exploring the intersection of new media and everything else

One of the questions that I have been wrestling with ever since I took a job as a teacher (which I must admit I am no longer doing) is how to fix our educational system. And by our I don’t mean just the one in the United States, but also the ones in places like Korea or Japan… those countries that people typically point to and say “Hey look at them. They have great educational systems.”

My response: I was a teacher in Korea. And the system here is just as f’d up as it is in the United States. If you want to compare math and science scores… ok Korea and Japan do have a significant edge on the United States, but you should see what these kids have to go through. A lot of these kids are addicted to coffee by the time they start middle school. It is not unusual for them to go to school from 7am to 10pm, Mon thru Fri and throw in another half day over the weekend. This can’t be healthy in the long run. And now I hear that people in the United States are saying that we should make our education system more like Korea and Japans? My honest opinion is that that would be a terrible mistake.

Why? Well if you are looking for solid data proving why this would be a terrible move, I don’t have any. But I do want to show you a YouTube video that I recently came across that will serve as my anecdotal evidence. This video (created by Kutiman) is a compilation of other user created music videos scattered across YouTube, blended together to create one longer video song. The result, an incredible creative audio endeavor.

But more important than the result itself was how it was created. You think that somebody went to school and was taught how to do this? You cannot be taught to be creative. Creativity comes from free time. And as Kevin Kelly suggests creating this video must have been a total waste of time and it will probably bring the artist immeasurable success.

What I am trying to suggest with this is that free time is important. The ability to waste time is important. Granted many of the things children do with that free time will be pointless (in our eyes) but we must still give them that time because one day they will create something that will bring them immeasurable success using that free time. 

Related posts:

1. Education Trends: Manga Meets Learning Long a popular form of media in Japan and the...
2. Educational Technology Review: New Ways To Bring New Media into Education | 17 October 2008 The world market for e-learning and Educational Technology is estimated...
3. Blogging as a Tool to Improve Writing Two weeks ago I made the decision to require my...
4. Magic of Design Education for Everyone – TEDxSeoul Second Speaker is Bill Dresselhaus – former Apple designer and...
5. Educational Trends: Video Games as the Future of Learning In a little over 30 years, video games have become...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.