What the First Teacher Missed by Ciara

There is no one ultimately right way to teach students. As each student has a different, unique personality, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to students. In this regard, i could not agree with the way that the first teacher guided the boy although I could partly understand her purpose. The first teacher had a responsibility to guide all of her students equally, so she wanted to make sure that everybody in her class get along with each other well. That is why she gave a group project to her students in her art class. She gave students some materials to share hoping that they could learn how to share limited resources with their friends, sometimes waiting for their turns. However, the little boy in her class started his own project using all the materials without any agreement with his group, and it obviously made his classmates uncomfortable. From her perspective, the new boy did not respect his classmates and may have some troubles in her class. Therefore, she decided to teach him that there is a set of rules he has to follow in a certain circumstance. The only problem is that her instruction and guidance were given in a very strict and disciplined way which did not consider the boy's unique personality and eventually killed his creativity.  Since she gave the boy instructions even how to draw a flower and how to make a dish in a very clear way and asked him to follow them, the boy lost his ability to create his own things and became a passive learner whether she intended it or not.
In my opinion, there are two different areas in education. One is fostering students ability to cooperate as members of our society, and the other one is helping them to show their unique potential as human beings. In the former area, education should be given as the first teacher did, teaching a set of rules to the students to comply and guiding them to respect others. However, this type of education always has a risk to make every student the same because it ignores the fact that every single student has different personality and different potential, and this is where the other type of education is needed. Education should be given in a way which encourages students to grow their creativity and not to lose their own personality. Through this type of education, students can explore their own possibility and potentiality and take active parts on their own life. What the first teacher missed was the latter part. Her educational approach was only focused on the former area of education. In this regard, I could not agree with the way she taught the little boy, but also could not tell she was entirely wrong. It is hard to make a balance between two areas, so this should be the major goal which our contemporary education should seek for.