Jonah Lehrer on the Picasso quote “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up”: “From the perspective of the brain, Picasso is on to something, as the frontal lobes (and the DPLFC in particular) are the last brain areas to fully develop. And so the super-ego settles in, and we become too self-conscious to create. Obviously, we need the frontal lobes to function – just look at the tragic life of SB – but every talent comes with a tradeoff. When we repress our urge to confabulate we also repress the urge to create. To quote Picasso once again: ‘Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.’ But it’s still a lie.” Related: Ken Robinson’s TED talk on how education is restraining the creativity of children.
Darryl Campbell’s post on The Bygone Bureau starts with his memory of his preschool teacher wheeling in a TV to watch the reunification of Germany. This is something I’ve been thinking about since we’ve been so lucky to watch extraordinary archival footage this week — why is this footage new to me? I was nine years old, old enough and curious enough to understand the fall of the Berlin Wall’s significance. I can’t remember so much as a passing mention in any of my classes. But not a single teacher in six years of elementary school made any impression that lasted some many years later. If I were cleverer at this moment, I’d find a way to tie this in with Arne Duncan’s appearance on Meet the Press this morning, particularly his comment, “Teachers in the middle don’t get support that they need. And teachers on the bottom, who frankly need to find another profession, that doesn’t happen, either.” It’s really a shame that anyone becomes a teacher for reasons other than fostering the creativity and intellectual capacity of young people. There are people right now, employed as teachers in this country, who couldn’t care less if the Berlin Wall fell or not and they don’t care if your children know about it either way. Maybe they are “nice”, maybe they are “bubbly and outspoken” but they are some of the most dangerous people in the world.
Ken Robinson on schools and how they kill creativity. Also, let students choose their own books.
PSFK takes a look at Savannah College of Art and Design’s “Working Class Studio”(among the recent grads: Linda McNeil, my sister.) SCAD sets a budget for developing products by students in the program and sells them at stores around the country.
Scientific American reminds us why many highly intelligent children do poorly later in life: they never need to put effort into their studies. “If the scholastic achievement of highly intelligent children remains below average for an extended period, many teachers will fail to recognize their potential. As a result, such students may not get the encouragement they need, further depressing their desire to learn. They may fall far behind in their schoolwork and even develop behavior problems. Boys may turn aggressive or become class clowns. Girls often develop performance anxiety and psychosomatic symptoms.” The trick for educators is to both challenge gifted students and reward persistence as well as excellence.
US education centers are indeed examining their structures after the tragedy in China. NYT has a good story on this. “The movement really began in California in 1933, when 70 schools collapsed around Los Angeles in the so-called Long Beach earthquake and a mob sought to lynch a city school-building inspector.” Very interesting point here: The main challenge in bolstering resilience to such geophysical shocks…is not the structural engineering…it is not cost, either… the big challenge lies in overcoming social and political hurdles that still give priority to pressing daily problems over foreseeable disasters that may not occur for decades, scores of years, or longer. In some developing countries there is a tendency to ascribe earthquakes and their consequences to fate.” (Previously.)
Some of the worst buildings in the world are the same ones that small children attend five days a week. Debate over education center architecture gained some momentum following the rash of school shootings, (albeit, some very bad suggestions come from it, like video surveillance and schools without windows.) According to a 2003 paper, a school’s physical condition is statistically related to students’ academic achievement. Not everyplace can look like Kindergarten Heddernheim, but, at the very least students deserve structures that won’t flatten in an earthquake. A reported 6,898 schoolrooms collapsed last week in China, oftentimes in the middle of still standing buildings. I wonder if the tragedy will renew interest in these questions in our country.
NPR just aired the first of a two-part series on American Indian boarding schools. They were sometimes taken forcibly, by armed police. Their names were changed, their braids were shaved off and they were forced into Western clothes. They could only speak English and practice Christianity, and education focused on trades like carpentry and cooking. “Saturday night we had a movie,” says Lucy Toledo, a Navajo who went to Sherman Institute in the 1950s. “Do you know what the movie was about? Cowboys and Indians. Cowboys and Indians. Here we’re getting all our people killed, and that’s the kind of stuff they showed us.” Seattle Times has more. Archive photos here.
“While the death rate among the most educated Americans is dropping dramatically, we’re seeing a real lack of progress or even worsening trends in the least educated persons. The gap between the best and worst off in the country is actually getting wider,” says Otis W. Brawley, M.D., American Cancer Society chief executive officer. (EurekAlert)
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