Education and Creativity

Hi everyone, today I’m going to talk about the relations between education and creativity exposed by Sir Ken Robinson.  I mean the need of incorporate creativity in education. He says that all educational systems are based in a hierarchical idea of intelligence. This means that educational systems encourage certain capacities of individuals while other skills are undervalued, such as dance or music. Like he said, there is a view dominated by academic ability and the preference for scientific subjects.  This is in addition to the educational system that stigmatizes the mistake, without which, according to Sir Ken, we are not prepared to come up with something original. The result of all this is that “we are educating people out of their creative capacities.”

When I was in high school I can see this very markedly. In my school always potentiated the good results in the sciences and mathematics. In penultimate year, when you could choose one area of ​​the curriculum related to your interests, the common was that they formed only two humanities-oriented courses and rarely came to constitute art courses. The rest of the courses were six or seven, were mathematicians and biologists.
For this speaker creativity in education should be as important to literacy. He defines creativity as: “the process of having original ideas that have value -- more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.” This includes the elimination of hierarchy between the disciplines that lead to artificial divisions...

My specialty meant having more hours of language, history, literature and visual arts. I remember it was hard for me to make that decision because if you were good at math and chose another area they called you from the school guidance department to make you reconsider your decision. Personally I felt quite depressed and I knew some colleagues who changed their original decision yielding to those pressures. Fortunately it was not my case.

Toys...

Hi everyone, now I’m going  to talk about a place I visited today. At midday I went with a friend to the exposition about national toys  in Cultural Center Palacio La Moneda. There more than 600 toys made in Chile between 1915 and 1975 are exposed in a sample divided into two rooms. All these items belong to a collector called Juan Antonio Santis.

The tour of the exhibition offers an emotional voyage to childhood itself and it is a very intense experience for those who are nostalgic of their childhood. The instance of the game is very attractive because it offers the possibility to live without your actions have real consequences. The games tend to have clear rules, without ambiguity. Surely most people miss the fantasy of childhood games, I think.

Toys tend to be associated with a fictitious reality, a child's world but it is very interesting how the toys are historical artifacts that reflect the global and national reality of other times. For example, in the exposition "National Toy" many objects appear obsolete for today's children. I’ve seen how aircraft, tanks and combat helmets are exposed reflecting an era marked by global wars. In turn, you see how these toys help-reinforced social constructions related to gender roles imposed by society. Toys reproduce values ​​through socialization. On the other hand, among the toys "for girls' dolls and kitchen items associate the image of the feminine with domestic activities. The exhibition which opened the first days of May will continue to receive visits until July. I must say that there is a discount for students and if you arrive before midday, you can enter for free! This is a great opportunity to see something interesting, I recommend it!

Websites!

Hi everyone! Today I’m going to talk about websites that I often visit. It’s difficult to me to choose a favorite website because I’m a huge fan of a lot. I’m a frequent user of internet, I must admit it. Much of my free time I dedicate it to surf the internet looking for interesting things to disconnect me of my sad existence… haha Well, apart of that  sites  all  we usually visit daily as gmail/hotmail/yahoo or youtube, I’m aware of the humor blogs updates.  I think we must find or invent reasons to laugh a while!

The first one I discovered was www.filosofosos.blogspot.com about three years ago. This is the website of a guy who recreates famous scenes from movies or TV series with a very personal style. The protagonists of his cartoons are always sarcastic, politic, existentialist and extravagant bears... He also works with your own scripts and the results are sometimes disturbing…

Since a couple of years I visit the website www.dosisdiarias.com. I visit it almost daily because as its name indicates offers daily updates. Montt is better known, perhaps you've heard of him before. Montt has the ability to parody whatever; policy, religion, art, movies, novels. Everyday situations and speeches are subtly ridiculed. I can remember that a friend recommended me and I strongly recommend it to you now

Finally, I usually visit the website of Liniers, argentinian strip cartoonist. Liniers is a classic and never ceases to amaze me. I think his characters are fascinating, especially the penguins. (http://www.macanudoliniers.blogspot.com/)

Notable of these websites is that you can leave comments to the artists, including suggestions. I hope you like it!