TED Community » Morten Kelder Skouboe

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Teaching and education. Equal respect and love for science and the arts.

An idea worth spreading

The climate should be of our concern, but it should not have top priority. There are far bigger problems in the world, like poverty, HIV/AIDS, and malaria.

Talk to me about

Controversial subjects, but only if you can discuss without taking things personal.

People don't know that I'm good at

Teaching, long-time planning and patience.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +82.10 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Conversation: At what point do animal rights begin or cease to exist?

  Dec 28 2012: I like your post, and I did frame my opinion in a very provoking way but I just did not want to be misunderstood.
  
  What I see as the big difference is that we as humans would automatically feel closer to others of the same species as we. I do not say that if we had some divine value of how much a life is worth, humans would be more worth than animals all the time. However I still think that if we took an arbitrary human and him/her against an arbitrary animal anyone would more easily bond to the human.
  
  The overall question I would like to be debated is whether there is some evolutionary/biological level where we would give animals or other life forms "rights"? It is not hard to damn creeps like rats, mosquitos and flies, but how about dogs, monkeys or dolphins? What if either of them were the cause of hiv? You seem to think that our right to survive overrules other beings' - but would there be a point where we would start treating sick animals as patients that needed to be cured rather than vessels for disease that needed to be destroyed? Would we at some point value an animal's survival as equal to a man's or woman's? My debate is on the philosophical and hypothetical level, not as much on the practical one.
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Susan Cain: The power of introverts

  Mar 3 2012: I learned a lot from this talk! I am myself a bit introverted and feel this sums up how I feel in certain situations but as she stated it is not all the time.
  
  I think I will forward this to some of the politicians in my country who seem to think that group work is the only way forward. Maybe they will learn that not all people benefit from constantly having to work hand-in-hand with others. One of the nearby universities has a reputation for and extreme amount of group work and that is (sorry to say it) enough reason for me not to want to go there.
  
  Great talk Mrs. Cain!
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: What do you think is the main reason why contemporary kids do not like / understand opera?

  Oct 11 2011: That is one good question!
  I think the main reason is that we (I still don't consider myself an adult) do not understand the fine arts, like opera. We have not been taught music and understanding of it like we have of many other arts, like literature. E.g. the first time you hear Shakespeare you're mostly dumbstruck because it is hard to comprehend, but then your teacher takes you on a trip into Shakespeare's world and suddenly it all opens up. I hope the issue is the same for opera: the first time we hear it, we don't get it. We need some sort of education or guiding in it to really appreciate it, and I for one have not been given that, yet.
  It's such a shame that the kids today are not offered the same education in arts like music as we are in literature. I believe we are missing a great part of the world here and who knows how many kids out there are bored to death with Jane Austen, but would find analyzing an opera by Wagner the most exciting thing in the whole world if they were just once introduced to it properly?
  For your suggestion about whether operas should adjust, I would say that all genres of art adjust in some way to the contemporary society, but rarely to become popular. I would say that art for art's sake is the right way to think here and that any art, that be music or painting, should be confident that it will always find its followers.
  Lastly, I think you are brave to discuss opera with your friends! As you might be able to tell, I'm more into literature, but my friends look at me in a "freak"-sort of way every time I start debating it. That is likely another issue that keeps kids away from operas: it can be socially dangerous to be different in this way. There is an unwritten code that says "keep away from this and that" and unfortunately opera is on that list of don'ts. I would like to hear from someone in here: How do we get rid of that list of things not to like that we all know kids follow?
  Thanks to all who read this!
  Regards, Morten