A poet: William Butler Yates

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

[He wishes for the clothes of Heaven]-by W.B.Y

Sir Ken Robinson

Here are the two videos~

2nd draft of my critical response to Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk (2nd version)

[The yes and no to an idea, an idea we need]

         Ken Robinson describes a part of our brain’s intelligence that was often overlooked by educationists. His theories on creativity and how public education kills it is valid and very true to both the current and future society. But, I also disagree with Ken Robinson on specific parts of his solution to the crisis.

             I support Ken Robinson’s view on the creativity of children and agree that public education shape them into non-characteristic beings. Especially on how the today’s society forces special students whose talents shine too bright to be reshaped into the same tuna cans everywhere. I believe this to be an oppression of the minority by the majority. In this case, standardized tests and diplomas are used as the main tools in forcing people with different talents than the majority to forfeit such a talent and adopt the ‘right’ skills. Through this procedure, the society limits itself from using minorities of the society who possess unique gifts that would have otherwise enriched the society and thereby make such students ‘losers’ of the society. Hence, I share Ken Robinson’s concern on the absence of critical discussion on this issue and call for changes that recognize differently talented students as well.

             Another problem Ken Robinson does a good job in illustrating is the problem of inflation of diplomas. As he said himself, ‘When I was young, if you had a degree, you had a job’. And that might be true even now for some countries, countries where selection of the talented happens once they are in the education system. But, countries where entrance equals a diploma, the inflation is perhaps worse than the economic crisis in Europe these days. The problem here is that because there are too many people with the same quality of degree, it is difficult for employers to distinguish who is the better candidate for a job. Therefore, more competitive and ambitious people would go on the graduate school. Then, the same happens to graduate school and so on until there is no place to move on. In the near future, we might randomly choose ten people out of a crowded train station and nine would declare himself or herself to be doctorate educated. In such a society, a degree is no longer guarantees a job as Ken Robinson said.

             Yet, I also have problems with Ken Robinson. His lecture is concentrated too much on students who are gifted in areas of dance, drama, and other such arts. Yes, there certainly is a problem with the status quo. But, the area he touches is all ready touched by others who had similar ideas with him and therefore is thrown spotlight all ready. Also, even in the traditional system of education where students are ‘mined for purposes’, the fields he focus on have institutions around the globe with the purpose of studying and exploring the fields.

Rather, I feel that a call for bridged study is more important. The self created term ‘bridged study’ is applying the concept of consilience to teenage students. At first, this might seem unnecessary and impractical since teenage students are supposed to be building their academic background on all fields of study while consilience is needed due to isolation of individual fields. Nonetheless, when we pay attention to Ken Robinson’s words ‘mined for purpose’ we realize that actually, teenage students are not educated as broad as they are supposed to. In reality, students are trained from an early stage of development to acquire skills that are deemed ‘useful’ in their career. To illustrate, students learn Chinese and not Tibetan since Chinese skills are expected to come in handy when dealing with tasks related to world economy and politics whereas Tibetan is not expected to be needed in almost all parts of life. This is in the same lines with Ken Robinson’s claim that subjects that were more valuable in the industrial society were given more emphasis than less useful subjects. Therefore, by applying consilience to junior highs and high schools, we can solve the problem of certain fields of study being undervalued and also prevent students gifted in those fields from becoming ‘losers’.

Meanwhile, Ken Robinson’s solution to the inflation of diplomas also contains logical contradictions. Ken Robinson suggests that the current education system is still based on the enlightenment period. It is true in certain aspects, for instance with the mining of children, best described by Ken Robinson’s words—‘and then we focus on their head, and slightly to one side’. Nonetheless, drastic changes happened to the education paradigm throughout the scores of years in between. A core change was the transition from elite education to the orthodox-egalitarian education. This transition is what enabled all willing students to achieve a degree and therefore provoked the inflation today. Even though there is a clear problem with the current situation as both Ken Robinson and I pointed out, there were also problems with ‘raising the standard of education’; Ken Robinson’s voting for it. Ergo, simply a return to the elite education is not the solution. Instead, a mixture of the egalitarian paradigm on the primary level and a modified elite learning system at the higher level seems more credible.  

             Lastly, I want to comment on Ken Robinson’s ignorance of the environmental setting in general as an important factor for students’ education. By including the influence of the environment in which students learn, Ken Robinson’s claims can become more persuasive. I would recommend him to research the relevance between students’ creativity and the nature.

* word count:578~> 919

A memo on bringing irrelevant information to the reader's focus

     Oftentimes, I find authors who like to reveal unknown information about other people by mentioning it as an example of an invalid argument. Most of the time, they are not expected, and when one reads them one usually feels a subtle surprise.

     I too felt this just this evening while reading a book on Constantinople and its fall. While reading the book there came a part where the author had to present the reason why a steward had the authority to repel his majesty's words freely. While I expected it to be related to the former emperor's deep trust in the steward or other such reasons related to his political life, the author delayed giving his answer by stating that the authority did not come from the steward's family line. The unexpected mention regarding the steward's family was lengthy and I felt confused at its sudden appearance.

     I believe this technique is somewhat similar to what the advertisement companies use today. Maybe all art of delivering has an underlying theme in them, for I just remembered using a very similar skill to my friend whose a art maniac, but abhors art history.

Critical Response to Ken Robinson's ideas

In response to Ken Robinson

10B2 HaeUk.Ko

Ken Robinson describes a part of our brain’s intelligence that was often overlooked by educationists. I believe his theories on creativity and how public education kills it is true. But, I also disagree with Ken Robinson on certain aspects of his theory and specific parts of his solution to the crisis.

I support Ken Robinson’s view on the creativity of children and agree that public education shape them into non-characteristic beings. Especially on how the today’s society forces special students whose talents shine too bright to be reshaped into the same tuna cans everywhere. I believe this to be an oppression of the minority by the majority. In this case, standardized tests and diplomas are used as the main tools in forcing people with different talents than the majority to forfeit such a talent and adopt the ‘right’ skills. Through this procedure, the society limits itself from using minorities of the society who possess unique gifts that would have otherwise enriched the society and thereby make such students ‘losers’ of the society. Hence, I share Ken Robinson’s concern on the absence of critical discussion on this issue and call for changes that recognize differently talented students as well.

Yet, I also have problems with Ken Robinson. His lecture is concentrated too much on students who are gifted in areas of dance, drama, and other such arts. Yes, there certainly is a problem with the status quo. But, the area he touches is all ready touched by others who had similar ideas with him and therefore is thrown spotlight all ready. Also, even in the traditional system of education where students are ‘mined for purposes’, the fields he focus on have institutions around the globe with the purpose of studying and exploring the fields. Rather, I feel that a call for bridged study is more important. The self created term ‘bridged study’ is applying the concept of consilience to teenage students. At first, this might seem unnecessary and impractical since teenage students are supposed to be building their academic background on all fields of study while consilience is needed due to isolation of individual fields. Nonetheless, when we pay attention to Ken Robinson’s words ‘mined for purpose’ we realize that actually, teenage students are not educated as broad as they are supposed to. In reality, students are trained from an early stage of development to acquire skills that are deemed ‘useful’ in their career. To illustrate, students learn Chinese and not Tibetan since Chinese skills are expected to come in handy when dealing with tasks related to world economy and politics whereas Tibetan is not expected to be needed in almost all parts of life. This is in the same lines with Ken Robinson’s claim that subjects that were more valuable in the industrial society were given more emphasis than less useful subjects. Therefore, by applying consilience to junior highs and high schools, we can solve the problem of certain fields of study being undervalued and also prevent students gifted in those fields from becoming ‘losers’. Furthermore, I believe this option to be a more valid one than Ken Robinson’s on the basis of practicality.

Lastly, I want to comment on Ken Robinson’s ignorance of the environmental setting in general as an important factor for students’ education. By including the influence of the environment in which students learn, Ken Robinson’s claims can become more persuasive. I would recommend him on researching the relevance between students’ creativity and the nature.

At the start of my 2nd semester at KMLA

Writing is a task and that is directly related to my survival and success as a professor in future years. However, I’m not sure whether I’ll survive well enough due to my unfamiliarity with writing. I was always a late starter when it came to writing. When kids in the same class already experienced writing lengthy paragraphs, I was still writing chopped sentences. But, I believe that my lack of experience can also work to my benefit if I practice enough from now on.

As explained above, my hands are not used to writing a lot, which in turn means that I did not write enough to have acquired a specific style of writing. I believe this can work as an advantage to me since a blank paper is fit to write something new than a used paper. Yet, during the few years that I have written in English, I have been commented on the length of my sentences. People find my sentences to be lengthy and to be containing multiple ideas in a limited number of sentences. Oftentimes, this leads to confusion and frustration to the readers as this applies not just to certain sentences but my paragraphs and essays in general. Still, this also represents a positive aspect of my style. The long, complex sentences I write directly reflect the way I think, and therefore is the right bowl to hold my ideas. In order to preserve the benefits and to improve the weaknesses of my style, recently, I try to incorporate my original lengthy sentences with short, impactful sentences.

My tendency to use examples from various fields of interest is something that is both my strong and weak point. Since I like reading books from all fields of study, I am familiar with various cases and concepts which can be used to strengthen my reasoning. I am especially familiar with connecting events in the past with ideas that are relevant to the case at hand. For instance, I remember being complimented on my usage of stirrups as a case where nomads’ open attitude toward foreign culture and its mix with original culture led to an advantage over agrarian societies. On the other hand, I sometimes try to connect two seemingly unrelated fields and fail to persuade the reader that my choice of evidence was fit for my argument.

My writings are not straightforward and dense. One example is that I do not use many adverbs. I rather fill my sentences with nouns, verbs, and prepositions. This is an advantage from the view that readers are not dazzled by pours of unnecessary words and therefore makes my writing more to the point. However, the problem is that my writings can be too stiff and rigid to read. I believe this is can bore the readers from time to time and eventually lead to the readers becoming distracted from what I have to say. This is apparent from the fact that I used only one dialogue in a fable that was almost a page long. As a means to improve this problem I attempted to describe in more lengthy ways, but found out that my unfamiliarity makes me describe too much.

Other than the points mentioned above, I anticipate that I showed several traits in my writing that I have not yet noticed. But, I also have certain problems that have apparently been solved but reoccur when I am ignorant. Such is grammar and spelling. All ready indicated from the fact that I did not write much, I am not innocent when it comes to grammar mistakes and misspelled words. I have put effort to solving it but feel that it is not as complete as I want and that there still is a need to hone my skills.

My ultimate goal as a writer is to help readers view an issue from my perspective and find out an aspect of the matter that I found out. I hope that readers might come to understand certain issues as I did and feel the emotions that I wanted to share with others. A writer that influenced me in setting such a goal was Khaled Hosseini. Reading his book Kite Runner was a blessing to me.

However, what I will present to you is not a piece of literature. Rather it is a research paper I wrote the previous semester in Mr. Ganse’s European history course. I selected this paper because this paper deals with a field of sturdy that is very intimately related with my future career as a humanities researcher. Moreover, this paper is not a raw draft, something this class requires. Also, I spent several days researching and writing on the topic, which will give you specific hints of how much of a depth my writing contains.

Above all, I look towards the practice of editing in this class. Even though we might have written essays before in competitions and exams, we rarely had a chance to revise our work seriously. I wish to establish my own way of editing my work during this semester, which can be done most efficiently under a professional writing teacher guiding a writing course. Ergo, I hope we that we won’t be writing completely new essays all the time but editing them from time to time.

What ever the decision might be, I want to enjoy your class this semester^^.

* word count :897words^^