A while ago, I had a task to write lyrics and come up with a vocal party for 5 instrumental songs.

As always, the crisis of inspiration came out of nowhere.

The worst timing ever.

I'm listening to the instrumentals, and they're good, but there's nothing in my head. Nada, nichts, zero. An empty bubble of brain cannot synthesize material out of total emptiness.

What do I do?

First thing, I fight off panic. Anxiety is a good old pastime for an extremely emotional and active modern young woman, but more often than not it's totally unhelpful.

Then, I go for sugar. Lots of it. And soda. And junk food. If you think of it, an extreme need for a quick rise of happiness and inspiration is one of very few valid excuses for stuffing one's body with bad stuff that provokes short-term rise of endorphines. But remember - it's really short-term! It's crucial to catch the wave of energy; otherwise, once it's gone, it's gone.

Third thing isn't as obvious or as easy: start being creative. About ANYTHING. Like if you're going to kitchen through living room, try to think of a metaphor for the color of the couch. Could it be "coughing salmon pink"? Would you describe the weather ouside as "smashed worm grey"? Or is it "Celtic golden"? While adding ice to your soda, think of rhymes. Like, easy ones: "Gimme some ice, it's gonna be nice!". Or something totally lame like "Red watermelon is better than lemon". Anything will do, anything at all. Take a bite of cinnamon roll and try to think of how to bake caramel coated deep-fried roaches into sweet buns so that the end product tastes good.

Remember the last "Alice in Wonderland" movie by Tim Burton? Alice had a habit of thinking of five impossible things every morning before breakfast. Try this exercise, it's good for creativity in general, and for crisis of inspiration.

Here you go, catch the wave. Go back to your desk and produce SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Lame or good. At best, you'll produce something good. At worst, you'll produce something horrible, but it'll give you idea of what to fix and where to move.

Call it "Informational Ambulance for Emotional Creators"

Pedagogy is considered a very conservative sphere. It's not conservative because of society's fear for something new, but because the need to teach kids from all social classes and origins has been there since the beginning of time. Hence, we've tried a huge variety of methods, we now have a few that're proven good and working, and there's very little one can add to this. Obviously, modern research in children's psychology has helped a lot, but it hasn't been a breakthrough. It's been more of improving what we've already got.

But one must not forget that Education and Pedagogy, albeit confusingly similar, aren't the same. Education is a very complex concept (if not process) that includes the curriculum (what is being taught and learned), methodology (how every subject is taught and learned) and pedagogics (a meta-approach to education - a philosophy in a way). Pedagogy is vague without Education, Education is vectorless without Pedagogy. Pedagogy is very conservative because we've already got most of what we could from the philosophy of teaching and learning. Education heavily relies on the available material: human resources, learning resources, current demand of society. That's why one can't say that education lags behind the progress. It responds to progress very quickly, although the ways in which it does aren't always apparent.

You might have noticed that, overtime, the volume of study material the students are expected to consume is growing and expanding. The result is fragmentation of knowledge and shift of focus from memorization to navigation. It's not bad, it's the demand of the modern society: remembering something isn't as valuable as knowing where and how to find information. Also, there's a question of processing the material. Traditionally, homework essays were a way to make students systematize and analyze the new material. But, once again, we've had a switch from memorization (let's assume it's roughly similar to systematization) to navigation (in this context, I'd also call it optimization). Students' demand for optimization lead to market's supply of facilitating material: essay writing apps, "The History of Ancient Rome in 7 minutes" kind of YouTube videos, online collections of short summaries and analyses of literary works.

One may note that, this way, processing study material has become very superficial, and this claim is probably true. As noted earlier, education responds to the needs of society very quickly, and not always in the way the society finds moral or appropriate. Progress is progress; a thousand years ago it was considered highly immoral to treat fever with medicine, let alone try to cure plague or lepra. Four hundred years ago the civilized society found the idea of a woman running a business simply scandalous. And today the students take blame for being too superficial.

Education always goes hand in hand with progress. Do you agree or disagree?

Recently, the World Bank has announced that shortage of funding will soon affect availability of education in the poorest regions of the world.

According to them, it'll surely widen the socioeconomic gap and escalate the tension.

The fact that, after a few years of schooling, many kids still can't read or count, is being emphasized.

Here's what I personally think.

For thousands of years, education has been a family/community affair. All kids got their education based on the everyday needs of their communities. As you can see, reading and counting hasn't always been a priority. The twenty-first century, obviously, changed the rules of the game. The government and the global community stepped in to ensure the kids can get the best the world has to offer. That's when the family and the local community somewhat faded away. I've heard that a lot: "No, my kid can't read. He'll go to school, they'll teach 'em.  - (one year later) He's reluctant to read. It's not my problem they don't want to teach him to love to read at school. What do I do after work? Watch TV, get together with friends, chat with a neighbour. What? No, I've had enough of reading as I child, I don't have to read any more!"

Funding's scarce, so the family and the community ought to step back in. Hopefully, there's some lesson learned. Hopefully, those, who have the access to the Internet, will make use of the endless free learning opportunities available online.

Let's hope for the best.