In the 21st century, having an open mind is imperative to being successful. Phil Hansen, Chimamanda Adichie, and Ken Robinson exemplify open-mindedness by overcoming limitations, being excited to learn a whole story, and embracing creativity. During his 2013 TED talk, an aspiring artist, Phil Hansen, relays a testimony of how he overcame his ultimate limitation, a hand tremor, as well as conquering the biggest limitations in art. After being diagnosed with a tremor, Hansen could no longer draw a straight line; this hindered his creative flow; however, even though “limitations might be the most unlikely of places to harvest creativity”, the artist found inspiration in destruction of art, a stretch in the confines of the art world (“Embrace the Shake”). …show more content…
During his Goodbye Series, consisting of 23 different art pieces that were made to be destroyed, he learned to let go of outcomes, failures, and imperfections while seizing the limitation.
In her TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story”, Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, unpacks a convicting truth; people make conclusions based on only half of a story, or the part of the story they know. Adichie tells about her experience in Mexico, expecting to see what the media portrays of Mexicans; job stealing, illegal immigrants, but being ashamed when she realized that they were completely different, and just like her; she “reject[ed] the single story,” and realized that there can never be “a single story about any place” (“Danger of a Single Story”). Through this experience, the novelist uncovered a revelation, that stories matter, and they are powerful, they can be used to destroy people, but can also be used to empower people. Ken Robinson, author of “Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative”, challenges the standardized school system, in claiming that it stifles children’s ability to have creative freedom, in his 2009 TED Talk, titled, “Do Schools Kill
Creativity?”. He conveys that the modern school system has made kids “become frightened of being wrong,” and “[people] now [run] national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing [people] can make”, he goes on to explain that the result of these educational systems is “educating people out of their creative capacities” (“Do Schools Kill Creativity?”). Robinson concludes his talk with a call to action, he explains that it is important for people to celebrate all of childrens creativity, and to educate them in all aspects, because they are the hope for the future. People can learn from these speakers that having an open mind can get them farther than they thought they could ever be.
In 1975 the “interesting” books for students of the Island Tree School District were nearly thrown under the bed forever. The Island Tree School District was presented with a complaint from the group Parents of New York United that posed a concern regarding the content of library materials. This community was concerned that public school libraries in the district were exceedingly “permissive” with the books they provided for students. The list of books that the Parents of New York United were wary of were: “Slaughter-House Five,” by Kurt Vonnegut; “The Fixer,” by Bernard Malamud; “The Naked Ape,” by Desmond Morris; “Down These Mean Streets,” by Piri Thomas; “Best Short Stories of Negro Writers,” edited by Langston Hughes; “A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich,” by Alice Childress; “Soul on Ice,” by Eldridge Cleaver; “A Reader for Writers,” edited by Jerome Archer, and “Go Ask Alice,” by an anonymous author(New York Times, 1982). The Island Tree School Board complied with the Parents of New York United's concern and took these books off school shelves in early 1976.
In Thomas King's short story "Borders," a Blackfoot mother struggles with maintaining her cultural heritage under the pressure of two dominating nations. Storytelling is important, both for the mother and for the dominant White society. Stories are used to maintain and pass on cultural information and customs from one generation to another. Furthermore, stories can be used both positively and negatively. They can trap individuals into certain ways of thinking, but they can also act as catalysts that drive social change within society.
It is only human to be biased. However, the problem begins when we allow our bigotry to manifest into an obstacle that hinders us from genuinely getting to know people. Long time diversity advocate, Verna Myers, in her 2014 Ted Talk, “How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them” discusses the implicit biases we may obtain when it comes to race, specifically black men and women. Myers purpose is quite like the cliché phrase “Face your fears.” Her goal is to impress upon us that we all have biases (conscious or unconscious). We just have to be aware of them and face them head on, so that problems such as racism, can be resolved. Throughout the Ted Talk, Verna Myers utilizes an admonishing yet entertaining tone in order to grasp our attention
In the Ted Talk, “My stroke of insight”, the speaker Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist had undergone a stroke affecting her left hemisphere. During this process she was able to experience her brain deteriorating slowly and she was able to study it. She explains how she wanted to become a brain researcher because of her brother’s brain condition, schizophrenia. During the TedTalk she also explained her whole experience, including what it felt like, her emotions, and the world around her while having a stroke as well as the difficulties that she had encountered. Jill explains this experience as a tremendous gift.
Erin Gruwell began her teaching career at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California where the school is integrated but it’s not working. Mrs. Gruwell is teaching a class fill with at-risk teenagers that are not interested in learning. But she makes not give up, instead she inspires her students to take an interest in their education and planning for their future as she assigned materials that can relate to their lives. This film has observed many social issues and connected to one of the sociological perspective, conflict theory. Freedom Writers have been constructed in a way that it promotes an idea of how the community where the student lives, represented as a racially acceptable society. The film upholds strong stereotypes of
Mueller expresses how stories allow children to achieve the impossible, such as flying when they are incapable and discovering the unknown. Stories give a life to the people who are unable to live, and that is one of the reasons why imagination is so essential to our world. The sharing of tales bring genuine joy to people without the need of materialistic items; it gives people the chance to relate to the author on a common ground. The sense of shared joy and mutual connection brings people closer together and expands on relationships. People begin to feel as if they are apart of an imagined community, which is a community in which people perceive themselves to be apart of, through common interests or relations from media or works of literature. Communities such as these allow people to connect with each other, despite never crossing paths. It allows the birth and the strengthening of relationships, for when people begin to converse with others, the first thing they do is find common experiences or interests that they share. In addition, a quote from Mueller, herself, adds to why we tell stories: “Because the story of our life becomes our life. Because each of us tell the same story but tell it differently, and none of us tells it the same way twice.” Tales are devised with the incorporation of the narrator’s imagination; it is a way to
Chimamanda Adichie, in one of her eye-opening speeches, The Danger of a Single Story, provides the audience with a new insight into the negative impacts that can occur as a result of viewing a story from a single perspective and not putting in an effort to know it from all available viewpoints. Adichie in her simple, yet well-grounded speech, filled with anecdotes of her personal experiences effectively puts across her argument against believing in stereotypes and limiting oneself to just a single story using a remarkable opening, the elements of logos, pathos and ethos, repetitions, as well as maintaining a good flow of thoughts throughout the speech.
Watch this Ted Talk, The Danger of a Single Story: https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en (Links to an external site.)
In 2009 Chimamanda Adichie gave a TED talk about the ‘danger of a single story’. A single story meaning, one thought or one example of a person becoming what we think about all people that fit that description, a stereotype if you will. In today’s America, I believe that we have all felt the wave of stereotypical views at some point or another. Adichie gives many relatable examples throughout her life of how she has been affected by the single story. Her story brings about an issue that all humans, from every inch of the earth, have come to understand on some level. A young child reading only foreign books, a domestic helper that she only perceived as poor. Her college roommates single story about Africans and her own formation of a single
The first effect of racism is a sense of loss. Children are first exposed to the world beyond their families via print and media. Western literature and movies often paint a similar picture – of blonde hair, blue-eyed children climbing trees and eating apples. This, as discussed by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her TED talk ‘The Dangers of a Single Story’, subjects children to the single story of what books and childhood should be like. The sense of loss emerges when children of minority realize the reality of their lives wo...
This story is one that some critics have considered as politically and morally offensive labelling it as an implicit endorsement of inequality and prejudice. Kohl in his book Should We Burn Babar? Essays on Children’s Literature and the Power of Stories (1995), addresses issues that transcend children’s literature. His work is considered as a reflection of his status as a relentless passionate supporter of children and a progressive educational reform. In his essay, Kohl questions how power is represented in children’s literature “The first and simplest question I would like to ask is: Who has the power in Babar?” He questions the message contained in the popular Babar books by arguing that it matters what children read and that literature has the power to exert influence on them, which could end up being harmful to them as they grow.
Some people write for entertainment and some people write for fortune, but other people write to tell the world their story and enlighten us to life’s lessons. Literary fiction is created to do more than just merely entertain. It is created to tell a story, to take the reader from one mindset to another and bring about the reader’s understanding of the purpose. Literary fiction explores innate conflicts of the human condition through cosmic writing. Richard Wright chooses to use this kind of writing to reach the world. Wright grew up in a time where he was denied many privileges because of his color and he really made a point to express his feelings to us through his writing. His life, works and short story “A Man Who Was Almost a Man contribute directly to his literary style.
The word danger probably makes you want to turn away and stop doing whatever it is that you are doing. Well, what do you do when you see the words, “The Danger of a Single Story?” These words had me nervous about what I was going to be watching. However, there was a lot of information that was explained throughout this 20-minute TED talk from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This paper will explore compelling ideas she mentioned that relate to things I have experienced when I went to another culture, the risks of telling a single story narrative in intercultural interactions, ways to protect myself from single story misconceptions, and how I was able to see how a single story might affect the way I communicate with others in different cultures.
Sturm, B. W. (1999). The enchanted imagination: Storytelling's power to entrance listeners. School Library Media Research, 2