Another minor adjustment should be the length of a school day and to not suck the life out of everyone’s days and especially the mornings.
If I had to put myself on a side of Dr. Robinson’s I would put myself on the academic side. School is a big part of my life and I do try extremely hard to do well. I do however think that this system is somewhat unfair because there are kids who are smart just not “book smart.” It is sad but true that in today’s world grades pretty much determine a persons future, and the future for the people who aren’t “school smart” but still try their hardest is at risk just because they don’t always get A’s in a certain class.
I definitely agree with Doctor Robinson on the issue of over medication of kids. Some kids can be more distracted than others but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have a “problem” and need to be on medication for it. Students are expected to sit in school all day long and then go home and do homework for a million hours in order to have a successful future; it is not uncommon for kids to be fidgety and distracted trying to focus on subjects they don’t have a lot of interest in for twelve hours a day, five days a week. Medication is not the answer to this problem.
I agree that American schools are based off an old industrialized model. Everyday students are expected to go to school, and get good grades in order to have a successful and rewarding life. It doesn’t make sense that we have all these required classes that may not have anything to do with where we want our careers to take us. Fr example if someone wants to be a historian why would they want to take chemistry? I think schools are designed to help kids succeed in standardized testing more so than their future which makes absolutely no sense to me.
Divergent thinking for me and many other people has definitely decreased through the years. In school there is always one answer to everything. There aren’t creative ways for us to do anything anymore because most of what we learn is memorization of one method, date, ect. When I was little I thought anything was possible because there was always a different way to do something. Now I don’t think like that because everyday at school we are taught to know certain things and how to do tasks efficiently in one manner.
If I could change anything about school I would give everybody the opportunity to take classes they would need to help their career of choice, not require classes that would help them get a good ACT score.
I would put myself under “academic people” according to Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale. I consider myself a smart person and according to Robinson, that is what qualifies you to be an “academic person.” Although I don’t know what qualifies you as a “dumb” person, or a “nonacademic person,” so Robinson’s scale doesn’t make much sense. I do not agree that kids are over-medicated but I do agree that we live in an extremely stimulating time period. It’s true that we, kids, work harder than any other generation before us just because we have to in this competitive world. But if certain kids require medication to get them through the day, I don’t see a problem with that. They could have been born like that and they can’t help that their minds tend to wander. I don’t think Robinson’s claim about production-line mentality is very valid. I think it’s obvious that a 10-year-old knows a lot more than a 5-year-old. As we get older, that knowledge line starts to blur but I still think it makes sense that we are grouped by age. Although we aren’t truly… We have classes (class of 2015!) but in high school we have classes with kids of all grade 9 through 12 so we are not necessarily stuck with an age group. Our “divergent ability” decreases as we get more educated because in school, we are told (generally) that there is only one correct answer. I think this makes a lot of sense. I think my own “divergent ability” has definitely decreased. When you’re young, you are encouraged to use your imagination and as a high school student, you are told basically the opposite. Being creative does not get you into college but when you’re young you don’t have things like that to worry about. After watching this video, I would want to have no required classes in school. We get to choose all the classes we take. This creates for a great classroom environment because all the kids who are there are there because they really want to be. And then they wouldn’t need medication to stay focused because they have chosen something that interests them. And when you’re interested in something, you tend to think more about it which gives you the ability to be more “divergent.”
I would consider myself both non-academic and academic. I consider myself an “academic person” in the strict category of earning grades. I care enough about my grades that I make an attempt to study and earn high grades, but when it comes to school, omitting the earning grades category, I consider myself a “non-academic” person because I don’t care enough about retaining the knowledge for a long period of time (forever) as I do about retaining the knowledge long enough to earn a good grade on the test. The downside to not caring about anything other than grades is that I forget everything we learn after we take the tests, and because of this I consider myself a non-academic person.
I do agree with Dr. Robinson that kids are over medicated because today, if people are having the slightest trouble with concentrating, for any number of reasons, they immediately blame their troubles on ADHD without considering any other options. As a result they immediately go for the medication, but people shouldn’t see Ritalin as the only option. If the way kids are taught is altered a certain way, they concentration could also be altered. We should start considering other options of retaining kids attention besides the Ritalin.
Dr. Robinson’s claim that American schools are based on an old industrialization model makes some sense to me in the way that American schools are set up, with separation of subjects etc within the schools, but when he expressed his opinion on the separation of grade levels it seems a tad ignorant to me. Schools are split up by age because when kids begin schooling at the age of three or four, there is no other way to split them up. By that age, they haven’t retained a great amount of knowledge that would make it easy to discern between the kids enough to split them up in a different way. From that point on, kids are all receiving the same knowledge in school. Yes, I understand that kids can excel outside of school, by which point there are other options the students and parents can take advantage of that pertains to this situation (extra-curricular activities, art classes, writing classes, music classes, sports etc).
Our “divergent thinking” ability decreases because as we get older, we are taught in school that there is one right answer. We are all only looking for that one right answer and we are so consumed with finding it that we don’t think that there can be more than one correct option. I definitely think my ability has decreased because the only thing I think about is finding the answer to get the problem right to get the high grade to get the high GPA to get into the right college and this has made my thinking so shallow and one sided that I have forgotten that there are other options.
I would certainly change the way kids are taught in regard of standardized testing and grades. Right now kids are trained to think that grades and test scores are the most important things in their life, that they are losing sight of the other more important things in life. I would minimize the amount of standardized testing that kids are put through and I would minimize the emphasis that is put on grades in American schools.
There is no one correct answer, and that is one of the biggest problems we face when trying to reform anything, especially education. The views of most Americans today seem to be “2 dimensional”. People are taught something, and told to recite it on paper to prove that they are “smart” which is called “learning”. I put these words in quotations to question their true meanings, and people’s connotations of them. Changing people’s perspective about why education is necessary is the key to successfully reforming it.
The question whether I view myself as an “academic people” or “non-academic people” only reiterates the theory that Americans view things 2D. Every single child born is different from the one born before and after them. How are you going to categorize them at all, let alone between two sections? To concretely place myself in a category of the above options, I would need more information as to what qualifies me to be included in either section. With the information I have now, I would side myself more towards the “academic people” even though most likely display some characteristics that Dr. Robinson would consider “non-academic”. I side myself on the academic side more, because I do value and truly care about my education as it will help develop me into a strong adult. This idea of academic vs. non-academic strongly ties into people being divergent thinkers. This tie is connected by one of my strongest beliefs; that there is a difference between knowledgeable and smart people. The second a child is born, the questions “what” and “why” are being asked with every new thing that they encounter. As they grow and become more educated through school, they are forced to ask the question “what” more often as they prepare to take multiple test to display there “intellect”. The average person will want to know what the words of the Pledge of Allegiance are. While the divergent thinkers will not only want to know what the words of the Pledge of Allegiance are, but why they pledge in the first place. This amplifies the difference between people who can remember the difference between an ionic and covalent bond, and whether Andrew Jackson was for states’ rights or a central government; and someone that can explain to you why the tactics of Martin Luther King Jr. worked based upon their own opinion and reasoning, and not something they learned in school. I feel that I have managed to stay a divergent thinker, due to the school I attended previous to Groves. This school was very encouraging of kids to always ask the question why. We try to educate kids faster and faster so we can compete with other countries to be the top nation, and this does no good for the development or health of the brain. Some kids might not be as affected by all of this overwhelming memorization, while it can take a real toll on others. This probably has some effect on the number of kids diagnosed with ADHD. But while we try to make children into mini professionals, knowing everything about every subject, we tend to forget who they really are; kids. A child’s instinct is not to go and sit in a desk and stare aimlessly for six and a half hours, they want to play and wonder and live. Any sign we get that a kid doesn’t like being lectured is a clue that they might have attention problems, and that quickly needs to change. Not only are kids being misdiagnosed and treated, but they are also under the impression that something is wrong with them; because they have an active/curious mind. School should feel like a place where you can grow mentally, a place that you value, and maybe even enjoy. But many kids would agree with Dr. Robinson’s point that school is like an assembly line, as you reach the point where you’re basically going through the motions. While it is possible that a 14 year old is in the same or higher math than a 16 year old, the difference in maturity is what makes an 18 year old ready to graduate before a 13 year old. And what if the older child is not able to do the same level of math that others can? Does that mean he never gets to graduate? Understanding different skill sets in different people is another problem we face when trying to reform education. A balance between a well-rounded education, and exposing a student’s strengths and weaknesses needs to be found.
While public education during grade-school might be the base problem, the answer cannot be achieved without the cooperation of colleges. Colleges keep competing with each other, trying to create an image of themselves as a “top college”. This leads to more requirements for students to get into college. Schools have to hurry to try and get in all of the required information for colleges, while also making sure that they are better than their neighboring school districts. If we reform early education without some reform to colleges, students would not meet the current requirements that colleges ask for. Reforming education will not occur over night, but finding the right place to start is the first step in a long journey.
I would consider myself an academic person by all means, including Sir Robinson’s but I think the fact that I learn in an academic fashion is not the only element of my intelligence and aspirations for knowledge. I think this “scale” is really based more strictly on tangible, finite, and measurable academic achievements and aspirations as opposed to all those that occur in daily life. I am certainly anti-medication especially in the region of neurological anesthesia. I’m a naturalist of sorts and I believe that if your brain is programmed to have as many thoughts ad it does, it is ever so capable of, with practice, being able to handle all of them. If you really aren’t able to function, something needs to change. Your brain may not be designed to be exposed to as much stimulation as it is but I think it’s a horrible thought to literally just cut off part of your brain’s activity in order to better focus on what you “should be” doing. I think Robinson’s theory about the assembly line is a very good one. However, I don’t think mindless grouping is the largest problem. As long as the students are exposed to the knowledge, it is, ultimately, their job to absorb it. I think divergent thinking is traditionally decreased with education due to a concept of “the right” answer. However, I think education has changed slightly and there is a lot more focus now on thinking outside the box. Also, I’ve also fancied myself a little divergent so I hope my divergent thinking skills are at least better than that of other’s, if they have decreased. I don’t really think I’d make any changes. I think the most important thing is access to knowledge which, quite frankly, I have more than enough of at the moment.
When I think of myself as person on Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale, I would not place myself in either “academic” or “non-academic”. In my life there are certain subject where I excel but there are also subjects where I find myself struggling. I care tremendously about grades and I have a drive to get good grades but sometimes having a drive isn’t enough. There are times where I become frustrated with myself because I may get a good grade on a test but I don’t fully understand the concept. To Dr. Robinson getting the good grade means I’m an academic person but to me that’s just luck or good guessing.
I agree with Dr. Robinson that kids are being over medicated with Ritalin and other medication to help them focus but with todays distraction I don’t think it is a bad thing. With school being as competitive as it is having an aid to help you through it, maybe what many kids need. If it is going to help you be the student you want to be I don’t see a problem with someone taking it.
I completely agree with Dr. Robinson claim that American schools are based on an old industrialized model. The point that he made about students going through school based on date “manufactured” really clicked. Who decided that just because someone is fourteen years old means that it is time to enter high school and begin their journey to the rest of their lives. I happen to think that just because majority maybe ready, majority isn’t everyone and when you look at education no child should be left behind because everyone deserves to have a chance in school and with the industrial look of education it’s easy for a child to fall of the production line.
As we get more educated divergent thinking decreases because we are constantly being told there is one answer and if you don’t get that one answer you are wrong and it becomes mentally draining. You may have a vialled answer but unless it is in a book you get a zero. My divergent thinking has definitely decreased. I remember when I was younger that I could sit in a room with someone and pretty much give them thousands of uses for a paper click but today I can barley think of 5 off the top of my head.
After watching this video I would change the meaning of grades. Grades are how well you understand something, so I do not think that it is productive in schools to give students tests have students do bad then just let it fly by and move on to the next topic. Instead of schools focusing on memorization and test taking, schools should focus on understanding the concepts and being apply them to normal a conversation which is why I prefer discussion based classes. I also believe schools should focus on students skills and help them excel in those but also make sure they are full rounded by helping them in other classes and making being in a “lower” level class not a bad thing. In my ideal world I would make travelling in schools a thing, so that you can actually go and see the ruins of a war, instead of sitting in a classroom and talking about them, or going and immersing yourself in a specific culture instead just looking at pictures on a white board.
If I had to place myself on the academic scale, with 10 being academic and 1 being non academic I would probably put myself at a 6.5. I say this because I get good grades and I have good work ethic but often I feel like my brain is a colander. I absorb all the information I need to achieve the short term goal of acing a test but once that’s over all the information seems useless and gets deleted from my brain files. Also putting people on a scale like this is virtually impossible because the word smart is so subjective. Someone who might possess all the books smarts in the world may lack common sense. When Dr. Robinson said that kids are over-medicated during this stimulating time period, I was very hesitant to agree because I personally don’t know what it’s like to have ADHD. I can see his point where he says students are easily distracted from schoolwork by the stimulants of society, which could possibly be misinterpreted into being ADHD. And I also know that now-a-days it’s not very difficult to get prescribed drugs like Adderall and Ritalin. But on the other hand it’s hard to speak on a topic I don’t have much personal experience with. As Dr. Robinson said, schools are literally factories. Schools run like clockwork with bells, and designated eating times. We are the product of these factories. We’re built into these shiny bodies of cars with a nice looking exterior but with no engine, no passion, no foundation to stand on. Schools give us so much surface knowledge like geometry (which I hope I won’t use in the future) but they don’t supply us with what we need to stand on our own in the real world. Our divergent thinking abilities decrease as we are educated more because we are brainwashed into thinking logically and not imaginatively. We are told that there’s only one answer. Which would make sense in a subject like math, but we are told the same in English as well. The fact that we take multiple choice tests in the most subjective subject will forever be mind boggling to me. My personal ability as a divergent thinker has definitely decreased. I remember as a kid, whenever we were asked questions there would always be those kids that would pose the teacher with multiple “what if” scenarios, and even as a elementary school student I found this annoying. So maybe I wasn’t a divergent thinker to begin with. We are taught to give answers that the asker is looking for which is normally only one. I feel that my brained has been trained not to be a divergent thinker. We’re brought up to believe that if we go to school, get good grades, and go to college, we’ll get a good job and make tons of money. But maybe my goal in life isn’t to make a lot of money, maybe I just want to make a difference in someone else’s life, maybe I want to live the lifestyle of a roof Thatcher in the Amazon Rainforest. Education in general needs to be changed. We focus so much on the grading scale that we don’t learn anything. School is all about looking smart and not being smart. Imagine school without grades. We would probably appreciate education so much more if we didn’t feel like it controlled every aspect of our future. The Infamous ACT, the numbers that decide the rest of our future should also be reformed. The ACT should be a test that tests intelligence not test taking skills. And lastly I feel high school should be more so path based. You should be able to form a schedule that caters to what you plan to do in the future. How great would it be if subjects like Math, Science, English, and History were applied to the field that you feel you might want to enter. So thanks Mr. Wickersham for this blog because it had me furiously typing.
Based on Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic” and “non-academic” people, I would place myself on the academic standpoint. I place education at a very high personal value for myself. In middle school as well, academics was something that I took serious, and was very important for me. Doing well in school is what motivates me to keep excelling, and challenge myself to new obstacles. Although I value academics in school, I still think it is important for me to expand my knowledge in the arts. In school it is hard to express natural creativity, which is why I think it is also important to take the arts seriously and be able to express your imagination.
In relation to Dr. Robinson’s statement that kids are given too much ADD/ADHD medication, I would agree. I have no personal experience of the effects of this medication, but I have seen friends with ADHD that have taken different types of medication. One of the first things I notice is how this medicine can change the personality of a person. One of the major effects I notice is how it calms down the person greatly. I personally think that this medication kills the creativity of the individual and is not needed to improve the academic ability of the individual. I think many people look at this condition as a problem because they have trouble focusing on certain subjects of school, but I think it opens up new windows of opportunity to excel in different areas. I also believe that with the countless opportunities to learn outside of school with the advancements of technology, and the ability to learn almost anything with the Internet, that anyone can expand their knowledge exponentially outside of school.
In relation to Dr. Robinson’s claim that the school system is based on that of an old industrialization model, I would agree. It is similar to the function of an assembly line in the way we do the same thing everyday in a specific order. It is also similar in the way that the main goal of most high schools is to get the kids in and out and have them graduate in four years. He continued to talk about how the concept of students going to school together in accordance to their age is not the best idea, because not all kids that are the same age have the same learning abilities as one another. I think this assembly line style of learning leads to a decrease of divergent thinking in students. This is a result of kids going to school and repeating the same thing everyday, thus kids not being able to express their creative ability. The core classes such as math, and science are emphasized in school and are the main priorities to the students, and classes related to art aren’t as important to the students. I believe my divergent thinking ability has decreased. I can tell my thinking is not as creative from when I was younger. I still try to increase my ability to be a divergent thinker by trying to learn things outside of the curriculum of school. If I were to change anything about the school system I wouldn’t necessarily try to minimize the importance of core classes, but put more emphasis on classes that have more interest value to the students. I would also start and end the school day later in the day. I think many kids do not get enough sleep and end up waking up and going to school too tired. I find that I am more aware on days we have late starts, as opposed to school starting at 7:30.
If I had to rate myself on an academic grade scale I would say that I am academic. I pay attention in school, learn quite quickly and I see helpfulness and meaning in education. I also believe that getting an education helps you to become a better person and a more successful person. It is not possible for me to understand, first hand, the side effects of ADHD drugs like Ritalin but I do believe and agree with what Dr. Robinson says about how, even though it may be helping students “learn”, it is forcing them to learn about sometimes unimportant, boring topics. As we get older and we get more experienced in life, our creativity and imagination deteriorates. This is because we are exposed to things and we learn the truth and reality of certain circumstances. I do believe that my divergent thinking ability has decreased, but I am more divergent than many people I know. After watching this video my opinion on schooling has changed. I did not know that our school system was based on imperialistic times and now that I do it makes sense. I think, and have always thought that school choices should be more flexibly and open. In many cases my options have been restricted by classes that I need to take taking my spots I would have used for interesting electives. I think that, like in some European countries, students should be able to pick a path and not have to do some courses if they won’t actually help them in the future for their jobs. I also found it interesting that Dr. Robinson brought up how some students learn differently, so they should be taught differently. Like I think time of day should be up to the student and class hours should be pick able in high school on. I am okay with our education system but there are things that could be changed for the better.
On Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic and non-academic people” I would put myself on the side of “academic people”. I have always done well in school, and even though my parents haven’t been on top of me making sure that I get all A’s so that I can get in to college etc., this idea has been branded into me by countless other adults. At school, they constantly reinstate the idea that getting into college is getting harder and we must all try hard and get good grades. But what does being “academic” really mean these days? Is it just that you’re good at memorizing stuff and can solve for ‘x’ or is it that you have a vast knowledge of the world and a fundamental understanding of how to get by? School today focuses so much on the original subjects like math and science, and if you work hard enough in school, like we are so taught to do, then anyone can be considered “academic”. In regards to medication such as Ritalin and Adderall, I do agree that American kids are being over-medicated in such a stimulating time period. There is so much pressure put on teens to do well in school, and mind you all must be done in a timely manner, and some kids just can’t do that. Some people are smart and have good ideas, but can’t put everything down on paper or utilize their skills in such a crunched period of time. People are put on medication for not being fast enough at accomplishing tasks when really they’re just thinking of other things. If they were given more time, they probably would be able to accomplish what they were asked to, but instead they have doctors shoving drugs down their throats so that they can do things according to how society wants it done. My dad was born and raised in Germany and every time one of my siblings or I have a sore throat or headache he is appalled that we just get medicine and call it a day. Even the smallest of ailments, as we have been taught throughout the years, can be fixed by simply popping a tylenol or advil. I agree with Dr. Robinson when he claims that American schools are based on an old industrialization model. In school we are taught how to memorize useless knowledge that probably won’t pertain to our lives ever again. We are taught to “solve for x” and use the periodic table to write the electron configuration of Fluorine, but we aren’t taught about different cultures, and how we can help make the world a better place. We aren’t taught how to be innovative and curious. School is so basic and only focuses on such a small area of knowledge. Yes, schooling is becoming more and more competitive, but yes, the world is also changing and not everything has to be so cookie cutter anymore. I think our “divergent thinking” ability decreases as we become more educated because we are constantly told we are wrong if we don’t do something “right” in the eyes of the instructor. After hearing “no” or “you’re wrong” so many times you lose your confidence and don’t have the courage to try again. School does this to us. It instills in us that there is a right and wrong answer to everything, when really, there isn’t! My “divergent thinking” ability has definitely decreased. Whenever someone tells you you’re wrong or you’ve done something incorrectly you lose hope and slowly become a robot that only does what is “right”. I definitely feel that during kindergarden and my young educational career I was much more creative and divergent, but schooling and the intensity of it has shrunk my divergent thinking. After watching this video, I would make several changes in school. I would want school to focus more on excelling in life rather than learning about the “law of syllogism” in math. I want to learn about different cultures and travel the world, not sit in a classroom and listen to a teacher lecture all day. I would have the classes be more relevant to life after school and I would also want to incorporate some sort of studying abroad trip in our curriculum. There are so many ways that I think schooling could be improved, and I think administrators and the board of education is slacking in creativity…hm maybe their “divergent thinking” was destroyed by school too.
1.Where do you put yourself on Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic people” or “non-academic people”? Why?
I put myself more in the “academic people” side of the scale, more than the “non academic people” but I’m on both sides. I put myself on the academic side more because as much as school bores me and I hate certain subjects, I think it is very important in life to help you grow and learn and find jobs. If it wasn’t for school how would you know if you wanted to be a teacher or a scientist or an author? It is vital that schooling is necessary, but the degrees of education and learning you absorb can differ depending on your mindset and what side of the scale you put yourself on.
2. Do you agree w/ Dr. Robinson that American kids are over-medicated w/ Ritalin, etc. in such a stimulating time period? Why or why not?
I agree and disagree with Dr. Robinson that american kids are over medicated with Ritalin and other drugs in this stimulating time period. I disagree with his statement because sometimes the drugs are extremely necessary for the child to focus a little bit. If they really cant focus and are hyper active, then a calming or focusing drug may help them concentrate in school, and prevent them from being such a disruption that others around them can’t focus. I agree with him that sometimes the drugs are given in such an overdose that their senses are dulled along with the world around them. These kids aren’t totally awake due to the meds, and the world is a wonderful place and they have much to learn and see. The things that need to be seen and heard need to be done with full concentration with no dulling or calming. It’s true that shuffling from class to class is not stimulating so the drugs can help them remain calm, but there are some activities that require you to think and can actually be very hands on and stimulating that the drugs are getting in the way of.
3. Discuss Dr. Robinson’s claim that American schools are based on an old industrialization model (production-line mentality).
I agree with Dr. Robinson’s claim about American schools being based on an old fashioned industrialization model. I think that back then they didn’t know any better, and plus the job opportunities were somewhat limited and nothing near like they are today so they thought it best for everyone to be grouped and tested on the same things, no matter what their individual abilities are. We are put through the same classes, learn the same things, and then are expected to choose from the same jobs and produce for the economy. I think that you should be able to choose at least some of the education you want to pursue. Everyone gets the same schooling up until a certain point in your life when you figure out what you want to do with your life. For example if you want to be an english major (me) then you drop science or math classes and add on more english classes that will be useful towards your career. I think it’s time to recreate some of our system. In the end it still benefits our economy so why not add some happiness into it.
4. Why does our “divergent thinking” ability decrease as we get more educated? Do you think your ability has decreased or increased? Why?
I think our divergent thinking ability decreases as we get more educated because in school we are taught that there is one right answer and that everyone must come to the same conclusion. Over the years it has kind of shut down our abilities to come to a new conclusion that we came to on our own. We have been worn down by schooling and their policies of only one answer , this is the formula, make sure you ace your test, and move on. I think my ability has definitely decreased. I went to a catholic school so a lot of times they tried to let us think outside the box because ultimately thats what they said God wanted, but it didn’t always work. I try to think on my own form different view points and come up with multiple questions and answers but my mind is so used to the straight minded one answer path thanks to my 10 years of schooling that sometimes i can’t.
5. What changes would you make in our school calendar, classes, etc. after watching this video? Why?
As I said in question 3, i would like to see our classes be a little more personalized for each student. We would still learn the basics but maybe those more interested in the political aspect could focus on the presidents of history and those who care about the literature could focus on that, same with economics and so on. In the end we would all learn about everything but we could just go into more depth with some of the units we learn to make it a smudge more interesting. I also think that we need more time to process what we learn and not be herded from class to class and penalized for not wanting to pay attention to boring things. Take some classes that get your brain thinking in different ways, stimulate your senses, and that overall you just enjoy.
Ok. So for Dr. Ken Robinson’s academic or non-academic uh…can I do both? I’m gonna go with both, because it was described as Academic is “smart” people and non-academic as “not smart” which is still really vague so I feel like Academic is use the stuff you read and books or textbooks and you apply it to everyday situations to figure out answers or problems. and non-academic is taking what you know from experiences and trial and error and apply it to everyday situations…Don’t know if thats what you wanted or i got totally mixed up, but that how i feel about it.
I’ll go with a snuggly soft yes for the “over medication” of ADD and other attention deficit related diseases, that is not to say that it is a fictitious disease I know PLENTY of people who DO need medication. but the struggle of not being able to pay attention calling it ADHD is like keeping a clean bed room and pointing out to your friends that you had OCD or feeling happy one day and sad the next and saying you’re bipolar. ADHD is the popular disease. and now that people are being forced into more desk jobs and school is a lot of sitting the disease has also been realised more apparent. it isn’t anything new it’s just in the spotlight at the moment.
I feel like the schools are based on old industrialization because the work force is one big machine so we educate people to fit the system for the most part cuz we know for the most part it works so its not an evil it’s just not a good thing “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” cept know its kinda broken so just gotta figure out how to fix it aka reform
It decreases because were taught to learn 1 way and that 1 way only FULLY benefits a certain amount of people in the educational system and were also taught there is only one way to get to an answer which is mostly true were not told not to use divergent thinking its just so majorly favored that we think linearly that we stop using divergent thinking.
school calendar changes: i Honestly dont know… less summer break longer winter breaks? or go full year with small monthly breaks
Cool here ya go. hope my rambling is readable
Personally i don’t like this first question at all because i don’t really qualify as an academic person in the traditional sense of the word. By no means whatsoever do I enjoy school or have a super easy time absorbing all the information being thrown my way regardless of the fact that I do however consider myself at least a little above average in intelligence. Being a student with severe ADHD I have always thought that ADHD was one of the most misdiagnosed disorders ever, and this is because of the parents who cannot admit that some children simply are not intelligent. Parents will medicate their children until the pass out in the hall ways before admitting that they are just plane dumb. And in this day in age there are many more distractions due to the bombardment of social media in recent years that it makes sense for kids to get diagnosed with ADHD or ADD. Also, doctors will prescribe ritalin to any child who has parents with the right back story. *side note; anyone who says ADHD is a myth deserves a slap. I agree 100% with what he said about how we learn today in schools and it is a little ridiculous that the only thing separating learning environments for children is age and not actual ability and capacity to learn. As we age our “divergent thinking” ability decreases because as we grow older we adjust to the same boring format of answering questions that we are taught in schools. As for me my “divergent thinking” ability has gone down ten-fold due to reshaping of the brain caused by public education, I know this because suddenly leggos arent as fun anymore and everything i think of was somehow taught to me by teachers who teach the same thing to every kid every year. I would make homework for each class due on different days so you dont get overlap and end up drowning in homework from too many different classes.
1). I would consider myself on the non-academic side. Until High School I didn’t get good grades. Their was talk about me getting held back in 7th grade because I didn’t see the point in school as Dr. Ken Robinson explains some kids do not. When I got to high school I realized that school counted now and that I have to work for my success. So although I do well in the academic way of school that was set up during the industrial revolution period, I work very hard for it and it does not come easily.
2). I agree that kids are overmedicated with Ritalin but I don’t believe it should be stopped. If what Dr. Ken Robinson explains about is true than ADHD is a man made disorder. For certain kids to get a fair chance at the obsolete game of school some must be medicated. It can be hard to focus on school with so many other things stimulating the child’s brain, but if it is true that school does not appeal to all forms of genius and there is a path to connect them I think that path should be endorsed. In this situation this path is a drug such as Ritalin.
3). Dr. Ken Robinson states that School, is set in the industrial time period. This is mostly due to the fact that, that time is when the idea of public school was becoming ratified. Since then there has been little reform in school systems besides equality of races and religion in education. How can we judge who a kid should be educated with depending on his or her age. We should educate kids with others that have similar interests and can challenge them mentally. Also Dr. Ken Robinson goes on to state that school is boring and outdated the way it is taught. School today is like trying to read an old book. The language is still English but it’s boring because it doesn’t appeal to your interests and your modern cultural appeals.
4). Our Divergent thinking decreases because we are told whole lives that there is only one answer to one question. On every test I’ve ever taken there is only one-way to get a questions right and that’s how people are thinking because that’s the only thing they know. When you’re a little kid your mind hasn’t been exposed to that school of thought yet. You still see one problem with multiple approaches’ and multiple solutions. I think my Divergent thinking has decreased but maybe not as much as others. I’m still a very creative person and am much “weirder” than most of my friends. I personally think I see things differently than most of my friends
5).I would make school appeal to both academic and non-academic people by placing kids to learn in different ways. For kids who excel in an academic sense I would keep them in the type of school there is today. For kids who do not I would let them learn in a more hands on and exciting way that will help them focus. Eventually I think most kids would appeal to the second option because it just sounds easier and more fun. This way of learning could possibly decrease the epidemic of ADHD if it works the way Dr. Ken Robinson explains.
I would put myself on the more ‘academic’ side of the scale. I do get good grades and can comprehend information in school pretty well, but I know that getting good grades doesn’t make you exactly an intellectual person. It’s all over social media such as Twitter and Tumblr saying grades and testing scores “don’t define you” or “just measure your ability to remember information”. But I wouldn’t be able to get good grades if I didn’t work hard, do all my homework, and develop good studying skills (which are how I remember information and retain it). Whereas someone on the more “non-academic” side of the scale wouldn’t do their homework, wouldn’t try, and wouldn’t study. I do believe that many children are being over medicated with ADHD pills such as Adderall or Ritalin. I still think that ADHD and ADD exist in kids and young adults, but I do think that there are many people who psych themselves out into thinking they need pills to focus, or that they have an attention disorder. I know personally many people with ADHD or ADD, some of these people I don’t think actually have the disorder; they’ve just convinced themselves they do (even though it really isn’t my place to judge). But the other people I know actually perform up to their full and complete potential when treated with medication. What Dr. Robinson was saying is that the schools in American are based on an old industrialization model. The kids are sorted by their age and put into the same level classes as others their age, even though not everyone is as motivated or as advanced as others. Kids are also told from a young age that to get from point A (school as a kid) to point B (a successful adult) that they need to get good grades, get into a good college, and then get a good job which will make them money for their perfect family. People aren’t taking into account the many obstacles that come in the way. Our “divergent thinking” abilities decrease because in school, we are told that there is only one answer, and aren’t given many open-ended questions. Kids aren’t given a way to explore the different possibilities and their ability to do this decreases because of the way they are taught. I think that in the school system today there are many classes that students are required to take that won’t help them for their lives and jobs in the future. Students should be able to figure out what they are good at and interested in in middle school and the beginning of high school, then become more advanced with these skills once they are older. Students should acquire basic skills that they will need as adults that have to do with managing their money and other things that have to do with the real world. School systems expect parents to do this job, but really, not all parents know these skills or know how to teach them to their kids.
On Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic people” or “non-academic people” I would put myself on the side of academic. This is because I do well in school, on the surface. Doing well in school, I believe, is largely a matter of privilege or haves versus have-nots. I come from a wealthy, white family and am therefore at a natural advantage to do well in school. Everyone before me in my more immediate family of aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, parents and my sister have either received a college degree and a job or are on the path towards that. It is only logical to assume that I will follow suite and while our system puts a great significance on grades and test scores, those same grades and test scores largely reflect privilege and the fact that the same families stay on top through generations. I do not agree with Dr. Robinson that American kids are over-medicated with Ritalin and similar drugs because the way society and school is set up, it is necessary for the stimulation to occur to do well or better in school and therefore many parents drug up their kids to get them to do their “best”. The kids are not over-medicated, that is a symptom of the problem of the pressure and influences of todays society. Dr. Robinson believes American schools are based on an old industrialization model because we are put in our grades by age and all carted through the same classes to hopefully reach the same end product, a college degree and then a job. Our “divergent thinking” ability decreases as we get more educated because we are no longer given a piece of paper and told color on it but are told gradually to color in the lines and then to write y=mx+b before you can do anything else. It is the unification of thinking and I believe that my “divergent thinking” ability has decreased because I have done more and more of my way or the highway type of subjects/tests/problems etc. Stress is placed on getting to an answer a certain way and it limits creative, or “divergent” thinking. After watching this video, I would change the placement of students into honors classes as well as requiring more classes that focus on “divergent thinking” or creativity such as classes on choose your own adventure type books/games or programming a game to fit a certain need. These classes would obviously include the regular art classes and theatre arts classes. As for honors placement, I would delay placement into advanced classes because often times children are placed in the gifted group for a sport or class because of their maturity, rather than intelligence and ability.
I find it hard to judge myself as an academic person or a non-academic person, for the reason that it is the school that says they are only these types of people. I found from the video that all kids can be academic it is just a matter of whether they take an interest in school. However to stay with the question I would hope that I am an academic person but find myself more in the middle.
I do agree that some kids are over medicated. It is also very easy to be declared ADHD. The point is that all kids are different and they just can’t be given all the same drug and hop it has the same effect for everyone.
I do agree that we are on a production line for school. We are required to take certain classes even if they are against are interest. In schools there is only one right answer but that is diffidently false. For instance in history you could make a pretty good argument that Germany or Russia started WWI rather than Austria. That also goes for science and literature.
I think the reason for less divergent thinking is that it is drilled in students to only receive the knowledge and don’t question our add your own opinions too it. That constant drilling of what you can think and what is right or wrong causes decreases in divergent thinking.
Changing the school day is hard and might not happen however I would like to see it more relaxed. Summer I love as much as anyone but doesn’t really effect us because 100% of the people in this school aren’t farmers. Therefore I think we should cut in to June and August to make more room for school and less forgetting over summer. With this extension I think the schedules should be more like collage to where you are offered classes at certain times and you sign up for them. This would help students get work done and causes less stress than continuing down the assembly line. Lately I think homework should go by the way side and instead of correcting the homework discuss what you did on the preceding day. If you want grades for homework than take a little quiz not worth a lot and replace that for homework.
I would say that I am a fairly academic person because I think things through and I do well in school without only doing well in school for the grade. I take a genuine interest in learning and I believe that is what makes someone an intellectual, not how they do in school grade wise. I do believe that kids are over-medicated these days because people give up too easily. These days if something is hard for you, then there is something wrong with you, not with how it’s being taught to you. I believe that with how many kids are being diagnosed with ADHD then everyone would be diagnosed. The industrialization model with American schools doesn’t work; children are educated by age. Many kids in our age group are not as smart as others and aren’t ready for high school and it’s not fair to those kids. Kids these days are not taught to think for themselves, they are taught to do what they are told. Many kids don’t do well in school because of how they learn, everyone learns differently so why is there still a strict formula for getting kids through school. I think the divergent thinking of people decreases as we get more educated because when we are young we are taught to think for ourselves, but as we age we are taught to follow the rules and not bend or break them. There is only one right answer but there isn’t; there are many right answers. I believe that my ability has unfortunately decreased because the only way to do well in school in my opinion is to conform to the way things work. That’s how they grade standardized tests and that’s how we as students are categorized. I would change the way classes are taught to make it more student led; make it a place where students figure things out by themselves because that’s how it is in the real world. Collaboration would be encouraged and divergent thinking would get stronger as we age.
On Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic” and “non-academic” I would put myself as an academic person. Only because what I want to do in life requires academics in the sense of that I need a higher education to achieve what I want in life. But in my opinion grades don’t matter only because I think they don’t really show how smart somebody actually is. I do believe that children are being over medicated in this time period. I believe that things like ADHD and OCD are being correctly diagnosed but I think the symptoms are too broad yes people really do have these things but doesn’t everybody suffer from these symptoms from time to time. I think Dr. Robinson hit the point perfectly with the production line mentality. I agree with everything he has to say about the topic. It does bring up the good question of why we are grouped by age and not by intelligence or interests. I think divergent thinking decreases, as we get more “educated” because we are told over and over that there is one answer and only one way to get the answer. I think that my divergent thinking ability has decreased but not completely. With that said I am almost happy that ability has decreased because it allows me to remember more small facts and tidbits. I think the major change I woud make to the schools the way the calendar works. I would change it to were we go to school all year round like they do in some places. I also feel strongly that school hours should be changed to something more work appropriate because if this is supposed to prepare us to enter the workforce or got to college we have the variable of when we go to class or to work at what time.
1.Where do you put yourself on Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic people” or “non-academic people”? Why?
In many ways i like to think i am academic because that is how i was raised. You are the smart kid and you will go far. But the thing is. I’m not the smart kids. I don’t get perfect grades, i dont talk all ap and honors classes. I’m okay with that, I just with someone could tell me that its okay that i am not.
2. Do you agree w/ Dr. Robinson that American kids are over-medicated w/ Ritalin, etc. in such a stimulating time period? Why or why not?
I think that there are kids out there who need to be medacated for other things then adhd. So I don’t really know how to answer that question.
3. Discuss Dr. Robinson’s claim that American schools are based on an old industrialization model (production-line mentality).
I think its true. We learn by grade. The older we are the more things we are expected to know. I don’t think that is right at all. Maybe I can read at the level of a 45 year old person but I cant calculate math equasions past what the adverage 10 year old should know. The way they have the system set uo is total bunk.
4. Why does our “divergent thinking” ability decrease as we get more educated? Do you think your ability has decreased or increased? Why?
Its the same idea behind teaching creativity. Have you ever seen the video “dont hug me im scared” that video explanes how we put creativity in a box but still call it creativity. We do the same thing with how we teach.
5. What changes would you make in our school calendar, classes, etc. after watching this video? Why?
Everything. We need a whole new system. I honestly think schol has become a more socal expreencce then a place of learning for many people.
1.Where do you put yourself on Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic people” or “non-academic people”? Why?
According to his scale I would categorize myself as a n academic person. I believe that school is a tedious requirement that kids have to go through for roughly the first 20 years of their life but based on our society it appears to me that the first twenty years of your life ultimately determine how comfortable you’ll spend the next twenty year and so on. I feel that when it comes to my classes, a large variety of school districts require us to take classes in order to graduate ; classes that we wouldn’t have taken otherwise. I find myself feeling obligated to learn about topics that don’t reflect my interest and sometimes it makes me not want to learn even though it’s best for me. Yet, with that said, when it comes to subjects that I do find a passionate interest in they seem to come more natural to me , and they make me want to know the finer details of the situations instead of skimming the surface. Education is a beneficial ting, I’ve always hated not thoroughly understanding things, and I completely agreed with Dr.Ken saying that schools should be more open minded and not just settle for ‘1 correct answer” when questions can be interpreted in so many different ways, rather than one general idea.
2. Do you agree w/ Dr. Robinson that American kids are over-medicated w/ Ritalin, etc. in such a stimulating time period? Why or why not?
I feel that American children are being over- medicated in such a stimulating time period. Compared to my parents and even my teachers , history has shown that education has always been a challenge, but because this world strives for reaching your highest form of success people tend to push themselves to the extreme and therefore set the ‘bar higher’ for younger generations to live up to. But what happens when they cant meet these expectations? When youngsters feel the pressures of society it makes them feel that its not the demand thats keeping them down but instead themselves. they feel that they aren’t smart enough or strong enough, which discourages them. However, this fallacy disrupts the way they function even when no ones around, which is not right- no one should be set in a competition to make themselves feel less than someone who’s fundamentally the same as them. Society traps students into thinking that if they aren’t making straight A’s then they’re a failure, when in reality they should encourage effort and actual comprehension rather than just a letter- which at the end of the day is just a letter.
3. Discuss Dr. Robinson’s claim that American schools are based on an old industrialization model (production-line mentality).
Ever since I was little I’ve consistently been told that through hard work you’ll reach a pivotal position in your life which allows you to achieve anything you desire, and at such an early age I feel that American children are brain washed into believing that there can only be one right way and therefore its reciprocal; one wrong way. And still this theory, so to speak, has been implemented into higher levels of education as well. It seems that regular individuals frequently compare their success to others, as an explanation of the right way to do something. “If only I would have..” Yet, what Dr.Ken is saying is that by following the ‘trend’ then how do we truly know what success is? The assembly line process has the ability the restrict generations from achieving their highest level of intelligence, because it shuns anything outside of the flow chart : Go to school –> get a good education —> go to college —> get a job —> have a family —> live happily :). However, this flow chart was more popular in previous eras because of their limitations to things such as ‘the arts’ and athletics. The arts has opened the door to a new uprising of people , and allowed them to reach success or follow their dreams based on their physical attributes rather than their intellectual ability.
4. Why does our “divergent thinking” ability decrease as we get more educated? Do you think your ability has decreased or increased? Why?
Our divergent thinking ability has been diminished over the years because schools teach us that theres usually one right answer and anything besides that is an example. Therefore, we become narrow minded and stop using our natural judgement to determine the outcome of possibilities , instead we say what we know that “they” want to hear in order for them “people who have already gained success / society ” to accept us.
5. What changes would you make in our school calendar, classes, etc. after watching this video? Why?
After watching this video , its made me wonder why society limits our way of thinking- for a lot of us, schools (colleges) only look for the letter grade we receive in the class. They don’t take out the time to determine how these experiences or encounters with diverse or similar groups of people have changed us physically or mentally. I wish that the school board of education would stop aiming to make education a competition rather than skill improvement – most of the time I feel like I’m just doing the work in order to receive a good grade instead of actually taking out the time to understand and reflect on how this information could change my life, my families, or even my children in the future. Honestly, this video has inspired me to stop looking at others as just a competition because I’m sure they’re feeling the pressures of society just as much as I do. With that said I’ll still aim to strive for high grades because I know that at this day a age that is what is required of me, but I hope to do that while genuinely learning something.
If after watching the lecture the first thought that popped into your head was “am I an academic person or a non academic person based on the scale Robinson pointed out for the explicit purpose of disagreeing with?” I feel you may not have taken away from the video the ideas Robinson was trying to convey. However if forced to choose I would place myself in the academic category for the base reason of my vain but consistent grasping toward success through academia. Like Dr. Robinson I am not in any way qualified to classify ADHD as a real of fictitious disorder I however am fully aware of the colossal presence of children who have been drugged into sitting still (myself included) and I am hard pressed to believe that such medication in entirely necessary. I feel that there is some truth to Dr. Robinson’s observation of the standardization of humans from a young age that I feel can and has been consistently detrimental to the American youth. The model is intended to shape young Americans into a mold the country no longer has need for mindless worker drones. Divergent thinking ability decreases as creativity is continentally discouraged. I am sure may ability has dramatically decreased. The ability to “think outside the box” was continually dismissed and not encouraged or cultivated in any way. Skills and subjects that require creativity and self expression are labeled as unimportant and dismissed. I feel the Idea of someone with no interest in what we consider “core subjects” should have just as much freedom to shirk courses in which they have no interest and are offered to benefit as those students who enjoy core classes are free to ignore the arts. The mere fact that such a large portion of individuals in classes obtain absolutely nothing worthwhile from them should be proof enough of the obsolescence of such antiquated methods of instruction.
1.) On the academic and non-academic people chart, I would put myself in the middle. This is because I enjoy both categories and I am good at both. I am an academic person because I enjoy learning and I am good at it; only in one class, which is math. Otherwise, not so much. I an non-academic because I enjoy things like cooking and I’m really good at it. Both make me happy and I am good at both.
2.) I don’t really think I’m in a position to comment on this. Why? Mostly because I’m not one of the kids taking medication and I have no knowledge about it. I don’t think it’s for me to say whether someone is in need of medication or not, considering I don’t know how they feel and I know nothing about Ritalin or Aderoll. All I know is this: I am a believer that people don’t need medication, the body can heal itself unless in desperate need, which would be cancer. I don’t take medication for anything, that’s what my immune system is for. However, when it comes to someone else’s mental health, I’m also a strong believer that that person knows what they are getting into by taking medication and know what is best for him/her. Regardless of the medicine or over-stimulating times, I really can’t give an opinion until I’m in the position that I think I need to be medicated.
3.) Dr. Robinson states that the school systems are similar to a production line mentality. He describes it like this: there is a school bell, separate subjects, different campuses/sections for those subjects, kids separated by age and then all of them judged on the same level. My correction to this comparison is this: school is similar to a prison, not an assembly line. Kids are forced to go by the government, forced to arrive at a certain time and leave at a certain time without leaving before that time (and if you do you need special permission), certain time a day and for a certain period of time in the year, while having to ask to do anything, including going to the bathroom.
4.) People’s “divergent thinking” is decreasing because for 12 consecutive years we are told “this the way you do things and if you do them any different way, you are wrong and will fail”. I will certainly own up to the fact that my divergent thinking is decreased. Just today I can think of two times I was told that what I was doing was wrong and there was no other way to do it.
Example A: “no Brooke, you can not drop an honors class, you have to continue taking it. It will look good for college” — counselor
Example B: “no Brooke, that method for stoichiometry will not suffice. It is too messy” — teacher
It is sad that I have to admit society is molding me into it’s little robot that thinks through everything a certain way. it irritates me because sometimes I can tell that the way I am thinking is similar to that of a critical 80 year-old and that makes me sad.
5.) I don’t need to watch this video to know what I would change. I actually had a conversation with my mom today about how school is literally wasting away my life in this way: I sit in chemistry class, wanting to cry because I can’t seem to understand stoichiometry when the fact of the matter is this: I will never need to know it again after this year. Ever. Again. Ever. I am burning my life away just by sitting in the chair in the right hand corner of the class. With that being said, this is how I would change school:
School would be about learning what is necessary in life, like wiping your butt or learning how to do taxes. Along with that, a shorter school year or a longer one with longer breaks. Also, teachers who want to teach you and are passionate about learning, not only there for the paycheck that arrives in their checking accounts every two weeks. School right now is sad, and I hope someday that can be changed so that my kids don’t have to wake up and dread coming every day.
I put myself as nonacademic because ive always been told that if you’re not a straight A witch im not student and that if your don’t go to the best university you wont get a job or succeed in life. I would agree to this Yes ADHD is a real disorder and some people have it but with other things on your mind that interest you more are going to take your attention not something that a teacher is babbling about. I also think that at this point the ADHD medication fad as I will call it is more of a placebo effect than actual help more kids are saying “oh I have ADHD let me get a prescription for that” when in reality it’s just them being distracted by more interesting things and short attention span. I found it interesting that he compared it to that yes I see how it can be like that with same age, grade and size but some of that works its nice being with people your own age but I do agree with what he said about some kids working better in bigger groups and some kids working better in smaller groups or alone. Our divergent thinking decreases for a number of reasons when your young you have a more wild imagination so that helps and as you get older you lose some of that. Also like he said we are taught that there is always and always will be one right answer to any one question so that decreases our divergent thinking. I think as we become more educated our thinking decreases because we lose our innocence and our taught how to think. I would keep the calendar the same I think summer is a good learning experience i.e jobs and trips and such. I would keep the ages the same but the class sizes I would change to cater to the learning needs of students. I would also change teaching styles to a more hands on approach instead of lecturing and yapping this would help kids think more for themselves instead of the one answer solution that’s been drilled into our heads.
1. I would consider myself an academic person according to Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale because I do above average and school and maintain good grades; I would consider myself intelligent in my capacity for learning. Though I would not consider this scale fair because if you aren’t good at school then you are considered a non-academic, or not smart. This frustrates me because someone could be a very intelligent person and be considered not smart because they don’t do well in school.
2. I do agree that American kids are over-medicated because not paying attention in school because it doesn’t interest you is being mistaken for ADHD, in some cases. I attribute the lack of attention in the classroom to lack of excitement and engagement. Especially when outside of school there are so many other things that students would rather be doing. When the students can’t focus they are diagnosed ADHD or ADD and are medicated to an excess. This overmedication is not necessary needed and the real solution would be to make school more involved and interesting. If this happens I believe the amount of children diagnosed with these diseases will significantly decrease.
3. His claim that schools are based on the old industrialization model is supported by the comparison of separation of subjects, and the batches of kids, solely based on age not intelligence or creativity. Also we are belled in arrival and dismissal.
4. Our divergent thinking ability decreases as we get more educated because over the years we are taught that there is only one way to do a problem and that any other way is wrong. This is different when we first start education because we have an untouched mind and think of everything with multiple answers not just one correct answer. My divergent thinking has decreased because I don’t think of different possibilities and my capacity for ideas is decreased to when I was younger.
5. After watching this video I would like to see more interactive classrooms with much more group activities and to just make school more interesting and engaging. This engagement will make kids want to go to school and they would apply themselves more and become and an academic. The organization of school I have no problem with, especially in the organization of classes of students by age instead of intelligence. Being the same age with let students interact better with each other and create a better working environment.
On a scale of 1-10, 1 being nonacademic, and 10 being very academic, I would say I’m more towards the academic side. I tend to get good grades in school and absorb information well- until it disappears in a week or two. I’m not really a creative person, I work better with logic. But I don’t think this scale can really measure how smart a person is. There are so many people in this world who are absolutely brilliant, yet fail classes; people who can think of a million different ways to do one thing. On the other hand, I know people who ace practically every test, but couldn’t tell you the difference between tin foil and Saran wrap. When you describe your friend, you begin to explain all these wonderful traits that they have that draw you to them as a person. Whether they’re kind, sarcastic, humorous, compassionate, adventurous-whatever makes them unique. When the educational system describes your friend, numbers are spit out. The system doesn’t even know your name. Your name is replaced by a series of numbers to make an ID. This ID is related with countless other numbers: your age, grade level, percents you earn in each class, the number you got right, your SAT score, your ACT score. Numbers on numbers on numbers. So when you ask if someone is “academic” or not, what number are you really looking for? Do you really have to ask, or can you just go plug in their student number and look at their grades?
I think medication is a tricky subject. Obviously, there are some people who do have serious learning problems and should be treated. I mean, if the whole point in life is to see how much money you can make and the grades you get on a test, and the medicine helps them do that, by all means give them what they need to function. No one likes to feel like the stupid kid in class, especially if it’s hard for them to control. On the other hand, I feel like you need to give the brain a chance to develop and adapt like it has in the past. Medicating someone too quickly can prevent that. If someone has to depend on drugs to get them to focus in school-obviously something is wrong- especially when it is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. Newsflash: The world isn’t going to get any less stimulating! The more and more technology, the more and more distractions there will be. If doctors continue in the trend they are going with prescribing medication, at some point, virtually every child will have to be on drugs-not in their natural mind just to get through school. That is ridiculous!
I somewhat agree with Dr. Robinson’s theory of education being like an assembly line. Public education really started booming during the industrial age, and therefore is centered around the idea of industrialism. Since then, times have clearly changed. Getting a college degree is no longer insurance to a good school. However, I disagree somewhat with his reasoning in separation. School would be even harder to learn in if it wasn’t separated into subjects. We are separated into age groups just to start us off. While it is the norm to stay with that age group, people are also moved up a year or possibly held back. This is the same reason we have different levels of classes as well, to allow people to expand their knowledge at a pace that is good for them.
Our divergent thinking lessens because of all of the conformity and standardization that we experience more and more of as we go throughout our educational career. In kindergarten, they just wanted to get you to think. To think of all the possibilities you could with your naive and imaginative mind. As the years went on and you “learned” more, you learned the “right way to do things. I understand that there has to be a way to grade students fairly and equally, but some of the expectations are ridiculous! What if the xbox method of solving quadratics helps me understand it better? What if I think my essay will flow better and be stronger if it is a compound, 2-pronged thesis instead of the standard 3-pronged? Does that make me wrong? Does that make me dumber than everyone else? Almost nothing we do in school is open to interpretation. Why is every test we take multiple choice? I cannot comprehend how that makes me smarter. Like, “Cool, I can use deductive reasoning instead of learning!”. There shouldn’t be one right answer in literature classes. The whole point of literature is to broaden your imagination and make it specific to you-not to standardize it so everyone gets the exact same meaningless thing out of it. How much more poetic and creative and intellectual would we be if we were given the chance to think for ourselves and to express how we see things? I don’t think I’ve ever really been a super divergent thinker, but I know that I definitely am not one now. I wouldn’t even think to question if the paper clip wasn’t really a paper clip, because all my life, I have been taught that a paper clip is a little piece of metal bent in order to hold my school work.
I think a big change to make in general, is fitting the educational system to the needs and benefit of individual students, not what is the easiest to manage or what is “the norm”. One way of doing this would be to allow students more freedom in their class choices. I think middle and elementary schools should stay the same so you get a basic understanding of all different subjects, but usually by high school, even if you don’t know what career you want to have, you do know what you like and don’t like. I find that having essentially 1/5 of my schooling to be math is useless (but thank heavens I know how to find the angle measure of clock hands even though most clocks are digital). I don’t like it and I know I’m never going to use it again in my life. Plus, I would probably have a better gpa which goes back to the whole being defined as numbers thing. It is way to hard to get an A. Having an understanding of 70% of the material you have been learning should be celebrated, not dreaded! Also, looking at the psychological side of schooling would help. If kids cry themselves to sleep at 2:30 in the morning because they’ve been studying to try and get a good test grade in a class they’re failing and not interested in, something should be done about it. The stress levels of teenagers today is absolutely absurd. School work should be left at school, not taken home, unless you want to do my laundry for me. Grades should not define us. Classes should be more involving of students and not just being lectured-we get enough of that from our parents.Teach me things that are actually applicable to life, please. I, personally am a fan of summer vacation because I love to travel for weeks at a time, but it could be shortened to maybe a month and a half or two and I would probably live. Basically, the breaks should be spread evenly throughout the year. Older people keep telling me that high school was some of the best 4 years of their life. If this is true for me, I’m in for a really rough life.
APUSH Blog
1. On the Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of “academic people” or “non-academic” I place myself more on the academic side. I’ve always enjoyed most parts of school. Of course there were always subjects that I struggled in or just disliked but for the most part I enjoy and try my best in school. Because of this I would consider myself an academic person.
2. I definitely think that Dr. Robinson made some valid points in his argument. I think that ADHD is definitely a real problem and I know people that have the disorder and really do need medicines like Ritalin and Adderall to focus. However I also believe that these drugs are widely abused by high school and college students and are prescribed way too easily. I agree with Dr. Robinson when he also said that in this time period there are way more distractions then there were 100 years ago which is also contributing to the problem.
3. I definitely understood what Dr. Robinson was saying when he said that kids are basically on a product assembly line. Through out elementary and middle school years there are not of choices on what you get to learn or how you want to learn it. In high school there is a little more freedom with electives but not that much. Each kid is taught the same things in the same ways and some kids learn differently than others. If they can’t understand what is being taught to them then they are usually labeled as stupid or “non-academic” which isn’t really the case. Kids especially at elementary school level, should be taught or “built” differently if needed instead of being taught or “built” the same way as everyone else on the assembly line.
4. I think divergent thinking decreases as we grow older because we are taught that in most cases there is only one right answer, when most of the time there are a lot of solutions to a problem. Kids are brainwashed in a certain way to think that you are only smart if you think or learn a certain way and that decreases our divergent thinking because we want to get good grades or be considered smart.
5. One of the main changes I would make to school would be to make classes that actually prepare teens for being on there own in college and for the rest of there lives. History and science are important but they aren’t going to help me know how to pay bills or taxes or know how to live on my own. Another change I would make would be to make sure each kid, specifically when they are young, is taught that everyone learns differently and they are not stupid if they learn differently than most kids. Then I would make sure those kids would be taught in there own specific way.
I think I would classify myself as a much more academic person. I hardly partake in any electives and stick to all academic courses, all AP and Honors’ classes, et cetera. I’m not very creative or good of finding more than one answer because, like he said, most tests have only one right answer. I somewhat agree with the idea that kids are over-medicated, however, if ADHD is a clinical disease and can be tested for and determined as positive or negative, then there is no way for somebody to “fake” it, because it is a real disease. If that’s not how it works then I would say that medicine is definitely overprescribed to stressed children. I agree with his idea that schools are based around a production-line type idea – kids are lumped together by only their age, not by anything else, like desire for future job, or even stuff such as working in small groups, large groups, or alone. The only thing that is used to differ students from others is their age, which is not even a good place to start anyway, as some younger students are a lot smarter than older students. The divergent thinking ability decreases as we age because we as students are taught that there can only be one right answer and that we have to show all our work to get to the proper answer. Tests and quizzes further strengthen this idea, because making one simple mistake or choosing another answer because it is possibly right in your mind is penalized and affects your chance of going to college and therefore getting a job. My ability has definitely decreased, I used to be a very talkative, open thinker and now I kind of use math in everything I do to try and get the proper answer or know the proper thing to say. I’d change the grouping by age idea that has always existed in school life and group by more relevant, logical standards.
On Dr. Ken Robinson’s scale of being an “academic person” or a “non-academic person” I would put myself more as academic because although I can get bad grades and have before, I do understand the things that I am taught and typically get good grades in school. When Dr. Ken Robinson talks about kids being over medicated I agree. If these kids were not medicated, they may not be able to focus as well as other kids, but they would learn to coup with it instead of relying on the medication all the time and making it so without it they would be almost helpless in a sense. The way the education system is now, is the way it has been for a while and is almost just like a production line system and I agree with Dr. Ken Robinson when he says that kids are having trouble getting along with this type of education because there is no 100 percent chance that every kid will come out of college and get a good job like they seem to be promised going through school. Even if these kids try their hardest, with this type of education it is not always easy for everyone because everyone learns in different ways and some learn faster and easier than others. I think that the older we get our divergent thinking decreases because from the start, we are taught one way, and that there is only one answer and everything else is wrong. Each year of school we get more and more used to the way of this and we start to forget that there is other ways of thinking. I definitely think that my divergent thinking has decreased because of the way I am taught. After watching Dr. Ken Robinson’s video there are some things that I would change with our education system like for instance I would make it so there were less standardized testing because with standardized testing there only ever real correct one answer and it is more difficult for kids with different types of thinking to take these tests. Another thing I would change is the time schedule that kids are on because there are people who can go home and get there things done quickly, where other kids they take hours to get things done causing them to be up all night and not getting an adequate amount of sleep.