Juggling in Schools

This is something I’m very passionate about.

I believe that alongside the more traditional sports like football, rugby, netball and rounders that juggling should also be delivered to school children.

Why?

That’s a good question.

In short juggling is good for you, both mentally and physically.

It helps the whole of your body from top to toe… Literally.

It’s also a non-competitive sport in that you can do it without having to beat anyone else.

With other sports, like football for example, you can only play if you are playing against someone else. Most sports are like this. But juggling isn’t like that. When you juggle you compete with yourself. Jugglers constantly strive to better their last run. Every time they practice they want to make one more catch or throw up just one more object. There’s always more to learn no matter how far you go.

It’s possible for an 11-ball juggler working on 12 balls to be stood in the same hall as a complete beginner learning 3 balls and both get the same sense of achievement from being able to juggle their new patterns for the first time. No other sport offers this.

What’s more, jugglers love to share. They love to teach each other new tricks as much as they love to learn them. When you get 700 juggling enthusiasts in the same place you don’t need extra police or other security to prevent violence or disruptive behaviour. It’s a shame that the same can’t be said if 700 football fans got together.

As a result of this, juggling is very sociable. When you get two or more jugglers together its not long before they start passing objects between them.

For those who want to compete, juggling can also provide this too. There are juggling competitions run by the IJA and the WJF. There are also smaller games run at conventions and some of the larger juggling clubs.

Finally, juggling can be used as a universal language. It’s not uncommon for jugglers from different countries who can’t speak the same language verbally to communicate through their juggling. Working together, playing together and teaching each other.

With all these benefits, why is juggling a minority sport? Seems a crime to keep it this way.

‘Civilisation is a race between education and catastrophe’ – H G Wells

No truer a statement has ever been written than the one that forms the title of today’s post, which will focus on an experience I had at a baked potato stand I was at in Bristol.

My wife (then girlfriend) and I were visiting my parents in Bristol and we’d decided to take a stroll into town. My parents live only 30-minutes or so from the Center and we will often take a walk in that direction.

On this occasion we had quite a bit of shopping to do. It was coming close to Christmas and we’d been trudging our way around the shops for some time. It was now 1pm and we were hungry.

After the 15-minute discussion any couple needs to decide what they want to eat and where they want to eat it we headed for a potato stand in the food court of The Galleries Shopping Centre. I’m sure you’re all familiar with these types of places. A plain, sterile looking collection of tables and chairs complete with teenagers munching on burgers and guzzling down coke, an elderly couple looking confused at the lack of change from a £10 note after ordering two cups of coffee and a screaming baby who’s completely shattered parents have gone into a coma-like state brought on by lack of sleep.

On approaching the potato stand I ordered my usual cheese and coleslaw and the Mrs asked for cheese and beans.

“Can we have butter on those too please?”

A confused look came back at us from across the counter and after a short period of silence a reply of: “Butter?”

“Yes please”, I said.

My poor server stood, thought and finally told me they could get me butter and proceeded to go and collect one of those pre-packaged portions of butter wrapped in foil and placed it on the side of my plate next to the potato.

It was my turn to look confused.

“Could I have the butter on the potato?”, I asked.

More silence.

“Oh, I’m not allowed to do that.”, was the reply.

I tried to explain that putting the butter on was no different to putting the beans, cheese, coleslaw or any other ingredient on.

Likewise, my server tried to explain that his job was to take the orders and he wasn’t allowed to touch the ingredients. So I came back with the argument that those who are allowed to build the potatoes could put the butter on.

But no, this too wasn’t allowed because the butter wasn’t officially an ingredient for use with the potatoes. Therefore the potato assembly team weren’t allowed to put it on either.

In the end I had to unwrap my butter and put it on myself before handing the potato back and having them put the rest of the fillings on the spud.

Ridiculous?

Yes.

True?

Yes.

Why have I shared this with you?

Well, it’s because it illustrates the title of this post perfectly. This is the result of our current education system. Not just schools, but anywhere that training is given. Including Potato College.

The current way of educating people produces obedient, rigid and non-flexible students and workers unable to think creatively and solve unique problems.

Now, I know the non-application of butter on a potato isn’t a total catastrophe. But it highlights the way in which people think. The way in which people are taught to think.

They are taught to think from A to B to C and if someone asks them for something slightly unusual they panic and are unable to come up with a satisfactory solution.

But if my server was able to think a little creatively they’d have put a tub of butter on the fillings counter and labelled it an ingredient. Then they would ask each customer if they’d like butter. If they do the fillings operatives (I’ve been struggling what to call them throughout this post) would be able to add butter to the potatoes that need it.

You don’t have to be a creative genius to discover that answer, I know this to be true because I discovered this answer and I’m no genius creative or otherwise. But I’m able to think outside the box enough to create a solution. And a solution that would solve my problem, and any future similar problems.

Creative thinking doesn’t have to mean writing plays, producing works of art or putting on a performance piece. It is essential to the general survival of our species. It’s needed in everyday life to solve simple issues like how to put butter on a potato.

I hate sport!

Not me. I love sport. Not all sports, but most.

I really enjoy rugby and other contact sports. I also like strength sports and the field games at athletics events. Skating, surfing, snowboarding and other extreme sports are also great fun to do and watching.

I don’t particularly like football though. Never have. And during primary school I was considered to be one of the non-sporty kids based on the fact I never wanted to play football.

In fact football was pretty much the only sport we were offered in primary school, the rugby and other sports I eventually got into didn’t come about until secondary school when we were offered a much wider choice.

But for a lot of kids sport isn’t something they find interesting. Or at least they don’t enjoy doing what they deem to be sports.

My niece hates sport, so she tells me. But in the same breath she also says she loves rock climbing, abseiling and canoeing. Since when was canoeing not a sport?

In her head it isn’t. In her head, and many other kid’s heads, sports are the games you do in school and see on TV. They are football, cricket, rugby, netball, hockey and athletics. No more, no less.

If all you know of as sport are those activities and you happen to dislike them then its quite easy, and logical, to come to the conclusion that you hate sport.

In my nieces case she has never had the extreme sports she loves doing labelled as sport. Sport is PE and PE is one of the activities listed earlier. The stuff she does in school during PE is sport.

This obviously indicates an area of school life that needs to change. Kids need a wider variety of sporting activities put on offer. Something more than team games that pit one against the other.

Modern school life is a stressful and competitive environment, do we really need to make young people compete even further on the rugby pitch or tennis court. Sport doesn’t have to be competitive, does it?

If you talk to a surfer and ask why they surf the answer will be a personal one. One of self improvement and a ‘oneness’ with nature. A surfer doesn’t try to beat the others on the water. They are there for themselves.

Before anyone writes in, I know there are surf competitions. But the choice to compete is just that, a choice. In football you either play a game or you don’t. There’s no way of playing a game of football without competing in some form.

Juggling, snowboarding and other similar sports share this non-competitive angle with surfing. The only competition is that of competing with oneself. Trying to juggle three balls for just one more throw or master a new slope on the snowboard. It’s all about self improvement.

Why are these sports not taught in schools on a more regular basis?

Team sports have their place and some people thrive in those sorts of environments. But they are just one example of the myriad of possibilities available. Team sports should be just one option offered alongside a variety of other sporting activities.

‘I’m thinking of becoming a primary school teacher.’

– Rhod Gilbert

I’ve been listening to Rhod’s interview for The Comedian’s Comedian Podcast on the way home from today’s gig, it was recorded back in August 2012 and the comedy superstar announced that he’d quite like to go into teaching.

To many the movement of performer to teacher seems almost backwards with most more likely to want to go the other way seeing teaching as the 9-5 and performing as something special. But like any job that you’ve done for a while the romantic image fades and reality eventually sinks in.

Rhod didn’t say much about why he wanted to become a teacher, but what he did say rang true with some of my own reasons for wanting to make the transition.

Besides, there are many similarities between being a good performer and being a great teacher. They share many of the same skills. At least I think they should.

If you’d like to listen to the Rhod Gilbert interview you can get more info on this and loads of other brilliant interviews over at www.ComediansComedian.com.

Francis Bacon paintings fetch £21 million at London auction

With all this talk of Renaissance Men I just discovered this story on the BBC.

“Francis Bacon paintings make £21m at London auction

Two works by British artist Francis Bacon, including the first painting he ever sold, have fetched more than £21m at a London auction.

Head III, which sold for £150 at Bacon’s first solo show 54 years ago, was bought for £10.4m by an American private collection.

It had been estimated to sell for between £5m and £7m.”

–read more–

Science + Art = The Future

Traditional education systems all over our tiny planet focus on the sciences, alongside languages, technology and mathematics, as the priority subjects taught to children. The arts, humanities and physical education are sidelined and deemed less important. As those who have read my other posts will know this is something I disagree with, and recently I’ve been pondering on this disagreement quite a lot.

One of the things I’ve discovered is that its only been in modern times that the sciences and the arts have taken different paths.

I was researching Ren Faires in the United States as a possible outlet for my work as a performer. Being from and living in the UK I’d never been to a Ren Faire before. I knew they were medieval-style themed events but didn’t know what the Ren in Ren Faire meant. Turns out its an abbreviation of the word Renaissance. A word I’d heard before but never used, and if I have I’ve probably used it incorrectly.

The Renaissance, in short, spanned several centuries from the 14th to the 17th and was the time of great thinkers like Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo Galilei. These men, these Renaissance Men, are known to be what’s called polymaths.

A polymath being someone who is an expert in both the arts and the sciences. The two subjects collide and blend together to become one ‘super subject’ within the minds of the polymath as apposed to being thought of separately as they are in the classroom.

The Renaissance legend Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) said: “a man can do all things if he will”. And who am I to argue with that? His concept did after all give rise to the Renaissance humanism movement, which considered humans to be “empowered and limitless in their capacities for development”. Renaissance humanism led to the notion that people could, and indeed should, embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible.

And that’s just what the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon and Michael Servetus did. Could you imagine what the world would be like if they hadn’t?

By combining the creative process often associated with arts subjects to the more linear subjects like science and maths you open a world where new, never asked questions form and the answers to those questions lead to exciting discoveries that would never have been found if we continued to simply learn what has come before.

Its a simple idea, and the best ones often are, that will keep us looking forward rather than constantly looking back. We don’t know what the future will hold, but what is certain is that our children are the ones who will have to face it and it is our job to make sure they are equipped with the knowledge to be able to cope with whatever is thrown at them. Science, math, languages and technology alone will not be enough.

Take Kodak as an example. A giant among the photographic world for decades and the home to many great minds in science, math, languages and technology, but where are they now? Unable to react to change they have gone by-the-by.

Kodak were unable to create a solution that meant they would continue as strongly in the 21st century as they had throughout the 20th. If they’d been a polymath organisation they would have been able to draw on knowledge from many different areas and ask new creative questions that would’ve generated the new answers needed for their survival.

In the same way our children need to be polymath organisms with the ability to creatively ask new questions that will lead to new answers needed for their survival.

Related articles

• Curiosity: Art and the Pleasure of Knowing (maiterodriguez.es)
• 3. Thee Creative Geniuses 1519-1632 (ancestorsofevolution.com)
• The Modern day Renaissance Soul: You don’t have to be a genius (creativechameleonblog.wordpress.com)

London House is 3D Illusion

Be prepared to have your mind go in to complete meltdown…

Leandro Erlich, an Argentinian artist, has built a Victorian-style house in London that doesn’t exist. It is nothing more than a very clever optical illusion… Yet you can see it, touch it and even give the impression you’re walking up it!

For those not able to see this in person you can check out the BBC’s report on it here. But if you’re in the London area why not go and try out your own Spiderman abilities?

Related articles

• This Is Not Photoshopped (neatorama.com)
• Spot the Phantom Dots (spoonful.com)

The Role of Education Today.

Inspired by his TED Talks I decided to buy the new edition of Out of Our Minds by Sir Ken Robinson and have spent the odd spare hour here and there over the past couple of days browsing through its pages. I use the word pages loosely and unsure of whether that’s still correct because I actually bought the Kindle edition (a saving of about £8 compared to the hardcover version and accessible instantly) but being over 30-years-old and like most others of my age group I straddle the old analogue world I was born in to with the digital world I’m forced to be part of with only a venere of understanding that any 3-year-old can see straight through without even having to Google it first.

Anyway, I’m 22% of the way through (the Kindle giving me information I never knew I even needed) and I’ve just finished reading about the roles of education. Found interestingly under the heading The Roles of Education on page 66 of the e-edition.

Sir Ken says:

“Education has three main roles: personal, cultural and economic. A great deal could be said about each of these, but let me boil them down here into three basic statements of purpose, which I think are relatively uncontentious:

• Individual: to develop individual talents and sensibilities
• Cultural: to deepen understanding of the world
• Economic: to provide the skills required to earn a living and be economically productive.”

Through my work as a circus skills instructor I’ve noticed that, even in younger children, the last of the three is deemed the most relevant. Now I think its very important, and I’m sure every parent everywhere can’t wait for their own children to become economically productive and self sufficient, but I don’t think its any more important than either of the other two.

Without individual or cultural development a child will not grow to become a well rounded adult capable of navigating through a world that will be vastly different from the one we currently live in.

In fact I’d go so far as to say that a person needs to know who they are and what they bring to the various communities they belong to in order to be economically productive. Its great if you are good with numbers or able to build kitchens or plaster walls, but if you’re unable to relate to the world around you or even recognise the fact that you are in fact the greatest kitchen installer ever to walk the Earth you will not make a penny, cent or ruble from the money-making skills you possess.

Quite often I’ve had kids ask me why they need to learn how to juggle. They don’t see the point because they don’t want to work in a circus.

I used to think this was an excuse they’d use because learning to juggle is a difficult thing to do and they didn’t want to do it for that reason. But I started hearing these same questions from children who had actually learnt how to juggle, they just couldn’t see the point of their newly found skill.

Having done the job for a while and having been a hobbyest for even longer I’ve got many reasons for learning how to juggle tucked up my sleeve, something I’m sure will appear on this blog at some point in the future. But why was this question being asked at all?

The reason, I think, is the fact that these children have learnt that the reason they have gone to school is to learn stuff that will help them get a job in the future. This is, or at least should, be true. But it shouldn’t be the only reason they’ve gone to school. The fact that this question is being asked by primary school aged children suggests that from a very young age they are being brainwashed in to thinking that what they learn in school has to directly link to the jobs market in the future. And that anything else, like learning how to juggle, dance or play piano, is pointless unless they want to become a juggler, dancer or pianist.

The fact is none of us know what jobs are going to be available in the future. Who would have thought we’d have mobile telephones that can connect to the Internet 30-years ago? Who would have thought we’d have the Internet anywhere for that matter?

Its impossible to know what skills kids today will need to be able to work in a world 30-years from now. I’m sure science, maths, languages and technology (all things that education systems around the world prioritise) will still be useful. But the creativity, personal understanding of our own skills and the understanding of the wider world that’s learnt through activities like dance, music and other artistic endeavours need to have as much emphasis placed on them as those traditional subjects.

Without these skills children today won’t be able to carve their own path in the future.

Related articles

• The ‘F’ Word! (magicofeducation.wordpress.com)
• Play being ‘pushed aside’ in nurseries (schoolsimprovement.net)
• Reflecting, Learning, Growing (shelleylacroix.wordpress.com)
• A Radio Spot from Sir Ken Robinson Reminding Voters About the Importance of Teachers (speedofcreativity.org)
• kgitch on inspiration (kgitch.wordpress.com)
• The Big Lie: Education=Financial Success (blackamericaweb.com)
• How to remain an artist once we grow up, part one (onewildword.com)
• Rethinking Education (laventuradecrecerysonar.wordpress.com)

A quote from a teacher that really made me think:

“We (teachers) need to get our job right for our own sake if nothing else, because we’re the ones who’ll be retiring in to a World run by those who currently sit in our classrooms.”

Related articles

• The Power of a “great” teacher! (kairoseducatespune.wordpress.com)
• UK teachers among youngest in the world (walesonline.co.uk)
• Teachers react with fury at plans for rise in working hours (metro.co.uk)

The ‘F’ Word!

No, not that word.

The ‘F’ word I’m talking about is the word fail. I hate it.

Well that’s not completely true, I don’t hate the word fail. It can be quite a useful word.

What I hate is its current constant use to describe a mistake. And especially its constant use by children to describe their mistakes.

I first noticed it during one of my science shows where, being quite tired after a long three-hour drive, I dropped during my first attempt to juggle 6-balls. I heard a little whisper from within my audience of 7 to 11-year-olds of “ooo, fail”.

Fail?

I dropped a ball.

I’d made a mistake.

But I hadn’t failed.

I can juggle 6-balls. Hell, I can juggle 7!

I proceded to pick up the stray sphere and tried again, where I succeeded to juggle all six for about 18 throws and catches, a pretty good run I thought.

The rest of the show was mistake free and the kids loved it, as did the teachers. But that little whisper bothered me.

Later that day I ran a series of short juggling workshops where I teach juggling using chiffon scarves. They move a lot slower than other juggling props like clubs, rings or even balls and this in turn makes the whole learning process a little bit easier. During these workshops, of which there were five or six running for approximately 20-minutes in length each, I heard the word again. But this time not to describe something I’d done but to describe a missed catch by one of the kids themselves.

How is that a fail?

For most, if not all the children I saw that day, the juggling workshop was the first time they’d ever tried to juggle anything. I was the only person in that school who had arrived that morning already knowing how to manipulate three objects in a cascade pattern. So how can a child fail at something they don’t even know how to do yet?

More importantly, why did they feel they had to get it right immediately and if they didn’t get it right why was it seen as a fail?

What makes this worse is that this happened over 12-months ago and since then the use of the word fail has become increasingly more popular. Children as young as five are using it to describe a mistake.

FIVE!

WHAT!!!

Nobody knows anything at the age of five. Its only been three years since they learnt how to walk and communicate using language.

There are five-year-olds that haven’t figured out how to string full sentences together yet and nearly all of them have accidents when it comes to remembering to use the toilet.

Based on this need to get things right first time or else, if a kid wets themselves do we turn to them, point and say: “Oh, you failed kid. Might as well just give up now.”?

No we don’t. We don’t because it was an accident, a mistake, and they’re still learning.

It feels like these kids are putting themselves under a lot of pressure to succeed immediately. That they have to be good at something straight away otherwise they are failures.

But the thing is the majority of people haven’t a clue what they’re good at by the time they’re 21 let alone know what they’re good at by the time they are 11 or younger. As I write this I’m 32-years-old and its only just now that I’ve discovered my passion lies in education. That what I’m good at is inspiring and encouraging children to learn things. I love doing it. But the path I took to discover that is long and varied. As are most other people’s CVs.

Look at your own resume, the journey you took to get to where you are now isn’t an organised linear path. Its organic. Learning, I believe, is exactly the same. It takes time and it takes a different amount of time for each of us. Some kids learn to talk by the time they’re 2-years-old, but others take until they are 5 or sometimes longer. But, excluding any physical conditions, they learn how to do it and by the time they are ready to hit secondary school they’re communicating just as well as everyone else.

Those kids who didn’t learn to talk by the time they’re 2 or 3 haven’t failed though. They just haven’t learnt how to get it right by the time they are 2 or 3.

So why does this bother me so much?

Well, being prepared to get things wrong and fail is the only way we are able to learn and be creative. In fact I believe getting things wrong and making mistakes is the root of all creativity. If we’re unable to take risks and accept the simple fact that we are going to make mistakes then we are setting ourselves up for a life of zero creativity and ironically a life of true failure.

Failure to reach our full potential.

Do we honestly believe the great inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs of our time got it right first time? Of course they didn’t. They tried something and that something didn’t work so they made a few tweaks and tried it again. And they continued to do this until eventually they found they were able to get it right.

The only way James Dyson could have failed to invent the bag-less vacuum cleaner is if he’d given up trying to invent the bag-less vacuum cleaner. But he didn’t give up, he kept trying until he got it right and now the majority of us no longer have to deal with overfilled vacuum bags, which is quite simply brilliant.

But it seems our children believe this to not be the case. If you listen to their conversations and to the words they are choosing to use it seems they believe they have to get things right first time, and if they don’t they have failed.

What’s worse is this is breeding a generation of children who are scared to even try something even once. They look at a task, believe it to be too difficult and so don’t even attempt it through fear of being labeled a failure.

Related articles

• We’re All Too Busy…Missing Amazing Opportunities (bigthink.com)
• Why Perfectionists Are Often the Biggest Failures | Successify (gethealthygazette.com)
• Embracing Imperfection: Overcoming the Fear of Failure (stevenashyb.wordpress.com)