TED Talk

After watching Sir Ken Robinson's 2006 TED Talk I agree with a lot of his ideas about the public education system. Going through the public school system myself, I completely agree that subjects like mathematics and language arts are given much more importance than that of the arts. Something that Robinson said that really stuck with me was when he said many highly talented and creative people in the world, feel that they're not. This is because the subject area they may have excelled in, was looked at as not being important and possibly stigmatized. To me, this is troubling because the creativity and intelligence of children are being stifled if what they are interested in and passionate about, is seen by society, as something that is unimportant compared to the "better" learning areas such as math, science and language arts, which will allow you to "get somewhere in your life." 

I truly loved the story he told about Jillian the famous dance choreographer and how in order to learn she needed to move. In today's society, many children are diagnosed with ADHD, which is probably what Jillian would have been diagnosed with if that exceptionality was common. Today children with exceptionalities such as ADD and ADHD and often given medication to calm them down and not always given the opportunities Jillian was given to understand that they learn differently. I feel that showing this video to our math class served a purpose to help us understand, as future teachers, that all children learn differently and there is not just one specific way to teach. Math and science and language arts are not the only important subjects that children should learn about, they should be exposed more to the arts and humanities, and these subjects shouldn't be looked down upon, but encouraged to allow students to achieve their full learning potentials.