A lesson, for YOU, parents AND educators alike!!! Translated…
There was a court case in the States, the parents SUED the teachers in the kindergarten, to make sure that their child, when he saw the letter “O”, he must say the sound of the letter without any mistake, the kindergarten teacher thought, that this may cause the child to lose his sense of imagination. Because “O” can be an egg, or a round rock, or it may also be a part of an animal too; but here in Taiwan, so long as the child pronounced the letter correctly, the adults wouldn’t think that anything WAS the matter.
yeah, uh, you’ve GOT to be SHITTING me here!!!
In our early childhood years, at the age of three, we were taught, to recognize the numbers, the phonetic spellings, even the English alphabets too; the more they’d recognized, the more we’d be able to see the progress our young children are making, and the more satisfied the adults get, but, we’d overlooked the fact, that our kids may have other abilities, that were eliminated, by the focus of “answering the inquiries correctly”, and the young didn’t even have the right to object to the way we’re teaching them.
Based off of my own observation of my own child, during the almost-a-day’s worth of power outage due to typhoon, other than reading the picture books I bought for him, worked alongside me on the easier household chores, the rest of the spare time, he’d spent, emulating Doraemon, pulling things out of the pocket in front of his shirt, he’d pulled out, an assortment of “tools” that he’d played with, some of which were the ones from the cartoon, while others, are invented by him; as he drew, there would be, from time to time, something that’s unknown to humans. I can imagine, that these, unshaped things, became slowly, put inside those boxes, set up by the adults, in the process of him being educated in school.
now this, is MORE like it here!!! Not my photo still…
In the movie directed and acted by the director, Roberto Benigni’s “A Beautiful Life”, a father who has an active imagination had, built up a virtual reality, and helped his five-year-old son who’s also there, in the concentration camps, to surpass his own fears, and adapted to the life inside the concentration camps, and escaped the gas chambers, to being rescued finally. I’d truly expected that I have this sort of an ability like him too, and hoped, that in the future, when my children are tried, they can have that same sort of humor, as well as imagination, and become flexible. It’s a wonder that Einstein stated, “Imagination is Way More Important than Knowledge”. In most of the circumstances, rather than explaining the facts to the children, use game to teach them about the facts of life, it will be easier for the children to understand.
If we, in our children’s early childhood years, managed to help them keep their sense of imagination and ability to create things intact, as they entered into the elementary school years, everything they’d learned there, can it continued, be applied like so? The truth of the matter is, that kids often conform to societal expectations, the more scholastically outstanding, the less freedom of thought, to think outside of the boxes, because in those entrance exams, there’s, NO room for mistakes to be made, without the gray areas, and speed is the key. Then, how can the kids have the opportunities, the chances, to learn to think creatively, to learn to tell the stories, and exercise their own imaginations?
the various stages in the chidhood years, not my photo…
So, this, is how F***ED up the current education systems became, and, because those people in the I.S.D.s wearing the TALLEST hats still believed, that “one-size-fits-all”, that, is why so many children’s sense of wonder, their creativity get slaughtered, and once that happens, they will become, dull adults, like you, their parents, and, is THAT what you want from your kids? To become, JUST as boring (yawn!!!), as stupid (no offense!) like Y-O-U? I truly don’t HOPE so!!!
Life, the Obstacle Course 