The capacity to be wrong is lost by many children when they enter adolescence and adulthood, as stated by Robinson (2006). This speaker argues that the ability to be wrong is the basis for creativity, while modern education does not allow children to make mistakes. Indeed, this statement seems to be correct as teachers usually point to errors and encourage students to avoid them as something that should not exist. However, I believe that mistakes are important to learn from them, and most importantly, these lessons should be free of judging or stigma. The traditional view of education implies that a person chooses one of the subjects and studies it to become a professional in a certain area. According to the mentioned author, this is a one-sided approach that fails to pay attention to the student’s intelligence and a full set of capacities. In my turn, I believe that if someone is good at arts, he or she can also be a physician or physicist, but labels that are often assigned to students diminish their development and reduce their self-esteem.
In the other video, Robinson (2010) speaks about the necessity to transition the cultural identity of the country to future generations. It is stated that the key problem is that education focuses on the past to anticipate the future, which is not valued by children, who do not understand why they should go to schools and learn about what happened years ago. Divergent thinking is proposed as the solution since it promotes creativity. When a student asks questions, interprets options, and seeks to find more alternatives. I think that education should be linked to the environment in which students live as it shows the value of having and applying knowledge in practice.
References
Robinson, K. (2006). Do schools kill creativity? [Video]. TED. Web.
Robinson, K. (2010). Changing education paradigms [Video]. TED. Web.