"It really isn't kindergarten anymore" (method, child, 5 year old)
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I attended elementary school in the late 60s/early 70s. I certainly got PE/Library/Music and Art as regular classes throughout the year. We had an art room and an art teacher, a music room (with a piano) and a music teacher, a Library and PE teacher. Absolutely.
I'm originally from France and high schoolers have these two breaks every day, and a longer lunch period too (50 minutes or more). The school day ends later, but at least they can catch a break.
I'd support a longer day for all students if it meant longer lunches/more breaks for them. Everyone needs breaks
I attended elementary school in the late 60s/early 70s. I certainly got PE/Library/Music and Art as regular classes throughout the year. We had an art room and an art teacher, a music room (with a piano) and a music teacher, a Library and PE teacher. Absolutely.
So did we and we actually learned concepts of each discipline in each class.
I attended elementary school in the late 60s/early 70s. I certainly got PE/Library/Music and Art as regular classes throughout the year. We had an art room and an art teacher, a music room (with a piano) and a music teacher, a Library and PE teacher. Absolutely.
When it's forced it's not, by definition, creativity. Creativity can not be taught. It has to be allowed to grow and develop through self driven exploration.
Creativity most certainly CAN BE TAUGHT. Where on Earth did you learn this nonsense? It is not an ineffable mystical gift. It is application of the mind to the rearrangement of concretes into something new and useful or in the case of art, pleasing. MOST DEFINITELY CAN BE TAUGHT.
Of course not everyone has equal talent, and some can never bring their creativity in a given discipline to a marketable level. However, everyone can be taught creativity, and everyone can be creative with sufficient instruction and proper stimulation.
We all see that the education system fails our students. But it also obviously is failing our teachers. "Creativity can not be taught"........
One of the problems is that they don't get it at home. First, we can't let them play outside alone at young ages for fear that they will be picked up by the police or CPS.
The don't play alone outside at school either. There is adult supervision. Why can't parents do this, themselves?
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Second, parents are often too afraid of allowing the children to play alone because they may get hurt by climbing trees or other risky activities.
What does this have to do with the price of tea? How does free play in school relate to parents being afraid their kids will get hurt playing? Are you saying you need a school environment to provide a safe free play area for your kids? I don't think many parents would agree that they are less capable, than any teacher, of safely supervising their own children's free play.
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Third, we have always had unstructured play at school via recess, but that is being cut back because of the heavy focus on academics.
So the, at best, 2 hours of recess that the most lackadaisical school in history (I think perhaps 1 full hour at most is a more realistic number) has provided, makes the difference between happy, intelligent, functional adults and miserable drones? Color me dubious. A full school day lasts from 0730 to 1430, just 7 hours. That leaves--with 10 hours of sleep--7 hours of "free play" time a day, should a parent wish it.
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Fourth, learning through play in school does require a certain amount of intervention - teachers set up the environment in ways that promote learning which often is not done at home because it can create a mess or because parents don't know how they should set up this environment.
Because there's no such thing as the internet, or parenting books, videos, etc.
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Now, I don't think free play has to continue into the middle or high school years at school although I think recess is important even in middle school. In the early years though, you are setting kids up for anxiety and failure if you push for academics to the detriment of play. Not only that, but you are creating an atmosphere where kids don't want to learn anything from adults. You also create problems because you have not actively taught kids to be problem solvers and to resolve conflicts.
Experience says otherwise. I see happy, engaged 1st-through-3rd graders who can solve some pretty tricky (even for a STEM-educated adult) "common core" questions, using logic, mathematics, and english skills that--in the 1980's--would not have been developed until a much later age.
Oh, and I remember my upbringing well enough to recall hating school, despite recess, art, and music classes. In my experience, kids today are no less excited to go to school than they were in the 70's and 80's, despite the advanced curricula.
Creativity most certainly CAN BE TAUGHT. Where on Earth did you learn this nonsense? It is not an ineffable mystical gift. It is application of the mind to the rearrangement of concretes into something new and useful or in the case of art, pleasing. MOST DEFINITELY CAN BE TAUGHT.
Of course not everyone has equal talent, and some can never bring their creativity in a given discipline to a marketable level. However, everyone can be taught creativity, and everyone can be creative with sufficient instruction and proper stimulation.
We all see that the education system fails our students. But it also obviously is failing our teachers. "Creativity can not be taught"........
Seriously...
Errr...no.
By definition, creativity cannot be taught. it can be encouraged, developed, allowed to grow, but it cannot be 'taught' by force to someone who doesn't have it. It is *not* "rearrangement into something new and useful" I don't know where you got that definition from. Lots of things are useful but they're not products of creativity. You can certainly make 'pleasing' art by mass-producing cheap tacky paintings like those sold at Walmarts across the nation. That does not = creativity or talent.
Children in Soviet communist schools put on wonderful performances, concerts, shows - they were beautiful and flawlessly executed for the benefit of the audiences, however most of the time the children themselves put no ideas or spirit of their own into them, and drew no joy out of them; they were simply dictated what to do and then made to rehearse painstakingly over and over until it was perfect, until they were miserable and exhausted. I know this because I still experienced some of that system growing up. I still remember my daycare - you would've loved it, it sounds like the system you're describing. It looked beautiful and had all the 'right' toys and things and activities, art, music, crafts, class pets, and yet it lacked the most important thing, nice and compassionate people who liked kids. Teachers taught by force and shame and humiliation, I remember trying to do an art project and the teacher mocking me for being so clumsy with the scissors. I hated every moment of being there, and I'm so happy now seeing my son skip off happily to his preschool, where he is encouraged to explore and lead his own learning.
Having things 'look nice' as the ultimate goal got ingrained in me so much that I still struggle with trying not to impose it on my own son - I catch myself trying to tell him how to make that card for grandma so it 'looks nice' and is neat rather than messy. And then I hate myself for it, because ultimately I'm the happiest when I see him scribble crazy complicated diagrams of some technical or science concept that he came up with all by himself - that is the true *him* and his abilities shining through, not making pretty little colorful drawings, and that's okay.
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Creativity can not be taught. It has to be allowed to grow and develop through self driven exploration.
