Week 4 Lab: The Creative Life

(A photo of a TED Talk stage. Photo by Wikimedia Commons)

For the story lab this week, I decided to watch two TED Talks, Copyright is Brain Damage and A New Theory of Human Intelligence. The first video examined the effects copyrights had on creativity. The second video scrutinized the trend of putting people in intelligence categories, from a young age to the young adult stage of life. I now realize after watching these videos, that in general children are brainwashed from a young age to not think creatively. For me it was the exact opposite.

These TED Talks opened my eyes to a issue I was never exposed to. As a child, I was three when my sister started in a program called Destination Imagination. Destination Imagination is a program that presents seven different problem in August every year, and a team of seven members have to solve the problem by presenting a skit with props, costumes, and all that jazz. There are usually two team managers per team, however, help of any form, from any adult can result in disqualification. The goal of the program is to get from the regional competition, to the state competition, to the global competition. When I was six-years-old, I followed suit and was entered into the program as well. I stayed in the program up until my senior year of high school. In Destination Imagination, the whole goal is to think and problem solve in the most creative way possible. Therefore, as a child I was brainwashed to think way outside of the box, no matter how crazy the idea might have been. With all this being said, after watching the videos and looking at the lives of my childhood friends, I can see the issue. I love my friends, but looking back on it most of them were too scared to think for themselves; they waited to be told how to think, which I think is sort of the root of the problems present in the Ted Talks.I now have come to the realization that our teaching methods need to change, so that we can allow creativity to be a present in this world.

 (The above photo is a of my sister and I at the D.I. Regional Competition in 2015. Photo by me)

(This photo is of my team's "brick wall" backdrop for our 2016 competition season. Photo by me)

(The picture above is a T.V. my team and I created for a prop in 2017. Photo by me.)