I was driving to work at ‘Signature Theatre’ in Arlington, just outside Washington, DC. I had taken Erin to school, she was in kindergarten. The station I listened to for the traffic reports WTOP was a talk radio station. They interrupted the regular programming to say that a plane had flown directly into the World Trade Centre. A few minutes later they reported that another had flown into the second tower. I was driving on ‘I 395’ and talking to myself out loud, “Would the next one be the Capitol Building, the White House or the Pentagon?” As though reading my mind the reporter came on and said a third plane had flown into the Pentagon. As I drove along 395, I saw the plume of smoke ahead and the police already turning the traffic back. I circled the off ramp and began my journey back to where we lived.
I could not reach my wife who was at work. The lines were absolutely blocked with calls. She was far enough from DC not to worry though and I headed off to pick up Erin.
I spent the rest of the day watching as America was brought to its knees. Like everyone said, “How could this happen on American soil?”
After I knew my family were safe I frantically spent the remainder of the day calling and emailing the fourteen people whom I had spent the previous several years with and who I had come to care about deeply. They were all in the theatre industry and many were living in New York. Krista Brown, Monica Dixon, Dan Galperin, Dave Simpson and the others who I had shared two intense years of my life with at the National Conservatory Of Dramatic Arts. By the end of the day I had located all but one person who I knew lived in New York City. I was deeply concerned and I remember at some point I must have called everyone I knew who knew this person. Finally three days later I called ‘Buck's cell phone and I got him. He was on a bus coming back from ‘Atlanta Georgia’ from a sales meeting. He had missed the whole thing.
I know that thousands of people made similar phone calls that day and thousands of them did not receive the joy that I received of knowing that my friends were alive and well. The country was swept with fear then sadness and quickly with anger. Many people wanted to retaliate with force and others wanted to understand what it was that would make people want to do such an act.
One of the most unnerving things I saw was a stream of traffic, mostly SUV's, laden with supplies heading for the mountains. People simply wanted to flee to safety with their families. When the dust had settled and we all took stock of the situation, the general agreement was that the country had lost something as a whole, an innocence, a trust and a carefree attitude that is so indigenous to the American psyche. For years after I could not go anywhere without a full tank of gas and spare battery for my cell phone. I felt I always wanted to know where my family and friends were. In conversations with people who had been involved or had been there, many would inevitably cry and many more could not talk about it at all.
On this ninth year anniversary I fear we are still only just getting beyond the event, maybe we never will. I hope though that we can learn to trust again. Many people I spoke to in the years that followed said that they and their partners made love more in the days that followed. It was as though we needed to feel safe and alive. As though out of fear we did not want to miss the opportunity to be close to those we loved. For three glorious day after I experienced a phenomenon in Washing DC. People being kind to one and other, going out of their way to be kind in fact. It is sad to think that after those glorious three days anger and fear gripped the country and we began to take it out on one and other.
Live Passionately, Ask Why!
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Thursday, 9 September 2010
When Did We Stop Learning?
At what part of our education do we stop taking tests and start learning?
If Einstein’s quote, (Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results) is right, then educationally we are about to go insane. We have heard on the news, on the net, in the papers and from every direction imaginable that there are now fewer and fewer places for university entrants (a shortfall of some 200,000 this year alone) and even if they do get in to a University what will they do when they graduate? We have also heard that we are trying to push all of our students through a one size fits all education process, which does not work. Surely then, the sum total of our children’s education is to pass tests in order to apply for fewer places in further education so that they can have the daunting prospect of no work in the field they have studied for. INSANITY!
My fourteen year old daughter came home today and was explaining why she did not like science. Part of the problem was how much time the teacher had spent explaining how much of the information was going to be in the test and not teaching Science. At fourteen should we not also be learning how amazing the world is that we live in? Learning how to get along with each other and cooperate? How to play team sports and discover the limitless resources of our mind and body? Don't get me wrong, of course we should be learning Science, Maths and English and as many academic subjects as we can, but not simply in order to extract the leanest amount of information to pass a test and not at the expense of experiencing life or learning for the shear joy of it.
The problem is that the retention of information through this method of learning is not for everyone. It’s the reason why on the onset some appear to have a greater IQ than others. It is simply the ability to retain information when fed it. Sadly many young scholars are now clued in and are asking the teacher what they need to pass the test. Even more startling, parents are holding schools and teachers accountable for not giving their children that specific information. Not for not teaching well, but for not giving specific information relevant to a test. Now some might say well of course, we go to school to go to a better school to go to a university and start a career. If that is what you think you may want to reread the beginning of this blog.
What happened to going to school to learn? To learn the things that we love to learn and the things that make us excited and passionate. Learn the things that we then are still talking about and cannot wait to get back to? It’s different for everyone. But from this learning comes ideas and from that comes confidence and from that come creative ideas and lets face it, it’s creative ideas that will get us out of this mess not tests. If you want a test just look at the mess we are in worldwide? That should be test enough for anyone to solve, not SATS or University entrance exams.
Go to this link, especially if you have children and take 20 minutes from your day to watch and listen and learn. Then if you dare, become passionate about your children’s future and learn with them. Challenge them and yourselves to learn more, more of what makes you joyful and passionate not what might help you pass a test.
Live Passionately, Ask Why!
Sir Ken Robinson, bring on the revolution.
If Einstein’s quote, (Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results) is right, then educationally we are about to go insane. We have heard on the news, on the net, in the papers and from every direction imaginable that there are now fewer and fewer places for university entrants (a shortfall of some 200,000 this year alone) and even if they do get in to a University what will they do when they graduate? We have also heard that we are trying to push all of our students through a one size fits all education process, which does not work. Surely then, the sum total of our children’s education is to pass tests in order to apply for fewer places in further education so that they can have the daunting prospect of no work in the field they have studied for. INSANITY!
My fourteen year old daughter came home today and was explaining why she did not like science. Part of the problem was how much time the teacher had spent explaining how much of the information was going to be in the test and not teaching Science. At fourteen should we not also be learning how amazing the world is that we live in? Learning how to get along with each other and cooperate? How to play team sports and discover the limitless resources of our mind and body? Don't get me wrong, of course we should be learning Science, Maths and English and as many academic subjects as we can, but not simply in order to extract the leanest amount of information to pass a test and not at the expense of experiencing life or learning for the shear joy of it.
The problem is that the retention of information through this method of learning is not for everyone. It’s the reason why on the onset some appear to have a greater IQ than others. It is simply the ability to retain information when fed it. Sadly many young scholars are now clued in and are asking the teacher what they need to pass the test. Even more startling, parents are holding schools and teachers accountable for not giving their children that specific information. Not for not teaching well, but for not giving specific information relevant to a test. Now some might say well of course, we go to school to go to a better school to go to a university and start a career. If that is what you think you may want to reread the beginning of this blog.
What happened to going to school to learn? To learn the things that we love to learn and the things that make us excited and passionate. Learn the things that we then are still talking about and cannot wait to get back to? It’s different for everyone. But from this learning comes ideas and from that comes confidence and from that come creative ideas and lets face it, it’s creative ideas that will get us out of this mess not tests. If you want a test just look at the mess we are in worldwide? That should be test enough for anyone to solve, not SATS or University entrance exams.
Go to this link, especially if you have children and take 20 minutes from your day to watch and listen and learn. Then if you dare, become passionate about your children’s future and learn with them. Challenge them and yourselves to learn more, more of what makes you joyful and passionate not what might help you pass a test.
Live Passionately, Ask Why!
Sir Ken Robinson, bring on the revolution.
Saturday, 28 August 2010
A question of Beauty.
Like many parents, I not only have the regular problems of raising children, but as the years progress so does the added pressure from the media, social networking sites, peers and reality TV.
Actually that to me seems somewhat of an Oxymoron as there is little in the way of reality about it. And to top it off we are now training Actors to be reality TV Actors, doesn't that defeat the object a little. Suddenly a medium that is called reality, which, in fact has little to do with reality, now has Actors trained to be realistically....never mind, I’ve lost the thread.
A friend of mine posted this clip on facebook and I thought, especially for those who have daughters I would re-post it. Boys take a look also, this is what we have helped to turn women into.
A Question of Beauty
Actually that to me seems somewhat of an Oxymoron as there is little in the way of reality about it. And to top it off we are now training Actors to be reality TV Actors, doesn't that defeat the object a little. Suddenly a medium that is called reality, which, in fact has little to do with reality, now has Actors trained to be realistically....never mind, I’ve lost the thread.
A friend of mine posted this clip on facebook and I thought, especially for those who have daughters I would re-post it. Boys take a look also, this is what we have helped to turn women into.
A Question of Beauty
Sunday, 22 August 2010
Context over Content?
You do not go to University to become more intelligent, you are either drawn in a direction which desires an aptitude for that intelligence, or you are not. You go to University to gain more information. You are either intelligent or you are not and who are we to judge the criteria for intelligence?
The problem is how we have come to measure intelligence. It would appear that one is intelligent based on what kind of degree you have and where it was earned. While no one would say that a plumber is not intelligent, it is taken for granted that it does not take the same kind of intelligence to be a plumber that it does to gain a Master Degree in Philosophy from a Russel Register or Ivy League University. Therein lies the issue though. While it does not take the same kind of intelligence, it does not take any less. It simply takes a different kind. A different way of thinking, a different aptitude and a different way of learning.
In an attempt to shift our thinking we might consider content over context. A crude analysis of the two might go like this: Content is the specifics. In a speech about law that would entail specific information as to how a law is judged. In a book it would be the subject, the grammar and the spelling. The Context is more in the direction of why something is done and not what is done. “I am writing this blog in the hope of inspiring the reader to shift their thinking a little and perhaps consider a different understanding of people.” The content of the blog is within the spelling, grammar and information.
When I was a young man in the Army (about a hundred years ago) sixteen years of age to be exact, we had to wait for seven weeks (half a term) to write home for the first time. Strangely enough we all looked quite forward to that, as technology had not taken hold. One of the young men wrote home to his mother who was an English Teacher. Like the rest of us he was excited to tell of the experiences he had in the last seven week. The thing we looked forward to of course, was receiving a letter in return. The mother of this poor young man sent the same letter back with all of the spelling and grammar corrected in red and nothing else. Needless to say, he was distraught. As far as we knew he never wrote back to his mother in the following two years of training. She missed the point of course by a mile; she should have been only concerned with the context in which her son had written and not with the content of the spelling and grammar.
The problem is that we do this with each other and we also do it when we are sending young people off to University. Firstly we try to cram everyone into the same content driven criteria and we forget to consider their context. Even if we do, we then place a value on the context of what people do rather than placing a value on the skills, service and knowledge they bring to society. Truthfully someone with a Phd in Philosophy is of little help when there is a leak in the water pipe, unless of course that Phd is also adept at plumbing. We have reached saturation point with the amount of young people who are leaving University with degrees in subjects, which, are of little use to them in today’s changing market and which they never wanted in the first place. What we need to do is nurture creativity and imagination (context) in young people, for it is that which will move us forward and out of this quagmire and not driving young people like so many cattle down the same one size fits all rout. Which incidentally, it does not. We need to make it okay for a young person to choose a context driven future and not necessarily a content driven one.
Think passionately, ask why!
The problem is how we have come to measure intelligence. It would appear that one is intelligent based on what kind of degree you have and where it was earned. While no one would say that a plumber is not intelligent, it is taken for granted that it does not take the same kind of intelligence to be a plumber that it does to gain a Master Degree in Philosophy from a Russel Register or Ivy League University. Therein lies the issue though. While it does not take the same kind of intelligence, it does not take any less. It simply takes a different kind. A different way of thinking, a different aptitude and a different way of learning.
In an attempt to shift our thinking we might consider content over context. A crude analysis of the two might go like this: Content is the specifics. In a speech about law that would entail specific information as to how a law is judged. In a book it would be the subject, the grammar and the spelling. The Context is more in the direction of why something is done and not what is done. “I am writing this blog in the hope of inspiring the reader to shift their thinking a little and perhaps consider a different understanding of people.” The content of the blog is within the spelling, grammar and information.
When I was a young man in the Army (about a hundred years ago) sixteen years of age to be exact, we had to wait for seven weeks (half a term) to write home for the first time. Strangely enough we all looked quite forward to that, as technology had not taken hold. One of the young men wrote home to his mother who was an English Teacher. Like the rest of us he was excited to tell of the experiences he had in the last seven week. The thing we looked forward to of course, was receiving a letter in return. The mother of this poor young man sent the same letter back with all of the spelling and grammar corrected in red and nothing else. Needless to say, he was distraught. As far as we knew he never wrote back to his mother in the following two years of training. She missed the point of course by a mile; she should have been only concerned with the context in which her son had written and not with the content of the spelling and grammar.
The problem is that we do this with each other and we also do it when we are sending young people off to University. Firstly we try to cram everyone into the same content driven criteria and we forget to consider their context. Even if we do, we then place a value on the context of what people do rather than placing a value on the skills, service and knowledge they bring to society. Truthfully someone with a Phd in Philosophy is of little help when there is a leak in the water pipe, unless of course that Phd is also adept at plumbing. We have reached saturation point with the amount of young people who are leaving University with degrees in subjects, which, are of little use to them in today’s changing market and which they never wanted in the first place. What we need to do is nurture creativity and imagination (context) in young people, for it is that which will move us forward and out of this quagmire and not driving young people like so many cattle down the same one size fits all rout. Which incidentally, it does not. We need to make it okay for a young person to choose a context driven future and not necessarily a content driven one.
Think passionately, ask why!
Friday, 20 August 2010
Thursday, 19 August 2010
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
Maybe we should begin by understanding how amazing things are right now!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzNrO54xsY&feature=related
This is a funny but very thought provoking conversation.
This is a funny but very thought provoking conversation.
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