Capacity for Innovation

  Soft chunks of clay can be shifted and molded into infinite usage. As time flows, moisture slowly escapes clay particles, solidifying. No more can molded turn into pliable again. Children are fresh clay, blooming with sprays of creativity; while adults are dry and weathered, deprived of such moisturizing. Such thoughts are widely accepted, as they are portrayed commonly as children learning the arid "adult world." James Matthew Barrie’s' Peter Pan and Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland distinguishes the line between the unrealistic world of children's imagination with the realistic one of adult's. Ken Robinson talks specifically about how academic education in an adult's perspective is killing the creativity of young minds.
     According to Ken Robinson, current education system is made suitable for the Industrial Revolution that happened years before. Subjects that "meet the needs of industrialization" were regarded as important while those not were considered trivial. I agree that there certainly is the same hierarchy of subjects all over the world, Korea no exception. Mathematics and languages on top, then humanities and science, and the bottom are the arts. Generally, mathematics and languages are seen as most fundamental basis for other education. Of course, those subjects are important, as they were stepping stones for further developments in other areas like science and humanities. However, such fundamentality does not mean that other subjects are inferior to mathematics and languages. Each subject has its own significance and value. The common hierarchy of subjects is underestimating the values of "unimportant" subjects, while hindering possible talents of people. Rene Descartes once said, "It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well." The excessively academic society is not allowing people to fully use up to their potential. Adults hardly recognize this partiality of education, because that educational environment is where they had their success. They see such hierarchy as obvious, unable to take a step to transform current education. People should realize that academic ability does not equal to intelligence.
     Another problem with current education is conformity. The main focus of parent's generation might have been stabilizing and developing the society. Conformity was an easy tool for organizing the society and promoting a fast development. But generations have passed, and now became a time where originality and creativity is the key. Ken Robinson defined creativity as a "process of having original ideas that have value." However, current education system emphasizes conformity, where each and every student is inserted with the same knowledge. Factorized education affected people in hardening their creativity. People tend to think less about an issue or about anything in ordinary life. Usually, creativity comes from taking interest in events aroud. Education should give opportunity to people to think deeply about what they are learning, instead of pouring facts. Albert Einstein quoted that "Imagination is more important than knowledge." In addition, I agree that the society made mistakes the worst thing that people can do. Parents and teachers scold when children makes mistakes. Anything out of order is considered absurd and unreasonable. Such conventional thoughts is stopping children to be brave in their thoughts and acts. If people are not preapared to be wrong, they will not come up with anything original. Used to such evironment, only little progress can be made with people unable to make bold steps.
     In his first and second speech, Ken Robinson describes the problem with current education and that people should transform, not reform, it. However, he does not propose a specific solution for this social phenomenon. In the second video, Ken Robinson then vaguely says that education should be customized. As he said before, education is something that goes deep with people. Education must be handled cautiously, which brings the tranform matter difficult to do.
     The best way to eventually transform education is to make gradual changes. Education should also reflect the thoughts of students, the direct receivers of education. I feel that the fundamental step is to provide an educational environment where people can freely read books and discuss about it. Through books, children can learn new ideas of others. They can build up their own imagination based on these other ideas. Then, through discussion, children can talk about their ideas and expand their ideas. In discussion, people should respect each other's ideas, whether the ideas may be absurd or not. Change in education is not radical, but a series of baby steps.

The Only Way to Do Great Work Is to Love What You Do

           Emotion, it is one great element that distinguishes human from humanoids. Even though science technology had shown tremendous development, it is not in a god’s status to gift real heart to machines. Maybe the imperfect, unpredictable emotions can only be a factor of defective, unconstrained living beings. Such emotions give people greater potential and ability, even near to infinite sometimes. Love is one the strongest emotions, as some say it can be more powerful than a mountain. It means passion, eagerness, enthusiasm, and care for the subject; an uninterested person cannot compete with such fervor.

           In general, a person quite usually walks a path of another’s, unable to seek for own values. Many set apparent benefits as the goal of their life, reality as the standard, or follows the path that another person had already planned out for them. For example, they become puppets of their parents, or become ordinary businesspeople and governmental officials. People, at least once in their time, had a dream that they truly wanted to achieve, but had to change for a realistic reason. Then, they shift their own views, deceiving themselves that the changed goal was what they had really wanted for. However, as many career complaints show, majority of people are dissatisfied with their type of work and regret about their life.

           In these cases, people naturally become uninterested since it was not what their true inner voice had wanted for. There is no love for it, just another repetitive part of boring, old life. On the other hand, a few people actually respected their inner voice, and were able to do what they truly felt in their mind. They love what they do, urging them to have more ardor and become attached to their work. Such investment towards work can eventually produce great result that receives attention. Steve Jobs was one who was able to take bold steps to find and do what he loved the most, naturally become successful.

           There are numerous benefits by just loving what a person does, without any surplus efforts. There is no forced action or seeming deception of oneself to get along with it. Effort and passion just happens to be there since there is almost excessive, obsessive care about it. By following the true emotions and inner voice, the great work can be achieved. That is why unless machineries gains a true heart, it can never have same potential as people.

This is the short piece of writing that I did in philosophy class. :)

What I Am as a Writer

What's your style?  What's your strength?  What do you think you need to improve?  What is your goal?

 Writing is like playing basketball to me. In basketball, once I keep scoring goals, the game becomes interesting and I get better. However, once I keep missing the goals, frustration and anger get the best of me. Similarly, sometimes I am fully submerged into the piece, my fingers flying across the keyboard. Once the tap is turned on, idea flows out. But most of the time, my face is frowning at the screen that just does not seem to progress.
 When I were younger, I quite enjoyed writing. Writing was the best way to materialize imagination into what everyone could see. The writings were mainly creative stories, such as "Rug Bug's House Horrors" or "Super Egg's Adventures." The stories were freely written, without any restrictions. Thus, writing did not pressure me whatsoever. It was after I went to middle school as I slowly lost my interest. The ratio of academic essays grew as stories lost their place instead. The pieces were even evaluated, giving me stress in writing. Frankly speaking, writing was never my specialty. Putting ideas and thoughts into an organized piece of alphabets is a hard, mind-boggling job. It is difficult, because I have to consider every single word to present the best work possible. Consequently, with all the effort, writing took long. Soon, I lost interest and only wrote what I was assigned to do. That should not have been the case, since I now realize that I do not like writing as much as I used to.
 Recently, I regained some interest in writing as there were some opportunities allowing me to write something other than TOEFL essays or literary analysis. One of the writings is the one that I wrote in philosophy class; which I liked, because it gave me space to think about the topic.
 It has been a long time since I had started to write, but I still do not exactly know my writing styles. However, I found out that I liked to explain more than giving bunch of statistics or examples. Usually, a right example for a specific situation is hard to find. For such situations, I try to clearly explain my thoughts in a general way for people to understand.
 My strength in writing is that it is easy to understand in terms of vocabulary. I usually write essays in easy, day-to-day language. I feel that complex vocabulary seems awkward, as I am not that familiar with the usage. However, I try to use higher level words as I become older. Still, not being exaggeratingly flashy is what allows my writings to be easily readable.
 My weakness is that sometimes I make unclear sentences. I tend to thoroughly explain what I think, but sometimes the sentences become jumbled up and unorganized. Since I understand what I wrote myself, I tend to skip the part that people might not be able to understand my writing.
 For me, I have several goals that I want to accomplish. First, I want to make writing enjoyable for me, since it is a crucial part of my life. I want to get rid of the tendency to evade writing as possible. Through frequent practices of different varieties of writing, I want to make writing a part of my life. Next, I want to make my pieces of writing to be enjoyed by different people. It is my goal to make my writing to be interesting and inspiring to read. In this semester, I hope that I would be able to accomplish my goals and have a nice year. :)