Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hello everyone, I’m quite nervous now after the fabulous performance of WORLD ORDER.
I had a workshop with children that was designed to imagine the cars in future.
What the children drew was, a car with theater in its roof, a car that avoids traffic by making its own roads, a fluffy car.
a car running with only solar power, a car which can drive into the sea or into space, a car that helps the homeless, among many others.
I believe that dreams shape the future. Just like cars, planes, rockets, and cellphones were created from the wish to fly,
the desire to land on the moon, and the want to be able to speak with people far away, Ideas are brought to life by people who chase their childhood dreams.
I want to excite Japan with children’s imagination. The key factor is in their creativity.
For 10 years, I’ve been setting up environments for children, to provide them with creative experiences. Recently, it has been said that academic performance of children has declined.
According to the test scores by OECD, math has dropped to 10th place from 1st in 6 years.
But there is a more serious problem. When asking children if studying is interesting, or if they believe it is helpful for their futures,
data showed that 20% to 30% more students answered negatively compared to the average of overseas students.
Children always smile. To them, learning and playing are the same thing. I want to make learning for children a fun activity full of new discoveries.
That is my hope. I asked many people, “What kind of ability is desirable of children in the future?”
Asking an Olympic gold medalist, minister, lawyer, president, entrepreneur, actress, musicians, The response I received was the following. “Creativity skills, problem solving skills,
Ability to acknowledge others, to harmonize with others, to be flexible.” There is clearly a gap between the skills in need and the skills taught in schools.
A survey conducted through a company questionnaire asks the question, “What skill was most evaluated on new grads selection process?” which was taken by Keidanren,
The top was “communication skills”, and ownership, followed by cooperation. Only 5.4% of the participants answered “grades.”
There might be a gap between society and schools for what is the most valuable skill. I want to develop a new place for learning.
It shouldn’t be teaching but studying. I want to make a place for learning that uses ownership and cooperation.
What you’re seeing here is called Workshop Collection. At this exhibition held once a year, children learn expression through creation.
Making films, animated cartoons, robots, newspapers introducing their towns... A hundred of such programs gathered in one place, and last year, one hundred thousand children participated during a period of two days.
Until now, the most emphasis has been placed on acquiring knowledge. Children one-directionally absorbed the information given by their teachers.
Although this might have been effective during the age of industrialization, in our society today overflowing with information, we have to be able to differentiate valuable information from that which is not.
What is being sought now is the skill to create new values. The theme of Workshop Collection is “To create.” There are many opportunities that allow us to observe and listen.
The activites at Workshop Collection, however, encourage people to communicate via their own creations; it is a festival for creative communication.
I recommend two valuable ways to start a new way of studying. One is such a workshop, and the other is,
to equip the environment to promote studying with a digital device. Digital textbooks are tools that allow studying with ownership.
Connecting the children from Japan, Cambodia, Brazil, and Italy, we had an opportunity to create animated cartoons. First we have them draw pictures of characters that appear in anime.
What we saw was that, Japanese children drew characters with black hair. Cambodian children drew houses raised from the ground.
and drawings of families offering prayers.
And this, isn’t it beautiful? We share what doesn’t exist in our own cultures. We gave instructions to the children to choose any picture drawn by anyone and use it to make your own animated cartoon.
One child said, it was fun to work with friends from other countries.
Another said, I wish I had more time to get to know them. Programming workshops were also held in Ishinomaki, Sendai and other regions in the Tohoku district.
Children make their own games by themselves. Look at the concentrated faces, and the lit-up faces of all of these children.
They are not forced to do it, they invent an idea based on their own interests.
Schools need to understand this. I’m currently working on making schools more information-oriented, and popularizing digital textbooks.
Compared to other countries, Japan is behind, but recently, it’s been catching up. It’s not the kind of one-directional learning in which teachers simply teach children,
but teachers and children get together on the same level and learn from each other. Learning 24 hours a day, while being connected to the world, Schools become more open to society, families, museums, and the local area.
Through this, it will be possible for students of various backgrounds and various skills to create new values through communication.
In the workshop, children got in groups of 3 or 4. “I like the characters like this, but...”
“I want to make the story more like this.” “You’re good at drawing, so you draw the pictures.” Through discussion, each child discovers the eachother’s strengths and divide roles.
“Let’s finish this part by 3pm.” One child takes leadership. Children learned to learn by themselves,
They acquired and took home something not able to be subsituted by computers: Imagination and communication skills.
This digital revolution unparalleled in history will change the world dramatically.
Can you imagine what will happen in 50 years, 100 years from now?
There is an area of study called “Future science,” in which the future is predicted from historical incidents or current phenomenons.
What I am establishing with together with these children is called “New Future science.” It’s not for predicting, but for creating the future through the realization of dreams.
What is important is not to imagine something, but to realize it. To realize the imagination of children.
I want to create a society which makes this possible. A world in which children’s eyes glimmer with excitement,
giving off creativity to the rest of the world. This is the world that I want to realize. And how about you? What dreams do you want to realize?
Thank you very much.