By Maria E. Zapata
Creativity + Social Change, University of Connecticut
Media Reviewed:

TED: Kiran Bir Sethi teaches kids to take charge
Kiran Bir Sethi shows how her groundbreaking Riverside School in India teaches kids life's most valuable lesson: "I can." Watch her students take local issues into their own hands, lead other young people, even educate their parents.

This is an amazing story and I really like the way she is using the word contagious. We need to be contagious with education, setting it  up as priority for the new generations. Education is the number one key to succeeding in life.

The kids are spontaneous and they have fabulous ideas and creativity but most of the time we burn those ideas and creativity because we set up a pattern for them, always telling them the way to do things. We need to trust them, letting them explore and follow their curiosity. Like Kiran Sethi said: “ We need to trust the kids. They will take the power and they will do much better."

We have to spread out the creativity, letting everybody use his or her own way, ideas, curiosity and the new world will be better and happier.

"It is possible to organize cities to teach usefulness, social responsibility, ecological skill, the values of good work, and the higher possibilities of adulthood." (Kiran Sethi)

Commentary: On Child-Driven Education

By Teley Quarshie
Creativity + Social Change, University of Connecticut
Media Reviewed:

TED - July 2010: Sugata Mitra: The Child-Driven Education
Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.

Commentary:
I logged onto Ted.com and clicked inspiring and ingenious and on one of the pages, the title "The child-driven education" stuck out to me. Children are the most creative and alive. Full of thoughts, ideas, eagerness. Education is a huge issue in this world, yet such a tool to change one's social-economic status. He has found the “child-driven” solution to education though children, along with the help of technology that is everywhere. A little strange that there is high-speed Internet in these Indian and African villages walls. Yet we all walk around with mini-computers in our pocket or on our ear. Society is very technologically driven. The global world connects via the Web. Teaching is a profession respected by many but very underpaid. Leaving teachers to pick and choose and neglect where the money is close to nothing. Leaving the children to teach themselves.

He is using the creativity that the child has to figure out problems. He questions machines they’ve never used and in languages they are unfamiliar with. It's also a very creative way to educate. Yes, it would be best if these children where in the classroom learning with a teacher and a desk ... but in this case, this is all they have and they should be lucky to be apart of such a study.

By working together to figure out the answers, they are processing the information more to find a solution instead of on their own. Makes you wonder if people should be taught in groups, not one on one. You vs. the paper. Open education seems like a better way for people to learn. Yes, there may be that person who really doesn’t know the answer or how to solve it, but by being apart and paying attention they will figure out why whatever it is is such. (That was a side thought I just discovered thinking about the children working together.) I feel working together is a better guide for how to work in a professional social community. We spend our whole lives in school progressing on our own. Maybe we wouldn’t loose so many students if it was a group effort. If we all succeed, the better off we can make things on a larger, societal level. Thinking not for just the "Me" but the "We."

Children love to learn, but not all the same way. If they learn how to learn outside of the box, they will be able to think and know outside the box. Creativity and innovative ideas will follow. I consider open environments with some structure the best support for such learning styles. The idea of the "grandmother" is brilliant. All grandparents do is love and encourage. Having someone like that there, but actually not there, while still being surrounded by your peers seems to be a great idea to the world's grim education issue. A lot of money is needed, but not much help. People are needed to help. The outcome can only benefit us as a society. Sugata Mitra's creativity is creating tomorrow's creative minds.

Commentary: On Creativity and Food

By Michelle DAiuto
Creativity + Social Change, University of Connecticut
Media Reviewed:

[CLIP]

Occasionally, I would show up at school and eat lunch with my child. What did I find? Pizza, chicken nuggets, fruit in a cup, and his favorite, French toast sticks and sausages.

Was there cooking in my local elementary school? No, they just reheat what was being sent from a central warehouse.

I remember as a young girl going to the cafeteria and watching the big machines mix the food. It wasn’t exactly homemade but better than today’s fare.

Food feeds the body. The body holds the mind. How can we as parents send our children out to eat things that are both toxic to the mind and body?

As we left the public school system and entered the private sector, we noticed a difference in the food being served. Foods were freshly prepared and a salad bar was offered. Even if our school system couldn’t afford great cuts of meat for everyone, fruits and salads should have been standard fare.

Only now do I realized what a disservice I was doing to my child, as well as my community. With the hurried life of Americans, we must stop and observe what our children are putting in their mouth. The school my son eventually went to for sixth grade had mid-morning snacks of apples and milk and a 15-minute break to burn off excess energy and that was the norm up to ninth grade. Sometimes kids get hungry and restless. When this happens, how are you to engage a child.?

Some parents might not believe it, but your child’s education does depend on the food that we feed them, whether its breakfast, lunch or dinner. We, as parents, need to speak up and affect change because a mind is a terrible thing to waste.