Do schools kill creativity?

https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity/transcript

Topic sentence: Creativity in education is as importat as literacy

Main ideas:
      -Extraordinary human creativity.
      -Uncertainty about the future.
      -Capacities and talents.

Conclusion: restatement of the thesis and summary 

Opinion Paragraph:

Schools should give more importance to creative subjects. Lately it is becoming more popular the theory of multiple talents or capacities in education. That is a great point against the traditionl way of teaching at schools, which gave a speacil importance to subjects like mathematics, history, grammar... and children were taugh to do things in a determined way, almost automatically.This, appart from killing creativity in kids, provoke frustration in those ones who have another way of understanding or other kind of habilities. Therefore, it is important to promote subjects that favor the development of originality such as painting, music or literature. These  subjects help the students work up their personalities as they offer them an infinite amount of possibilities of doing something which will be extremly usefull for them in a futur when they will have to find a job, because specially nowadays with so much competition, having innovative ideas can make the difference. There are many the benefits in the development of creativity in young people and if society were more concerned about it we would have more cultural richness and people would be happier working on what they really like. Quoting Robin Williams ''Medicine, law, business, engineering: these are nobel pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance...these are what we stay alive for.''

Opinion Paragraph

The goverment should create more green spaces in cities. Nowadays the number of buildings in big cities has  increased considerably. One of the most important consequences of this, is the lost of biodiversity , as well as the the rise of pollution.Caused by the wastes of the construction process  and the amount of energy used in it. As a result, I consider that citizens should ask for the creation of more green spaces in their cities or  towns, because in addition to being charming and relaxing sites, where they can disconnect from city strife it is demonstrated that plants can help reducing the amount of pollution. So If we had more green spaces we could have nicer views and enjoy the benefits of plants.

Descriptive paragraph

My favourite place to  study is my bedroom which is located in the attic, so it is a large and  quiet place where I can easily concentrate.The only downside is the temperature, which is very high during summer and almost freezing during winter.  There is also a big window right  behind my desk, so the luminosity is perfect. The walls are painted in pastel colors and full of posters. On the left wall there are three venetian masks while on the right wall there is a wooden clock. The ceiling of the bedroom is white and there is a hanging lamp in the middle of it, just above my bed. At the background, there are a big dark wooden wardrove and a shelf where I have some of my favourite books. I specially love working in my bedroom on rainy days when i  can hear  the water falling just above me, I find it very relaxing.

Guernika

Whenever I look at this painting, I feel just like if time had been frozen that 26th April 1937 and I were caught inside a surrealistic universe of agony and destruction, where nothing has sense and all you can see is horror and suffering. I can almost hear the screams of panic and the lamentations for the lost ones. The image of the mother carrying her baby's corpse is the anguish itself and chaos reigns over every single brushstroke.

For whom the bell tolls

John Donne – Meditation XVII

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 
It tolls for thee. 

Ningún hombre es una isla, 

entera en sí,

Cada hombre es pieza de continente,

parte del total.

Si el villano es arrastrado por el mar,

Europa se reduce.

Cual si fuera  promontorio,

cual si fuera coro de amigos,

o  fuera propia:

Toda muerte me disminuye,

pues estoy con la humanidad

Así no pidas saber por

quién dobla la campana;

dobla por ti.

A.     Answer the following questions:

1.      Could you summarize the content of the poem in just a sentence?

 Each human is a part of a whole, humanity.

2.      What does the poem make you feel?

 It makes me feel a bit melancholic as well as a bit reflexive. Are we just a small piece of a huge puzzle? what happens if a piece gets lost? does it affect us? 

3.      Do you consider the poem a good description of a feeling? Why?

From my point of view, the poem cannot be considered a description of a feeling itself, because it doesn't portray or list a serie of characteristics about an especific emotion, which would be the main topic. However it produces in the reader the feeling of anguish and melancholy that the author wanted to transmitt by touching topics as dead, and lost. 

Text from: For Whom the Bell Tolls?, by Ernest Hemingway

The night was clear and his head felt as clear and cold as the air. He smelled the odor of the pine boughs under him, the piney smell of the crushed needles and the sharper odor of the resinous sap from the cut limbs. Pilar, he thought. Pilar and the smell of death. This is the smell I love. This and fresh-cut clover, the crushed sage as you ride after cattle, wood-smoke and the burning leaves of autumn. That must be the odor of nostalgia, the smell of the smoke from the piles of raked leaves burning in the streets in the fall in Missoula. Which would you rather smell? Sweet grass the Indians used in their baskets? Smoked leather? The odor of the ground in the spring after rain? The smell of the sea as you walk through the gorse on a headland in Galicia? Or the wind from the land as you come in toward Cuba in the dark? That was the odor of the cactus flowers, mimosa and the sea-grape shrubs. Or would you rather smell frying bacon in the morning when you are hungry? Or coffee in the morning? Or a Jonathan apple as you bit into it? Or a cider mill in the grinding, or bread fresh from the oven? You must be hungry, he thought, and he lay on his side and watched the entrance of the cave in the light that the stars reflected from the snow.

B.      Answer the questions:

1.       Do you consider this text a description? From your view, what is he describing?

 Yes, because it lists a serie of adjetctives about certain objects or aliments which help the reader imagine them. 

From my point of view he describes two things. First the scenary he is at and then the two smells he loves the most

2.       Could a description include questions?

 Yes, if it is to help the reader visualize the topic which is being defined.

3.       What is the smell for the author?

 Nostalgia

4.       Could you write a topic sentence for the excerpt?

 The smell of the past.

writting an essay: How to narrow a topic

Hello everyone, today I'm going to show you 3 different ways to narrow a topic before writting a parragraph.

In first place, we will have to choose a topic which isn't neither too narrow nor too broad. In my case i chose ''friends''

The first method I used was making a list of ideas and terms related to it.

-friends
-social websites
-internet
-penpals
-letters
-emails
-meeting new friends
- activities you do with your friends

The second method I used, which is my favourite one, was a mind map, which is more visual.

Later, we will have to narrow our mind map.

Finally the third method consist of free writting. For doing it, we will have to write as much as we can, trying to include as many ideas as possible. It doesn't matter if you have any mistakes, you will be able to eddit them later.

''Nowdays, people have thousands and thousands of friends, as social websites become more and more popular. Everybody flollow everybody and friends of their friends, sometimes just to be able to say ''I have X thousands of friends in facebook'' but the point is How many of those people are real friends? Moreover, Can you conssider a friend someone you've never met? what about penpals? it isn't something as new as facebook, many years before people also used to have ''friends'' they didn't know at all, but they used to send letters, which to me is something much more personal and helped them cultivating themselves, as they were able to learn from a native different facts about other cultures and improve another languages. For luck or not, things  have changed a lot in the last years and from my point of view with new technologies everything is becoming more impersonal.''

What I have lived for

      Hello everyone, I am going to dedicate today's entry to talk about Bertrand Russell, concretely about his essay What I have lived for which is the introduction to his memories.

      But before starting, it might be necessary to learn a bit more about who was Bertrand Russell, because, despite having worked side by side with some celebrities such as Albert Einstein , he has not recieved the recognition he should have had, at least here in Spain and I have to admitt that before last week, I had not heard about him neither. So in order to write this entry I have been reading in different websites curiosities and facts about his life, and i found it extremly interesting and helpfull  to understand his 3 passions, which I will develop in the next parragraphs. But again the question is Who was Bertrand Russell?
   
      Bertrand Russell was born in England in 1872 and he was a philosopher, mathematician, logician, social critic, historian and political activist, who supported female suffrage, racial equality, homosexuality and pacifism. Throughout his life he suffered many armed conflicts like the first and second world war, during which, he was imprisoned. He also demonstrated his objection for Vietnam's war and founded in association with Albert Einstein Pugwash movement. Moreover he led the campaign against the nuclear disarmament, which made him be imprisioned for second time in his life, at the age of 90. He won the Nobel prize for literature in 1950 and until his final day he fought with tireless passion and optimism to carry out his projects and achieve his objectives.

      In his essay What I have lived for Russell talks about which ones have been the most important things in his life with the perspective of time. In his case those are love, knowledge and pity for suffering of mankind.

      It is very curious to check that the three passions he talks about appear in the same chronological orden in the life of the philosopher. He starts talking about love, a love that relieves his lonliness. It is remarkable that during his youth, Bertrand Russell felt terribly lonely, his education was imparted by particular professors who used to gain confidence with Russell easily and talked with him about topics that were of a great interest for the author but which constituted a taboo for those times. So when Russell's parents knew about it, they  dismissed the professor and found a new one, and again Russell was completly alone with his thoughts. It was not until he arrived to Cambridge that he felt  really integrated in a group of friends, teenagers with recolutionary thoughts who made clandestine meetings once a week to talk about them. When we read Bertrand Russell's 3 passions, specially love, we tend to think of another kind of love, but we must not subestimate the love of friendship, feeling part of a group, were you are understood and nobody try to cut off your wings. Some years later he also found another love, after marrying his first wife, but there's no doubt that his biggest love were maths, maby the only ones that accompained him during his whole life.

      His second great passion was knowledge, a knowledge that made him wish to understand the hearts of men or why do the stars shine. Maby it was that love for knowledge what moved him to work for the Trinity's Fellowship, and carry out various trips to foreing places, in which he was able to contemplate firsthand the situation of those new countries, political and economical as well as their culture. But above all, one of the more remarkable things he did to spread knowledge was the foundation of the progresist school Bacon Hill, where he pretended to impart a new type of education, free of the taboos and prejudices of the time.

      Finally, his third passion was pity for the suffering of mankind. Bertrand Russell had to live hard times, throughout his life, he had to suffer events like the burst of the first and second world war as well as Vietnam's war. Specially in the 30s after he got divorced, he decided to fight against Hitler. Unfortunately, he was captured and imprisioned, and lived in his own skin the miseries and hardships that war provokes and so, he mentions the horror of the victims tortured by their oppressors and the echoes of cries of pain.

      Russell conceives his two first passions as something wonderful that elevates him to another divine dimension. In contrast it is the horror of war and human cruelty what bring him back to earth.

      From my point of view, if I had to decide which are my 3 passions, I would probably agree with Bertrand Russell and choose love, knowledge and pity for the suffering of mankind too.

      In first place I would choose love, because it is the strongest armor we will have to protect ourselfs from the crudity of the world. Sometimes we try to hide behind masks, that we create oruselves from pain and hypocrisy, in order to pretend that nothing can affect us. But those masks, as everything else, will deteriorate with the pass of the years and they will become dust, the remind of what they were once. Instead, love come from wherever it comes will provide us of an armour stronger than the own time and that will give us strengh to face all adversities, come what may.

      Secondly, I would choose knowledge. If love is the strongest armor, then knowledge is the strongest weapon that we will have in this vast battle that is life. It is a waepon that we are given in the same moment we are born and that we can improve through the years until our final day. A weapon that nobody can snatch away from us and that will be the only thing we will have to survive in that large ocean we call society.

      To conclude, I consider pity for the suffering of mankind, as well as sympathy, two essential elements which are very significant in almost every aspect of life, not just in war matters as it was the case of Bertrand Russell. There is a whole world that lies in front of us full of all type of injustices. Have you ever wonder how many children suffer from bullying everyday? and How many of them live each one of their days wishing that it is their last one? they are also victims tortured by their oppressors, I can also hear the echos of cries and pain here. There's no doubt that these are the situations that as Russell said make a mockery of what humankind should be.

      These are the reasons that sumarize the election of my three passions. I hope you have enjoyed this entry. Looking forward to reading your comments.