Ken Robinson And A Documentary About Jane Elliot (Essay Sample)

Name
Instructor
Course
Education
The texts presented include the Ted talk video done by Ken Robinson and a documentary about Jane Elliot; a third-grade teacher. The two mainly speak of the education system and the problems the system faces. Jane Elliot after MLK's assassination tries to explain to her third-grade class why their ‘hero' was killed as they come in the next day confused. Racism was a huge problem then, and petite was explained to the young ones. She comes up with the blue eye brown eye experiment where she separates the students in her class with blue and brown eyes then on the first day makes those with the blue eyes feel superior in all perspectives and those with the brown eyes inferior on the second day. She does the opposite and makes those with the brown eyes excellent and those with the blue eyes inferior. On the third day, Elliot does the experiment on the adults. The results gathered are quite impressive with both the children and adults getting to understand the feeling of racism, and at the end, they all stand united. Sir Ken Robinson on the other hand, explains the education systems' bias towards creativity and individuality going into detail on how the system needs to be improved and how children need to be assisted and supported in growing their creativity.
Back when I was in high school, my favorite subject was biology because of the fascination it brought and got me thinking so much about life and living things. Getting to learn about my body and the functions of every part of it was quite exciting, and the fact that it was directly relatable and that it could be physically understood made it even more impressive. My worst subject and that which I performed poorest was history mainly because I have never been a person to believe in fiction but facts. I think this is what essentially killed my interest in the subject. Plus there was so much of the past I had to read on.
The current education system has been under criticism for a very long time. I too criticize how things have been run in schools for a very long time. In my opinion, the education system has many cons as compared to the pros it offers, hence reforms must occur. According to Robinson, the education system all across the world has been very discriminative against creativity by putting more emphasis on more purposeful subjects such as mathematics and languages. The system still seems to instill the idea that such subjects are the key to a more wealthy lifestyle than topics such as art, dance, and music. Robinson states that creativity is the key to revolutionizing the current world's future. In Elliot's experiment, she gets to learn that those discriminated in her class put out a negative vibe and perform poorly in class. About the current education system, students who perform well in superior subjects (mathematics and languages) are often treated better than those who are not as gone thus putting out some discrimination on the less advantaged, this pushes them down leading to poor performances. There is so much that could be reformed in the system, first of all; creativity from a young age should be built in the children and nurtured into something purposeful as opposed to the criticism most children get when they show interest in something that is not related to education. Parents need to learn that education is not the only path to success. Another reform would be treating all subjects equally whereby the same emphasis put in mathematics should be the same in art and music. Every student should also be addressed equally with all their abilities and talents nurtured.
Jane Elliot presents the issue of racism in a quite productive manner by making each stu...