Pedagogy, What Is It?

During today's ENG 220 class we watched two brief videos, one  by Dr. Sonwalkar which covered the topic of what pedagogy is and the other by Sir Ken Robinson who discussed the ideas of what the public education system. Dr. Sonwalkar described the general definition of pedagogy as the art of teaching children. He then goes on to explain that teaching should be towards the students cognitive learning and creating lesson plans that create cognitive learning. What is cognitive learning? Its learning in which students are doing thinking on more than a literal level but on a critical level. 

Sir Ken Robinson would argue that today's public education system does not do this. He believes that creativity today is squandered in children and that there is a hierarchy in what students do learn. At the top of this hierarchy is Math, Science, English and at the bottom is Humanities and the Arts. Within their education students are taught that mistakes are damaging and this crushes the possibilities of original ideas for fear of being "wrong".

Students are taught to certain skill sets and environments, and when they are met with something outside of their comfort zones are unable to come up with solutions. Their intelligence becomes something that is not their own. The way in which Sir Ken Robinson describes intelligence should be realized as is: diverse-each person is different and doesn't think the same, dynamic-original ideas and interactive,and distinct-everyone has unique talents, and there are multiple forms of intelligence.

My own personal belief is that Sir Robinson has an accurate description of education systems today. Creativity should be celebrated and embraced in the school system, something which I feel it does not do today. Testing starts from early as third grade and takes away from the child's essence of what is childhood.Every one person is unique and learns differently, something which has started to be acknowledged but has far to go through the education system.Examples of teaching that teaches to the individual is student centered learning. This is where the students are the leader in the process of their learning.They are the ones who are the primary focus and with some aid from the teachers are able to create deeper connections to their own personal experiences and their learning. Such ideas are what I believe are strides to the education system celebrating and focusing on the needs of individuals.

Links to the videos mention are below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkoRR670fj8
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html