Dianne Gates

Looking for the real news?  Maybe you are already a fan of this wonderful, inspirational and intelligent resource on your own computer, and it’s free of charge.

Ted Talks started in 1984, but in 1990 that they really took off.  They feature talks about the speaker’s subject of expertise. Each speaker knows their subject well, there are no “ums or ahs” and they generally speak without notes. Talks can be anything from five minutes to around 20 minutes, and cover an amazing selection of subjects.

Check out www.ted.com/topics for a full list of the subjects and topics available.

I am hoping to encourage you to check out this marvellous information resource for yourself.  

Let me review this Ted Talk by Sir Keith Robinson to get you started:

“Do Schools Kill Creativity?” from February 2006 (Yes, it’s old, but a goody).

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenged the way we educate our children, championing a radical rethink of how our school systems cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born artists.

The problem is how to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it.

Or rather, we get educated out of it. So why is this?

Gillian and I had lunch one day. I said, “How did you get to be a dancer?” It was interesting. When she was at school, she was hopeless. And the school, in the ‘30s, wrote to her parents and said, “We think Gillian has a learning disorder.” She couldn’t concentrate; she was fidgeting.

I think now they’d say she had ADHD. Wouldn’t you? But this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn’t been invented at this point.

It wasn’t an available condition. People weren’t aware they could

have that.

Anyway, she went to see this specialist. So, she was in this oak-panelled room, and she was there with her mother. She was led to this chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this man talked to her mother about all the problems Gillian was having at school; she was disturbing people, her homework was always late, and so on. She was a little kid of eight.

In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian and said, “I’ve listened to all these things your mother’s told me. I need to speak to her privately. Wait here. We’ll be back. We won’t be very long,” and they went and left her.

But as they went out of the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk. And when they got out of the room, he said to her mother, “Just stand and watch her.”

The minute they left the room, she was on her feet, moving to the music. They watched for a few minutes. He turned to her mother and said, “Mrs Lynne, Gillian isn’t sick. She’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.”

I am involved with the senior’s fellowship group known as U3A (Stands for University of the 3rd Age) where we have over 24 special interest groups established to cater for our many Whakatāne members.  

One of the special interest groups features Ted Talks.

Twice a month, we show three or four talks, depending on their length, and, then we have an interesting discussion about the subject featured.

Dianne Gates