no more imagination
For anyone who doesn't know, one of the things I do to make money is to train young people how to make digital videos and use other creative media at the BBC. For the past few years, I have noticed a steady decline in the interest in using video. It is usually greeted with a polite version of "who gives a fuck?" when teachers or youth workers offer it as a possibility for the young people they work with. There is the occasional young person who really gets into it or is already skilled and enjoys the process and being an informal peer educator. I've tried to figure out what has happened to change things so rapidly and the main things I can think of are that young people are not only bombarded with different media constantly (something that has been going on for a few generations) but also that schools and youth clubs have easy access to digital video making so it is seen as just another part of the education system.
Today I worked with a group of English GCSE students (11th grade in the US) who were given free reign to interpret some pretty amazing poetry using digital video. One group was asked to visually interpret Blessing by Imtiaz Dharker and came back after an hour of filming time with 49 seconds of one of young people looking bored shitless, reading the poem straight into the camera (their task was to make a two minute film). Now, GCSEs are chosen so should be a subject that young people want to study. I was astounded and the young people were really ashamed when they saw what the other groups had managed.
I was speaking with the teachers who brought them out of school to work on this project and they were telling me their theory of the lack of imagination and creativity. Basically, the entire curriculum in state (public) schools in the UK is geared to ticking the boxes on their GCSE exams so there is absolutely no room for creativity in either the teaching or learning. To get what stands as a special qualification in English, a student merely has to be able to answer, Charles Dickens was born in _________. Enjoying Oliver Twist or A Tale of Two Cities doesn't even figure into the equation. And did I mention that these students today were actually brought to the BBC by an independent charity because going out of school in London and using the huge resource that is this city is just not something schools bother with.
But, on Monday night, the Kate Moss range of clothing was released at Topshop and there were huge lines stretching around the block and TV news cameras aimed at the door. So Yanks, the next time a British person tries to act superior and claim that their education system/culture is better than yours, tell them to fuck off.
Today I worked with a group of English GCSE students (11th grade in the US) who were given free reign to interpret some pretty amazing poetry using digital video. One group was asked to visually interpret Blessing by Imtiaz Dharker and came back after an hour of filming time with 49 seconds of one of young people looking bored shitless, reading the poem straight into the camera (their task was to make a two minute film). Now, GCSEs are chosen so should be a subject that young people want to study. I was astounded and the young people were really ashamed when they saw what the other groups had managed.
I was speaking with the teachers who brought them out of school to work on this project and they were telling me their theory of the lack of imagination and creativity. Basically, the entire curriculum in state (public) schools in the UK is geared to ticking the boxes on their GCSE exams so there is absolutely no room for creativity in either the teaching or learning. To get what stands as a special qualification in English, a student merely has to be able to answer, Charles Dickens was born in _________. Enjoying Oliver Twist or A Tale of Two Cities doesn't even figure into the equation. And did I mention that these students today were actually brought to the BBC by an independent charity because going out of school in London and using the huge resource that is this city is just not something schools bother with.
But, on Monday night, the Kate Moss range of clothing was released at Topshop and there were huge lines stretching around the block and TV news cameras aimed at the door. So Yanks, the next time a British person tries to act superior and claim that their education system/culture is better than yours, tell them to fuck off.