just thought id share

[crowsashes]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55w ... r_embedded#

very interesting video makes me think that maybe im doing alright encouraging my son to get his hands dirty

(apologies its a link )

[grahamhobbs]

Great speaker and important ideas on education and creativity. I love the insight that education is orientated towards the sepration of the brain from the body, so that in its pinnacle, professors, the body is merely a vehicle for moving the brain from place to place.

When State Education was introduced into this country in the late 19th cent. it was not initially compulsory and many working class families were concerned about their kids being indoctrinated by the State. But the kids clamoured for education, so in the East End in Stepney Green, two kids set up a school. I think they were 13 year old girls. They organised adults to come and teach them about things that they were interested in. The school was full to overflowing. Even when State Education became compulsory, the school continued for many years operating in the evenings after normal school. This was education for the kids, by the kids.

[crowsashes]

thats how it should be! i always struggled at school because i became bored to easily , i can see my son already gets bored easily too! means i have to have a whole host of things on stand-by! lego and crayons have bee the best investments for him!

the education system is part of the reason im considering home educating.

[liskeardjane]

Know the film clip well. Ooo er! I'm a teacher and got to admit; it's not Butlins and I'm not a childrens' entertainer. I got bored at school as I gave up when anything was difficult and became hard work and consequently learnt, and passed exams when I was older and could 'put my mind to it'. School is challenging and hard work was never fun. I teach my kids to expect the challenge to be taxing, I teach them fortitude and to endure with forebearance and that to overcome such 'trials' is character building. I show them the Rocky Balboa clip where he has a heart to heart with his son where he says something along the lines that it's not how hard you hit, but how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. We had all that trendy fun, child centred education in the 70s - turn of the century and realised that kids were leaving school illiterate. We've had to go back to the hard graft of the 'basics'. I'm sure you've seen it but look at "Shift Happens" on Youtube and look at the future? I have a fierce reputation in the school I teach in and I take no prisoners, but my students appreciate me in the end and often come back and talk to classes for me and all of them say 'Listen to miss!'. None of my students have achieved less than their target grade yet in my six years of teaching.

[ElizabethBinary]

I'm only about 3 minutes in but I get the idea, it is much like my partner and I.

I always loved school but constantly found myself unchallenged and bored and wouldn't do the work because I'd pass the tests anyway. I liked learning things that MADE SENSE to me, like geometry vs. algebra. The teacher could never tell me what we use algebra for. He used them to help him sleep. Geometry made SENSE, I need it to wallpaper a house. Got it, learned it, done. (and now that I'm studying nutrition I do need to know algebra, go figure ). I was an excellent artist and very creative. I was also very good at acting and dancing. None of those panned out when my glorious mother told me it was 'pointless' and I needed an education instead. I ended up graduating with honours at the age of 15.

My fiancee hated school. His mother never made him go, though, preferring him to work on the farm. His father didn't believe in homework either. He's not very literate. His reading and writing skills are average but, get this, schools didn't teach him that anyway - his aunt did! He ended up leaving school at 15 to join a tradesmanship.

Which one of us entered the world with more knowledge, creativity and coping skills in the 'real world'? Not me. I struggled. Bills were harder than I thought. My fiancee, however, bought a house at the age of 20, learned a valuable trade and by 22 was earning a thousand dollars a week. Me? Well. I'm a fricken model. I earn just as much but seriously, how long will that last? At 23 I am just now going back to school to learn something useful. And now my resume looks like sh*t, too.

Building, fixing, repairing, gardening... USEFUL creative skills... I learned from him. Neither of us use any of the information we gained from school. I taught myself to read and write and do maths as well, long before the schools taught me (like I said, I was an overacheiver). G used his apprenticeship that he chose after school and his skills on the farm to learn everything we needed to know.

Yeah I can read faster than him and am, socially, considered smarter than him - but I don't think so. This man can fix ANYTHING. He taught me how to reverse a box trailer on a car in ten minutes. He taught me to weld. He taught me to fix my car and my motorbike. He taught me how to do wheelies on dirtbikes (okay not practical but who cares!).

To this day I think the only thing I taught him was how to make a tuna casserole.

So who's smarter... really?