(토요모임) [04. Feb. 2017] Saturday meeting topic

[Scarlet]

Howdy ! 

It's me Scarlett !   

This week we have 4 topics. 

◈ Culture : Chart shows 'what the British say, what they really mean, and what others understand' 

◈ Psychology : 6 Things to Do to Improve Your Relationship

◈ Future Education : 

----------- Develop talent, connect and shape the future of work

----------- What does the future of jobs look like? This is what experts think.

-----------  8 digital life skills all children need – and a plan for teaching them

◈ Directions of Education : 

----------- Do Schools Kill Creativity?_Ken Robinson

----------- There Are Instructions for Teaching Critical Thinking

----------- 40 Things You Learn From Making Mistakes

Hope you enjoy the topics. 

With luv 

Scarlett

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Chart shows 'what the British say, what they really mean, 

and what others understand'

The table claims that when British people say it's 'quite good' - it's really 'a bit disappointing'

Victoria Richards @nakedvix Wednesday 11 November 2015

A chart that claims to show the differences between what British people say, what they really mean - and what non-British people understand by it - is being shared widely on social media.

But what is behind its success?

The three-part table was first reported in 2011, and is split into three columns. It details examples such as, "I hear what you say", a phrase commonly used by British people in a range of social and business situations.

Contrary to what Britons think they are saying, however, what they really mean when they use the expression‎ is, "I disagree and do not want to discuss it further" - according to the chart. 

And as for what people from outside of Britain understand, it's another translation entirely.

The chart claims that rather than picking up on a lack of enthusiasm, non-native English speakers or those from other parts of the EU or beyond are actually likely to take Britons at face value and assume they are saying, "I accept your point of view".

And rather than realising that when British people murmur, "That's not bad" - and really mean "That's good" - non-Brits think they've done a terrible job.

What's more, the chart claims the phrase "very interesting", when spoken by a British person, really means "This is clearly nonsense" - while a fellow European would read it as, "they are impressed". 

The chart discusses veiled language and cultural stereotypes

The nuances of such loaded conversations, which have also been analysed by Business Insider, may seem rather baffling. 

Dr Matthew Melia, a senior lecturer in Performance and Screen Studies at Kingston University, who teaches about cultural linguistics and stereotypes, told The Independent the truth behind what we say and what we really mean may depend a little on individual - and regional - characteristics. 

"I’m from Liverpool and we just say what we mean," he said. "I teach television and in our first year classes we talk about how meaning is constructed and how an image can show you one thing and say something else.

"The thing that really pops into my mind is the kind of phrase you hear a lot, such, ‘I’m not racist, but…’. When people say that, it’s a subsconscious recognition that what you’re about to say is, actually, incredibly racist. And it shows that very often, people don't say what they're really thinking or what they mean because they're scared of being judged."

Dr Melia also said that the kind of language we use may depend on our career or the kind of business we're involved in. 

"When I’m with my students and giving them feedback I tend to be direct," he said. "If it’s bad, it’s bad – if it’s good then it’s good. As a lecturer and tutor I have a duty to be direct with students, whereas in business there’s likely to be a whole lexicon of sayings and language, such as the phrase, ‘blue sky thinking’. 

"As someone who works within academia, I don’t think it’s good to be indirect. Students need to be able to be on the same page and you can’t give them mixed messages. For me, the same rules apply with friends and family, which is probably why my mouth gets me into trouble sometimes!"

Dr Melia criticised the chart, however, for propagating an "us vs them" mentality. 

"By labelling these columns, 'what the British say' and making it appear differently to those from other parts of the EU, very much marks it out as an 'us vs them' mentality," he said.

"Whereas what we say depends very much on the situation, and I would question how applicable this chart is to a wider set of social interactions.

"The first column of the chart appears to me to be a very antiquated, softened, white middle-class, polite and decorous way of making a point. It's a very loose version of what we say, and disregards all nuance."

Dr Melia said he did recognise some of the phrases that the chart claims British people use often, but that he felt more familiar with the second column. 

He said: "I recognise the first column, certainly - but these kind of phrases are often ways of disguising someone making a bad point. From my own experience, I recognise the second column, 'What the British mean', much more.

"I think it is always better to be direct and to let people know where you stand. It kind of annoys me when people sugar the pill. There are occasions when it needs to be done – when you're trying to be sensitive or delicate. But if you’re down the pub with your mates and someone says something clearly ridiculous then you should make your case and challenge it directly. If you do that by going around the houses then it lacks impact.

"Language doesn’t have a fixed point, it changes, it’s culturally coded."

But as for the chart's popularity, Dr Melia says that while we may think we're comfortable with stereotypes, the reality is a little different. 

"Are we comfortable with stereotypes?" he says.

"Or is it actually cliche? The reason we are comfortable with cliché is because the words we say, or hear, have a recognised meaning to them."

Article source : http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/chart-shows-what-british-people-say-what-they-really-mean-and-what-others-understand-a6730046.html?cmpid=facebook-post

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<Questions>

Q1. Why do you study English? Except English, do you speak any other languages? 

Q2. Do you have any other languages you want to learn more? Why? 

Q3. How do you study language? 

Q4. What is the best way to deliver your thoughts? Languages, gestures or writing? 

Q5. Have you ever been misunderstood by some English sentence as above article suggested? Please share your experiences with others.

Q6. Please test yourself with below examples whether you understand sentences well or not?

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6 Things to Do to Improve Your Relationship

Eric Barker/ Aug 29, 2014

Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

In the past I’ve covered the research regarding what you should look for in a marriage partner.

What do studies say about what you can do to improve your relationship?

■ Excitement

Divorce may have less to do with an increase in conflict and more to do with a decrease in positive feelings. Boredom really can hurt a relationship:

▶ Being bored with the marriage undermines closeness, which in turn reduces satisfaction, Orbuch said.

“It suggests that excitement in relationships facilitates or makes salient closeness, which in turn promotes satisfaction in the long term,” she said.

We spend a lot of time trying to reduce conflict but not enough time experiencing thrills. And the latter may be more important.

Via Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being:

▶ Shelly Gable, professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has demonstrated that how you celebrate is more predictive of strong relations than how you fight.

The research points again and again to how important thrills are:

▶ What reignited passion in long term marriages? Doing exciting things together.

▶ Think a pleasant evening is all it takes? Researchers did a 10 week study comparing couples that engaged in “pleasant” activities vs “exciting” activities. Pleasant lost.

▶ Why would doing anything exciting have such a big effect on a relationship? Because we’re lousy about realizing where our feelings are coming from. Excitement from any source will be associated with the person you’re with, even if they’re not the cause of it.

So do something exciting. Go dancing together or anything else you can both participate in as a couple.

■ Let Yourself Be A Little Deluded With Love

Being a little deluded helps marriages:

…people who were unrealistically idealistic about their partners when they got married were more satisfied with their marriage three years later than less idealistic people.

And it’s not just true for marriages:

…relationship illusions predicted greater satisfaction, love, and trust, and less conflict and ambivalence in both dating and marital relationships. A longitudinal follow-up of the dating sample revealed that relationships were more likely to persist the stronger individuals’ initial illusions.

■ 5 to 1

Keep that ratio in mind. You need five good things for every bad thing in order to keep a happy relationship:

A 2.9: 1 means you are headed for a divorce. You need a 5: 1 ratio to predict a strong and loving marriage— five positive statements for every critical statement you make of your spouse.

And when you’re dealing with your mother-in-law the ratio is 1000 to 1. I’m not kidding.

The Island That Holds the Secret to Long Life

Here's how the people of Ikaria, Greece reach old age

■ Be Conscientious

Conscientiousness is the trait most associated with marital satisfaction:

…our findings suggest that conscientiousness is the trait most broadly associated with marital satisfaction in this sample of long-wed couples.

Actually, you can kill a lot of birds with this one stone because it’s also associated with longevity, income, job satisfaction and health.

■ Gratitude

Gratitude can be a booster shot for a relationship:

…gratitude had uniquely predictive power in relationship promotion, perhaps acting as a booster shot for the relationship.

It can even create a self-perpetuating positive feedback loop:

Thus, the authors’ findings add credence to their model, in that gratitude contributes to a reciprocal process of relationship maintenance, whereby each partner’s maintenance behaviors, perceptions of responsiveness, and feelings of gratitude feed back on and influence the other’s behaviors, perceptions, and feelings.

■ Try

Sounds silly but it’s true. Want a better relationship? Try.

Sounds ridiculous but:

▶ Improving any relationship is as easy as actively showing interest in the other person or sharing with them.

▶ Pretending time with a romantic partner was a first date makes it more enjoyable for you and for your partner. Why? On first dates we make an effort to impress.

▶ Worried that all this is fake and contrived? Relax. Putting your best face forward actually reveals your true self.

▶ Reminisce and share laughter. Stare into each others eyes. Sound corny? It works.

Article source : http://time.com/3154651/6-things-to-do-to-improve-your-relationship/?xid=time_socialflow_facebook

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<Questions>

Q1. What was the main reason to break up with your ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend? 

Q2. Describe your perfect man/woman that you would like to date.

Q3. What was the most exciting activity you've ever done before with others?  

Q4. How often do you compliment others? Are you following a 5-1 rule when you make critical comments to others? 

* 5 to 1 rule : You need a 5: 1 ratio to predict a strong and loving marriage— five positive statements for every critical statement you make of your spouse.

Q5. Above article suggested successful relationship can be maintained by excitement, idealistic attitude toward love, five-one rule, being conscientious, gratitude and trials. Do you think which one should come first to keep a long lasting relationship with people? 

Q6. From your experience, what’s the single most important thing for a relationship to be successful?

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Develop talent, connect and shape the future of work: 

A call for responsible leaders

Written by Alain Dehaze/ Chief Executive Officer, Adecco Group

Published Wednesday 18 January 2017

This article is part of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2017

If 2017 is anything like 2016, “disruption” is set to become the word of the year. In politics, business and society, recent events have highlighted the shortcomings of predictability and the urgency of expecting the unexpected.

The same applies to the labour market. Warp speed developments in technology – automation, artificial intelligence and the arrival of the sharing economy – are transforming how we work. Beyond technology, traditional working patterns are also being disrupted by changes in society, organizations and workforce management, leading to the rise of a more independent and dispersed workforce.

Flexibility is, indeed, the key to this new age, with around 30% of the US and European working population already free agents. The “job for life” no longer exists, while the “multi-career” is the norm.

A failure to recognize and adapt to these challenges could have disastrous consequences for social inequality, unemployment and polarization. While the historical evidence suggests technology augments human productivity and ultimately increases the number of jobs over time, the transition can be rocky.

Talent champions as our template

Helpful pointers for navigating this uncertain future are to be found in the fourth edition of the Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI), which this year has the theme of “Talent and Technology”.

Launched for the first time in 2013, the GTCI is an annual benchmarking report that measures the ability of countries to compete for talent. The report ranks 118 countries according to their ability to grow, attract and retain talent.

Switzerland, Singapore and the UK lead the way, with Nordic Countries ranking in the top 10. A success additionally confirmed in the newly launched Global Cities Talent Competitiveness Index (GCTCI), where Copenhagen, Zurich and Helsinki head the ranking and San Francisco is fourth.

The latest index shows that intense “connectedness” between governments, businesses and schools is a common trait of talent winning countries and cities, and collaboration is the keyword for their leaders.

Excellent education derives from such connectedness. “Talent champion” countries have education systems that provide the employable skills the new labour market needs. To shape today’s and tomorrow’s “future proof” worker, schools must teach specialized hard skills, such as the STEM skills that are in high demand. The European Commission has forecast a shortfall by 2020 of 756,000 information and communication technologies professionals and, according to the World Health Organization, we already lack 7 million healthcare workers.

But schools must also provide social and project skills that people need to develop flexibility. As the world we live in is so unpredictable, the ability to learn and to adapt to change is imperative, alongside creativity, problem solving and communication skills.

‘Must do’ in education and employment policies

Responsive and responsible leaders in governments and businesses must act and collaborate to expedite change, implementing innovative, experiential and project-based educational approaches. These must include the integration of work-based training opportunities, such as the ones provided by the apprenticeship systems. Employability – and therefore our young people’s futures – is at stake, so we cannot afford to wait any longer for change.

Beyond education, successful GTCI countries attract and retain talent by shaping flexible labour markets that include a level of social protection. Here again, responsible leadership is required at a policy level, with the collaboration of company leaders.

More generally, effective labour markets will require less red tape and active employment policies, to boost competitiveness and job creation. Take the examples of Switzerland or Denmark, where lean regulation benefits both companies and employees by focusing on their employability. At the same time, for the new workers of the sharing economy, the need for protection goes hand-in-hand with the quest for flexibility. To ensure a level playing field for all forms of employment, rules will have to apply to everyone.

Reforms must also facilitate retraining and mobility in response to market needs. The global economy and its new work paradigms require new skills: in the multi-career existence, life-long learning becomes a must. With respect to mobility, one potential solution lies in creating “individual security accounts: that allow benefit portability (unemployment insurance, health insurance, disability and injury insurance) as people move across jobs and countries.

The role of business leaders

It is also up to us, business leaders, to maximize companies’ organizational flexibility, given the likelihood of ever-greater volatility. As workers gain more independence, organizations are becoming flatter and more interconnected, with unprecedented changes in leadership highlighting the importance of collaboration and results over traditional corporate hierarchies and authority.

At the same time, we must invest in training to develop, attract and retain talent and ensure the employability of our own staff.

All in all, there’s urgent work for every one of us in implementing wide-ranging reforms to drive innovation, foster flexibility and tackle unemployment at its roots.

Article source : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/develop-talent-connect-and-shape-the-future-of-work-a-call-for-responsible-leaders?utm_content=buffer50d46&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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What does the future of jobs look like? 

This is what experts think

Written by Alex Gray/ Formative Content/ Published Friday 27 January 2017

This article is part of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2017

The jobs we have today won't will not be the ones that we have tomorrow. Neither will the skills. So what will the future of jobs look like, and what should we be doing to prepare? This is what the experts think.

No more jobs for life

New jobs supported by the right education

“In the very near future we won’t have the same jobs that we have today, but new jobs will be created. We must empower people with the right education and opportunities. I believe our greatest days are ahead of us, but this rests on embracing our most promising technologies — and shaping them — to lift people up and create opportunity at all levels."

- Devin Wenig, President and CEO, eBay -

What we need to teach our children

“Cultivating digital intelligence grounded in human values is essential for our kids to become masters of technology instead of being mastered by it.”

“Without a national digital education programme, command of and access to technology will be distributed unevenly, exacerbating inequality and hindering socio-economic mobility.”

- Yuhyun Park, Chair, infollutionZERO Foundation -

Policy needs to catch up

“While there are deeply polarized views about how technology will impact employment, there is agreement that we are in a period of transition. Policy needs to catch up and facilitate this transition. We propose four areas of action: recognition of all work models and agile implementation of new regulations, updated social protection, adult learning and continuous re-skilling, and proactive employment services.”

- Saadia Zahidi, Head of Education, Gender and Work and Member of Executive Committee, World Economic Forum Geneva -

Disruption is nothing new

“The disruptive effects of innovation are nothing new: the farm worker, transported to the industrial factory in the latter half of the 18th century, would have experienced levels of devastation to their lives and society that make the present changes seem minor in comparison.”

- Mark Dodgson, Director, Technology and Innovation Management Centre, University of Queensland Business School and David Gann, Vice President, Imperial College. -

Why empathy will matter

Learning matters

“In an environment where new skills emerge as fast as others become extinct, employability is less about what you already know and more about your capacity to learn.”

- Jonas Prising, Chairman and CEO, ManpowerGroup - 

Man or machine?

“Autopilot didn’t put pilots out of a job; instead it foreshadowed an increasing collaboration between human and machine on complex tasks.”

- Laurent Haug, author -

Shifting skills … shifting jobs

“Many members of the global workforce can’t keep up with the shift in skills required for jobs, which are seen by some as part of the evolving Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

- Allen Blue, Co-Founder and Vice President, Product Management, LinkedIn -

Digital brings opportunities for everyone

An equal future

“The future won’t be a man’s world, it will be a skilled world – one where women have equal access, representation and skills to capture the opportunities in industries and jobs that are growing and well-paid.”

-  Mara Swan, Executive Vice President, Global Strategy and Talent, ManpowerGroup - 

Robots won’t be taking our jobs

“The biggest misconception I’ve heard here at Davos is this idea that technology is going to come for all of our jobs and there’s nothing we can do about it. The reality is that It’s a more powerful tool than we have ever had before, that means we had more power to shape that going forward.”

- Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the MIT Initiative for the Digital Economy -

Nor will computers

“The first is that occupations that use computers grow faster, not slower – and there is no sign of technology causing large scale unemployment or polarization.

The second insight is that instead of job losses, there is a resulting need for new skills: “New technology can increase demand for an occupation, offsetting putative job losses.”

Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the MIT Initiative for the Digital Economy

Now watch 

The Digital Transformation of Industries

What big bets are companies making in the digital transformation of their business models and organizational structures?

On the agenda:

- Defining digital transformation

- Making the right investment decisions

- Designing a digital culture

Speakers: Rich Lesser, Klaus Kleinfeld, Marc R. Benioff, Meg Whitman, Bernard J. Tyson, Jean-Pascal Tricoire

Topics: Global Economy, Fourth Industrial Revolution

Article source : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/future-of-jobs-davos-2017

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8 digital life skills all children need – and a plan for teaching them

Written by Yuhyun Park/ Chair, infollutionZERO Foundation

Published Tuesday 6 September 2016

A generation ago, IT and digital media were niche skills. Today, they are a core competency necessary to succeed in most careers.

That’s why digital skills are an essential part of a comprehensive education framework. Without a national digital education programme, command of and access to technology will be distributed unevenly, exacerbating inequality and hindering socio-economic mobility.

 What’s your DQ?

The challenge for educators is to move beyond thinking of IT as a tool, or “IT-enabled education platforms”. Instead, they need to think about how to nurture students’ ability and confidence to excel both online and offline in a world where digital media is ubiquitous.

Like IQ or EQ – which we use to measure someone’s general and emotional intelligence – an individual’s facility and command of digital media is a competence that can be measured. We call it DQ: digital intelligence. And the good news is that DQ is an intelligence that is highly adaptive.

DQ can broadly be broken down into three levels:

Level 1: Digital citizenship

The ability to use digital technology and media in safe, responsible and effective ways

Level 2: Digital creativity

The ability to become a part of the digital ecosystem by co-creating new content and turning ideas into reality by using digital tools

Level 3: Digital entrepreneurship

The ability to use digital media and technologies to solve global challenges or to create new opportunities

 Why are we neglecting digital citizenship?

Of the three, digital creativity is the least neglected, as more and more schools attempt to provide children with some exposure to media literacy, coding and even robotics, all of which are seen as directly related to future employability and job creation. Likewise, there are major education initiatives – from America’s code.org to Africa’s IamTheCode.org – that promote access to coding education.

Digital entrepreneurship has also been actively encouraged, particularly in tertiary education. Many top universities have adopted and developed new courses or initiatives such as technopreneurship and entrepreneurship hackathons to encourage a culture of innovation. We’re even starting to see global movements that nurture social entrepreneurship among children through mentoring programmes – such as the Mara Foundation – and school programmes, like with the Ashoka Changemaker School.

But digital citizenship has often been overlooked by educators and leaders. This is in spite of the fact it is fundamental to a person’s ability to use technology and live in the digital world, a need which arises from a very young age. A child should start learning digital citizenship as early as possible, ideally when one starts actively using games, social media or any digital device.

 The digital skills our children should learn

Educators tend to think children will pick up these skills by themselves or that these skills should be nurtured at home. However, due to the digital generation gap, with generation Z being the first to truly grow up in the era of smartphones and social media, neither parents nor teachers know how to adequately equip children with these skills.

Young children are all too often exposed to cyber risks such as technology addiction, cyberbullying and grooming. They can also absorb toxic behavioural norms that affect their ability to interact with others. And while most children encounter such challenges, the problematic exposure is amplified for vulnerable children, including those with special needs, minorities and the economically disadvantaged. They tend to not only be more frequently exposed to risk, but also face more severe outcomes.

So what skills should we be teaching our children as part of their digital citizenship? In the research we’ve done on this matter, we’ve identified eight in particular.

     

1. Digital citizen identity: the ability to build and manage a healthy identity online and offline with integrity

2. Screen time management: the ability to manage one’s screen time, multitasking, and one’s engagement in online games and social media with self-control

3. Cyberbullying management: the ability to detect situations of cyberbullying and handle them wisely

4. Cybersecurity management: the ability to protect one’s data by creating strong passwords and to manage various cyberattacks

5. Privacy management: the ability to handle with discretion all personal information shared online to protect one’s and others’ privacy

6. Critical thinking: the ability to distinguish between true and false information, good and harmful content, and trustworthy and questionable contacts online

7. Digital footprints: The ability to understand the nature of digital footprints and their real-life consequences and to manage them responsibly

8. Digital empathy: the ability to show empathy towards one’s own and others’ needs and feelings online

 What a quality digital education looks like

A quality digital citizenship education must include opportunities for assessment and feedback. The assessment tools should be comprehensive as well as adaptive in order to eval‎uate not only hard but also soft DQ skills. Ultimately, such assessments should serve as a means of providing feedback that gives children a better understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses, so that they may find their own paths to success.

Ultimately, national leaders need to understand the importance of digital citizenship as the foundation of digital intelligence. National education leaders should make it a priority to implement digital citizenship programmes as part of an overall DQ education framework.

Most importantly, individuals should initiate digital citizenship education in their own sphere of influence: parents in their homes, teachers in their classes, and leaders in their communities.

There is no need to wait. In fact, there is no time to wait. Children are already immersed in the digital world and are influencing what that world will look like tomorrow. It is up to us to ensure that they are equipped with the skills and support to make it a place where they can thrive.

This post is a follow up to the 8 digital skills we must teach our children

Article source : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/09/8-digital-life-skills-all-children-need-and-a-plan-for-teaching-them?utm_content=buffer6d09e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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<Questions>

Q1. What is your current job? Do you think your job can sustain permanently? Or do you have any field you want to challenge in the near future? 

Q2. Which parts of your job do you find most exciting? Which parts of your job do you find most boring? Why?

Q3. Which knowledge is required for your next occupation? How would you improve your knowledge on it? 

Q4. What’s your DQ(Digital intelligence)?

Q5. According to an article, we need to be involved in education initiatives for our future employ ability and job creation. In this point, are you join any kinds of programs to develop digital creativity? For instance, media literacy, coding and robotics? 

Q6. This article suggest 8 skills should be trained by us to be a successful digital citizen. How many items did you acquire from the belows? 

1. Digital citizen identity: the ability to build and manage a healthy identity online and offline with integrity

2. Screen time management: the ability to manage one’s screen time, multitasking, and one’s engagement in online games and social media with self-control

3. Cyberbullying management: the ability to detect situations of cyberbullying and handle them wisely

4. Cybersecurity management: the ability to protect one’s data by creating strong passwords and to manage various cyberattacks

5. Privacy management: the ability to handle with discretion all personal information shared online to protect one’s and others’ privacy

6. Critical thinking: the ability to distinguish between true and false information, good and harmful content, and trustworthy and questionable contacts online

7. Digital footprints: The ability to understand the nature of digital footprints and their real-life consequences and to manage them responsibly

8. Digital empathy: the ability to show empathy towards one’s own and others’ needs and feelings online

     

Q7. Do you have any friends or acquaintances who have issues in terms of screen time management or digital citizen identity? 

Q8. Do you think our education system have assessment and feedback procedure for students' better understanding of their strength and weaknesses? 

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Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

TED2006/ Filmed Feb 2006

Sir Kenneth Robinson (1950~) is a British author, speaker and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, education and arts bodies. He was Director of the Arts in Schools Project (1985–89) and Professor of Arts Education at the University of Warwick (1989–2001), and is now Professor Emeritus at the same institution.In 2003 he was knighted for services to art. Originally from a working class Liverpool family, Robinson now lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children._from Wikipedia

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Good morning. How are you?

It's been great, hasn't it? I've been blown away by the whole thing. In fact, I'm leaving.

There have been three themes running through the conference which are relevant to what I want to talk about. One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity in all of the presentations that we've had and in all of the people here. Just the variety of it and the range of it. The second is that it's put us in a place where we have no idea what's going to happen, in terms of the future. No idea how this may play out.

I have an interest in education. Actually, what I find is everybody has an interest in education. Don't you? I find this very interesting. If you're at a dinner party, and you say you work in education ? Actually, you're not often at dinner parties, frankly. If you work in education, you're not asked.

And you're never asked back, curiously. That's strange to me. But if you are, and you say to somebody, you know, they say, "What do you do?" and you say you work in education, you can see the blood run from their face. They're like, "Oh my God," you know, "Why me?" "My one night out all week."

But if you ask about their education, they pin you to the wall. Because it's one of those things that goes deep with people, am I right? Like religion, and money and other things. So I have a big interest in education, and I think we all do. We have a huge vested interest in it, partly because it's education that's meant to take us into this future that we can't grasp. If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise that's been on parade for the past four days, what the world will look like in five years' time. And yet we're meant to be educating them for it. So the unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary.

And the third part of this is that we've all agreed, nonetheless, on the really extraordinary capacities that children have ? their capacities for innovation. I mean, Sirena last night was a marvel, wasn't she? Just seeing what she could do. And she's exceptional, but I think she's not, so to speak, exceptional in the whole of childhood. What you have there is a person of extraordinary dedication who found a talent. And my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents. And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.

So I want to talk about education and I want to talk about creativity. My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.

Thank you. That was it, by the way. Thank you very much. So, 15 minutes left.

Well, I was born... no. I heard a great story recently ? I love telling it ? of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson. She was six, and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this girl hardly ever paid attention, and in this drawing lesson, she did. The teacher was fascinated. She went over to her, and she said, "What are you drawing?" And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." And the girl said, "They will, in a minute."

When my son was four in England ? Actually, he was four everywhere, to be honest.

If we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was four that year. He was in the Nativity play. Do you remember the story?

No, it was big, it was a big story. Mel Gibson did the sequel, you may have seen it.

"Nativity II." But James got the part of Joseph, which we were thrilled about. We considered this to be one of the lead parts. We had the place crammed full of agents in T-shirts: "James Robinson IS Joseph!" (Laughter) He didn't have to speak, but you know the bit where the three kings come in? They come in bearing gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. This really happened. We were sitting there and I think they just went out of sequence, because we talked to the little boy afterward and we said, "You OK with that?" And he said, "Yeah, why? Was that wrong?" They just switched. The three boys came in, four-year-olds with tea towels on their heads, and they put these boxes down, and the first boy said, "I bring you gold." And the second boy said, "I bring you myrrh." And the third boy said, "Frank sent this."

What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong. I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original ? if you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this. We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities.

Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it. So why is this?

I lived in Stratford-on-Avon until about five years ago. In fact, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles. So you can imagine what a seamless transition that was.

Actually, we lived in a place called Snitterfield, just outside Stratford, which is where Shakespeare's father was born. Are you struck by a new thought? I was. You don't think of Shakespeare having a father, do you? Do you? Because you don't think of Shakespeare being a child, do you? Shakespeare being seven? I never thought of it. I mean, he was seven at some point. He was in somebody's English class, wasn't he?

How annoying would that be?

"Must try harder."

Being sent to bed by his dad, you know, to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now! And put the pencil down."

"And stop speaking like that."

"It's confusing everybody."

Anyway, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles, and I just want to say a word about the transition. My son didn't want to come. I've got two kids; he's 21 now, my daughter's 16. He didn't want to come to Los Angeles. He loved it, but he had a girlfriend in England. This was the love of his life, Sarah. He'd known her for a month.

Mind you, they'd had their fourth anniversary, because it's a long time when you're 16. He was really upset on the plane, he said, "I'll never find another girl like Sarah." And we were rather pleased about that, frankly ?

Because she was the main reason we were leaving the country.

But something strikes you when you move to America and travel around the world: Every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. Every one. Doesn't matter where you go. You'd think it would be otherwise, but it isn't. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on Earth. And in pretty much every system too, there's a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think math is very important, but so is dance. Children dance all the time if they're allowed to, we all do. We all have bodies, don't we? Did I miss a meeting?

Truthfully, what happens is, as children grow up, we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads. And slightly to one side.

If you were to visit education, as an alien, and say "What's it for, public education?" I think you'd have to conclude, if you look at the output, who really succeeds by this, who does everything that they should, who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners ? I think you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors. Isn't it? They're the people who come out the top. And I used to be one, so there.

And I like university professors, but you know, we shouldn't hold them up as the high-water mark of all human achievement. They're just a form of life, another form of life. But they're rather curious, and I say this out of affection for them. There's something curious about professors in my experience ? not all of them, but typically, they live in their heads. They live up there, and slightly to one side. They're disembodied, you know, in a kind of literal way. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads.

Don't they? It's a way of getting their head to meetings.

If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, get yourself along to a residential conference of senior academics, and pop into the discotheque on the final night.

And there, you will see it. Grown men and women writhing uncontrollably, off the beat.

Waiting until it ends so they can go home and write a paper about it.

Our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there's a reason. Around the world, there were no public systems of education, really, before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas.

Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don't do music, you're not going to be a musician; don't do art, you won't be an artist. Benign advice ? now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in a revolution.

And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly-talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can't afford to go on that way.

In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, more people worldwide will be graduating through education than since the beginning of history. More people, and it's the combination of all the things we've talked about ? technology and its transformation effect on work, and demography and the huge explosion in population.

Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job, it's because you didn't want one. And I didn't want one, frankly. (Laughter) But now kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other. It's a process of academic inflation. And it indicates the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet. We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.

We know three things about intelligence. One, it's diverse. We think about the world in all the ways that we experience it. We think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically. We think in abstract terms, we think in movement. Secondly, intelligence is dynamic. If you look at the interactions of a human brain, as we heard yesterday from a number of presentations, intelligence is wonderfully interactive. The brain isn't divided into compartments. In fact, creativity ? which I define 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.

By the way, there's a shaft of nerves that joins the two halves of the brain called the corpus callosum. It's thicker in women. Following off from Helen yesterday, this is probably why women are better at multi-tasking. Because you are, aren't you? There's a raft of research, but I know it from my personal life. If my wife is cooking a meal at home ? which is not often, thankfully.

No, she's good at some things, but if she's cooking, she's dealing with people on the phone, she's talking to the kids, she's painting the ceiling, she's doing open-heart surgery over here. If I'm cooking, the door is shut, the kids are out, the phone's on the hook, if she comes in I get annoyed. I say, "Terry, please, I'm trying to fry an egg in here."

"Give me a break."

Actually, do you know that old philosophical thing, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, did it happen? Remember that old chestnut? I saw a great t-shirt recently, which said, "If a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?"

And the third thing about intelligence is, it's distinct. I'm doing a new book at the moment called "Epiphany," which is based on a series of interviews with people about how they discovered their talent. I'm fascinated by how people got to be there. It's really prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman who maybe most people have never heard of, Gillian Lynne. Have you heard of her? Some have. She's a choreographer, and everybody knows her work. She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera." She's wonderful. I used to be on the board of The Royal Ballet, as you can see. Anyway, Gillian and I had lunch one day and I said, "How did you get to be a dancer?" It was interesting. When she was at school, she was really hopeless. And the school, in the '30s, wrote to her parents and said, "We think Gillian has a learning disorder." She couldn't concentrate; she was fidgeting. I think now they'd say she had ADHD. Wouldn't you? But this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn't been invented at this point. It wasn't an available condition.

People weren't aware they could have that.

Anyway, she went to see this specialist. So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her mother, and she was led and sat on this chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this man talked to her mother about the problems Gillian was having at school. Because she was disturbing people; her homework was always late; and so on, little kid of eight. In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian, and said, "I've listened to all these things your mother's told me, I need to speak to her privately. Wait here. We'll be back; we won't be very long," and they went and left her.

But as they went out of the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk. And when they got out, he said to her mother, "Just stand and watch her." And the minute they left the room, she was on her feet, moving to the music. And they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said, "Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick; she's a dancer. Take her to a dance school."

I said, "What happened?" She said, "She did. I can't tell you how wonderful it was. We walked in this room and it was full of people like me. People who couldn't sit still. People who had to move to think." Who had to move to think. They did ballet, they did tap, jazz; they did modern; they did contemporary. She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School; she became a soloist; she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet. She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School, founded the Gillian Lynne Dance Company, met Andrew Lloyd Webber. She's been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history, she's given pleasure to millions, and she's a multi-millionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

What I think it comes to is this: Al Gore spoke the other night about ecology and the revolution that was triggered by Rachel Carson. I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won't serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children.

There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said, "If all the insects were to disappear from the Earth, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish." And he's right.

What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination. We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely and that we avert some of the scenarios that we've talked about. And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are and seeing our children for the hope that they are. And our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future. By the way ? we may not see this future, but they will. And our job is to help them make something of it.

Thank you very much.

Movie clip source : http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity/transcript?language=en

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There Are Instructions for Teaching Critical Thinking

Over a year ago  by LORI CHANDLER

Whether or not you can teach something as subjective as critical thinking has been up for debate, but a fascinating new study shows that it’s actually quite possible. Experiments performed by Stanford's Department of Physics and Graduate School of Education demonstrate that students can be instructed to think more critically. 

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of critical-thinking skills in modern society. The ability to decipher information and interpret it, offering creative solutions, is in direct relation to our intellect. 

The study took two groups of students in an introductory physics laboratory course, with one group (known as the experimental group) given the instruction to use quantitative comparisons between datasets and the other group given no instruction (the control group). Comparing data in a scientific manner; that is, being able to measure one’s observations in a statistical or mathematical way, led to interesting results for the experimental group.

Even after these instructions were removed, they were 12 times more likely to offer creative solutions to improve the experimental methods being used in the class, four times more likely to explain the limitations of the methods, and better at explaining their reasoning than the control group. The results remained consistent even in the next year, with students in a different class. So what does this imply about critical thinking, and how can we utilize these findings to improve ourselves and our society?

We live in an age with unprecedented access to information. Whether you are contributing to an entry on Wikipedia or reading a meme that has no sources cited (do they ever?), your ability to comprehend what you are reading and weigh it is a constant and consistent need. That is why it is so imperative that we have sharp critical-thinking skills. Also, if you don’t use them, you will have nothing to argue with your family about at Thanksgiving. More importantly, it keeps your brain from nomming on junk food and on more of a kale-based diet. Look at any trending topic, and test yourself. Is this true/accurate? How do I know either way? Is there a way I can use data (provable, factual information) to figure this out?

Certainly, we can train ourselves to become better critical thinkers, but it’s also important that we teach these skills to kids. Studies have shown how important this ability is to our success, and yet many feel that we’re doing a terrible job of teaching it. This study, however, may lead to educators and parents realizing that these skills are teachable. The implications of a better thinking society are not quantitative, but I do believe they would be extraordinary.

PHOTO CREDIT: De Agostini Picture Library / Contributor

Article source : http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/can-you-be-taught-how-to-think-better?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox#link_time=1485632466

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40 Things You Learn From Making Mistakes

Maria Hill

Do you like making mistakes?

I certainly don’t.

Making mistakes is inevitable. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could be at ease with them? Perhaps there is a way to think of them differently and see their benefits.

■ Why Mistakes Feel Dangerous

Mistakes often feel dangerous. Throughout human history, our errors have often been treated as dangerous for a variety of reasons:

▶ Our vulnerability.

We have limited and fragile support systems. When those systems fail, people often lose their lives.

▶ Real dangers. 

Nature can be dangerous, and making mistakes can put us at the mercy of nature and its animal residents seeking a meal.

▶ Ignorance. 

Many cultures scapegoate someone whenever there is a failure of some kind. Scapegoating can be serious and deadly.

▶ Order. 

Many societies punish those who do not conform to the prevailing orthodoxy and treat difference and non-conformity as a mistake. Even our brains flash an error message whenever we go against prevailing social norms according to research published in the Spero Forum.

We have a history of handling mistakes and failure in an unpleasant way. Since each of us carries our human history with us, it can be a challenge to overcome the fear of making mistakes.

If we can embrace the reality of mistakes, we can free ourselves to be more creative in our lives and dig up some interesting insights.

■ Why You Cannot Avoid Making Mistakes

Many people operate under the notion that making mistakes is an aberration, a mistake if you will. You can call it perfectionism but it is a more substantial problem. It is really a demand for order and continuity.

When we think we can eliminate mistakes, we are often working from a perspective that sees the world as a fixed place.

The world, however, is not so obliging. Like it or not, the world, and everything in it, is constantly changing. Change is more constant and pervasive than we can see with our own eyes which is why we often miss it. Our bodies are constantly changing. The natural conditions of the earth change constantly as well. Everything, including economic and cultural systems have life cycles. Everything is in a constant state of flux.

We cannot see all of the changes going on around us since rates of change vary. Unfortunately, when we try to create a feeling of certainty and solidity in our lives or operate from the illusion of stability and order, we are fighting reality and our natural evolution which is built on adapting to change.

It is better to continually bend into this reality rather than fight every change we experience. Fighting it can cause us to make more mistakes. Finding the benefits in change can be useful and help us minimize unnecessary mistakes.

■ Benefits of Making Mistakes

Life has so many uncertainties and variables that mistakes are inevitable.  Fortunately, there are many things you can learn from making mistakes.

Here is a list of ways to harness the mistakes you make for your benefit.

1. Point us to something we did not know

2. Reveal a nuance we missed

3. Deepen our knowledge

4. Tell us something about our skill levels

5. Help us see what matters and what does not

6. Inform us more about our values

7. Teach us more about others

8. Let us recognize changing circumstances

9. Show us when someone else has changed

10. Keep us connected to what works and what doesn’t work

11. Remind us of our humanity

12. Spur us to want to better work which helps us all

13. Promote compassion for ourselves and others

14. Teach us to value forgiveness

15. Help us to pace ourselves better

16. Invite us to better choices

17. Can teach us how to experiment

18. Can reveal an new insight

19. Can suggest new options we had not considered

20. Can serve as a warning

21. Show us hidden fault lines in our lives which can lead us to more productive arrangements

22. Point out structural problems in our lives.

23. Prompt us to learn more about ourselves

24. Remind us how we are like others

25. Make us more humble

26. Help us rectify injustices in our lives

27. Show us where to create more balance in our lives

28. Tell us when the time to move on has occurred

29. Reveal where our passion is and where it is not

30. Expose our true feelings

31. Bring out problems in a relationship

32. Can be a red flag for our misjudgments

33. Point us in a more creative direction

34. Show us when we are not listening

35. Wake us up to our authentic selves

36. Can create distance with someone else

37. Slow us down when we need to

38. Can hasten change

39. Reveal our blind spots

40. Are the invisible made visible

■ Reframe Reality To Handle Mistakes More Easily

The secret to handling mistakes is to:

- Expect them as part of the process of growth and development

- Have an experimental mindset

- Think in evolutional rather than fixed terms.

When we accept change as the natural structure of the world,  our vulnerability and humanness lets us work with the ebb and flow of life.

When we recognize the inevitability of mistakes as part of the ongoing experiment which life is, then we can relax more. In doing so we may make fewer of them.

It also helps to keep in mind that trial and error is an organic natural way of living. It is how we have evolved over time. It is better to be with our natural evolution than to fight it and make life harder.

When we adopt an evolutional mindset and see ourselves as part of the ongoing human experiment, we can appreciate that all that has been built up over time which includes the many mistakes our ancestors have made over thousands of years. Each one of us today is a part of that human tradition of learning and experimenting,

Mistakes are part of the trial and error, experimental nature of life. The more you adopt the experimental, evolutional frame, the easier it becomes to handle mistakes.

Handling mistakes well can help you relax and enjoy all aspects of life more.

Article source : http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/40-things-you-learn-from-making-mistakes.html

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<Questions>

Q1. What is the definition of creativity? How about critical thinking?

Q2. Are you agree that schools kill creativity? Why or why not? 

Q3. Do you agree that you can learn something new by making mistakes? 

Q4. Are you get afraid of making mistakes? 

Q5. Why does critical thinking matter in a modern society?