The Golden Rule

In Karen Armstrong's TED talk, she talked about how the Golden Rule needs to be reapplied back into society. For those of you who don't know the Golden Rule, it's this: Treat others like you would like to be treated, and don't treat others how you wouldn't want to be treated. Karen really didn't use any special means to deliver her TED talk, and it was a little boring, but her message was one that was very good and should be applied everywhere. To me personally, as a Christian, the Golden Rule is something that I try to live by, and I think that everyone should try to live by. This is a concept that has been lost in the midst of the world trying to keep up in technological advances and in wars and other problems in the world. Education-wise, the Golden Rule is a hard concept to really apply, but still should try and be enforced as much as possible. The area where the Golden Rule really needs to be applied is in the real world. People everywhere are trying to get ahead of the game for themselves by any means necessary. This is how society is telling people to work, and everyone is more than willing to follow society in that sense. People need to challenge the system of society and try and go out of their way to make a difference; to treat other people nicely and to help other people out with their problems. The intrinsic motivation of people to go out of their way and help people is still a concept that people are coming to terms with, so it might take a while to sink in, but this is a change that society needs in order to move into a future where creativity and new thinking is the norm. 

Math Overhaul

The TED talk by Dan Meyer explained how math curriculum in schools today is more harmful to students than helpful. He says that this curriculum is just regurgitated information that only needs a formula to solve. Meyer proposes that math problems need to be simplified to just the basic shape or picture; to let the students come up with the questions to solve and to discuss with others how to solve the problems. The way that Meyer gave his TED talk was by using the methods of how he teaches his own classes, and he shows the results of this type of teaching and how different classes around the world tried this technique. I completely agree with Meyer that students need to be able to come up with their own mathematical equations and not be fed information that can easily be solved with a simple formula. I know that for me personally, math is a class that is very boring and something that I really don't want to do. The prospect of solving math by making an equation with real-world objects sounds a lot better than solving problems in a textbook that follow the same guidelines. The concept of using real-world items and situations is especially appealing to the type of math I'm currently in, which is geometry. Geometry is a math class that is one of the easiest places to apply real-world ideas and situations. Seeing real objects that have the shape you are learning how to solve makes learning a lot easier, and the teachers can let students come up with problems and solutions to those shapes. This type of math teaching/learning is an evident form of intrinsic motivation, and how students can be creative and learn as long as the right system is implemented to learn in and the students don't have information and questions that they are required to answer. Students (as well as most adults) would rather find out what the problem is and solve that rather than be given a problem and solve it, and then to another one that is the same thing.
  

After School Help

The TED talk by Dave Eggers talked about how students tend to work better and are more motivated to work if they have one on one conversations with adults to get help and ideas. Dave Eggers and a group of other authors set up a shop in San Francisco in order to give students this help after school, purely on a volunteer basis. Dave gave such a great TED talk because of his personal experiences with this idea that he had, and how he utilized this idea that eventually became a worldwide phenomenon to help students everywhere. This idea of intrinsic motivation to work harder and to get help for homework goes along with many other ideas in other TED talks that I have seen, and this is something that is extremely undervalued in schools and in the workplace in modern society. Schools still use the carrot-and-stick concept of motivation, in that if you do "good" work, you are "rewarded" with a good grade and if you do "bad" work you are "punished" with a bad grade and the option of failure of the class. The same is used in the workplace, with raises and bonuses for good work, overtime and the possibility of being fired for bad work. This process has been used for many years, but studies now show that people work harder when they are working for the joy of working on something meaningful. The study center that Dave Eggers and other authors set up also shows that students are willing to learn and get better, but feel more inclined to do so on their own terms, not because a teacher or parent forces them to. The same concept can be used in other areas of school as well as in the workplace. Grades in schools need to be eliminated in order to encourage true learning, and workplaces need to incorporate the creativity of their employees to get new ideas. Revolutionaries like Eggers and others will eventually show the world the true value of intrinsic motivation, as they already have begun to do.