ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ken Robinson - Author/educator
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

Why you should listen

Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. It's a message with deep resonance. Robinson's TED Talk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? "Everyone should watch this."

A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His 2009 book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, is a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 21 languages. A 10th anniversary edition of his classic work on creativity and innovation, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, was published in 2011. His 2013 book, Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life, is a practical guide that answers questions about finding your personal Element. In his latest book, Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education, he argues for an end to our outmoded industrial educational system and proposes a highly personalized, organic approach that draws on today’s unprecedented technological and professional resources to engage all students.

More profile about the speaker
Ken Robinson | Speaker | TED.com
TED2006

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Filmed:
64,284,825 views

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.
- Author/educator
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:24
Good morning. How are you?
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(Laughter)
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It's been great, hasn't it?
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I've been blown away by the whole thing.
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In fact, I'm leaving.
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(Laughter)
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There have been three themes
running through the conference
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which are relevant
to what I want to talk about.
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One is the extraordinary
evidence of human creativity
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in all of the presentations that we've had
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and in all of the people here.
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Just the variety of it
and the range of it.
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The second is
that it's put us in a place
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where we have no idea
what's going to happen,
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in terms of the future.
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No idea how this may play out.
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I have an interest in education.
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Actually, what I find is everybody
has an interest in education.
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Don't you?
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I find this very interesting.
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If you're at a dinner party,
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and you say you work in education --
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Actually, you're not often
at dinner parties, frankly.
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(Laughter)
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If you work in education,
you're not asked.
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(Laughter)
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And you're never asked back, curiously.
That's strange to me.
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But if you are, and you say to somebody,
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you know, they say, "What do you do?"
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and you say you work in education,
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you can see the blood run from their face.
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They're like, "Oh my God,"
you know, "Why me?"
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(Laughter)
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"My one night out all week."
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(Laughter)
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But if you ask about their education,
they pin you to the wall.
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Because it's one of those things
that goes deep with people, am I right?
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Like religion, and money and other things.
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So I have a big interest in education,
and I think we all do.
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We have a huge vested interest in it,
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partly because it's education
that's meant to take us into this future
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that we can't grasp.
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If you think of it,
children starting school this year
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will be retiring in 2065.
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Nobody has a clue,
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despite all the expertise that's been
on parade for the past four days,
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what the world will look like
in five years' time.
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And yet we're meant
to be educating them for it.
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So the unpredictability,
I think, is extraordinary.
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And the third part of this
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is that we've all agreed, nonetheless,
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on the really extraordinary
capacities that children have --
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their capacities for innovation.
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I mean, Sirena last night
was a marvel, wasn't she?
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Just seeing what she could do.
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And she's exceptional, but I think
she's not, so to speak,
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exceptional in the whole of childhood.
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What you have there is a person
of extraordinary dedication
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who found a talent.
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And my contention is,
all kids have tremendous talents.
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And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.
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So I want to talk about education
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and I want to talk about creativity.
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My contention is that creativity now
is as important in education as literacy,
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and we should treat it
with the same status.
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(Applause) Thank you.
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(Applause)
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That was it, by the way.
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Thank you very much.
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(Laughter)
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So, 15 minutes left.
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(Laughter)
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Well, I was born... no.
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(Laughter)
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I heard a great story recently
-- I love telling it --
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of a little girl
who was in a drawing lesson.
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She was six, and she was
at the back, drawing,
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and the teacher said this girl
hardly ever paid attention,
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and in this drawing lesson, she did.
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The teacher was fascinated.
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She went over to her,
and she said, "What are you drawing?"
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And the girl said, "I'm
drawing a picture of God."
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And the teacher said, "But nobody
knows what God looks like."
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And the girl said,
"They will, in a minute."
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(Laughter)
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When my son was four in England --
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Actually, he was four
everywhere, to be honest.
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(Laughter)
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If we're being strict about it,
wherever he went, he was four that year.
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He was in the Nativity play.
Do you remember the story?
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(Laughter)
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No, it was big, it was a big story.
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Mel Gibson did the sequel,
you may have seen it.
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(Laughter)
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"Nativity II."
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But James got the part of Joseph,
which we were thrilled about.
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We considered this to be
one of the lead parts.
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We had the place crammed
full of agents in T-shirts:
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"James Robinson IS Joseph!" (Laughter)
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He didn't have to speak,
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but you know the bit
where the three kings come in?
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They come in bearing gifts,
gold, frankincense and myrrh.
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This really happened.
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We were sitting there and I think
they just went out of sequence,
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because we talked to the little boy
afterward and we said,
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"You OK with that?" And he said,
"Yeah, why? Was that wrong?"
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They just switched.
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The three boys came in,
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four-year-olds with tea towels
on their heads,
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and they put these boxes down,
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and the first boy said,
"I bring you gold."
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And the second boy said,
"I bring you myrrh."
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And the third boy said, "Frank sent this."
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(Laughter)
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What these things have in common
is that kids will take a chance.
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If they don't know, they'll have a go.
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Am I right? They're not
frightened of being wrong.
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I don't mean to say that being wrong
is the same thing as being creative.
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What we do know is,
if you're not prepared to be wrong,
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you'll never come up
with anything original --
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if you're not prepared to be wrong.
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And by the time they get to be adults,
most kids have lost that capacity.
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They have become
frightened of being wrong.
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And we run our companies like this.
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We stigmatize mistakes.
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And we're now running
national education systems
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where mistakes are the worst
thing you can make.
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And the result is that
we are educating people
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out of their creative capacities.
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Picasso once said this, he said
that all children are born artists.
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The problem is to remain an artist
as we grow up.
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I believe this passionately,
that we don't grow into creativity,
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we grow out of it.
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Or rather, we get educated out if it.
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So why is this?
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I lived in Stratford-on-Avon
until about five years ago.
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In fact, we moved
from Stratford to Los Angeles.
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So you can imagine
what a seamless transition that was.
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(Laughter)
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Actually, we lived in a place
called Snitterfield,
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just outside Stratford,
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which is where
Shakespeare's father was born.
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Are you struck by a new thought? I was.
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You don't think of Shakespeare
having a father, do you?
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Do you? Because you don't think
of Shakespeare being a child, do you?
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Shakespeare being seven?
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I never thought of it.
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I mean, he was seven at some point.
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He was in somebody's
English class, wasn't he?
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(Laughter)
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How annoying would that be?
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(Laughter)
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"Must try harder."
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(Laughter)
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Being sent to bed by his dad, you know,
to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now!
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And put the pencil down."
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(Laughter)
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"And stop speaking like that."
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(Laughter)
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"It's confusing everybody."
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(Laughter)
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Anyway, we moved
from Stratford to Los Angeles,
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and I just want to say a word
about the transition.
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My son didn't want to come.
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I've got two kids;
he's 21 now, my daughter's 16.
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He didn't want to come to Los Angeles.
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He loved it, but he had
a girlfriend in England.
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This was the love of his life, Sarah.
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He'd known her for a month.
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(Laughter)
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Mind you, they'd had
their fourth anniversary,
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because it's a long time when you're 16.
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He was really upset on the plane,
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he said, "I'll never find
another girl like Sarah."
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And we were rather pleased
about that, frankly --
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(Laughter)
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Because she was the main reason
we were leaving the country.
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(Laughter)
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But something strikes you
when you move to America
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and travel around the world:
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Every education system on Earth
has the same hierarchy of subjects.
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Every one. Doesn't matter where you go.
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You'd think it would be
otherwise, but it isn't.
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At the top are mathematics and languages,
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then the humanities,
and at the bottom are the arts.
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Everywhere on Earth.
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And in pretty much every system too,
there's a hierarchy within the arts.
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Art and music are normally
given a higher status in schools
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than drama and dance.
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There isn't an education
system on the planet
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that teaches dance everyday to children
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the way we teach them mathematics. Why?
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Why not? I think this is rather important.
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I think math is very
important, but so is dance.
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Children dance all the time
if they're allowed to, we all do.
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We all have bodies, don't we?
Did I miss a meeting?
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(Laughter)
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Truthfully, what happens is,
as children grow up,
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we start to educate them progressively
from the waist up.
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And then we focus on their heads.
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And slightly to one side.
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If you were to visit
education, as an alien,
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and say "What's it for, public education?"
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I think you'd have to conclude,
if you look at the output,
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who really succeeds by this,
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who does everything that they should,
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who gets all the brownie
points, who are the winners --
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I think you'd have to conclude
the whole purpose of public education
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throughout the world
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is to produce university professors.
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Isn't it?
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They're the people who come out the top.
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And I used to be one, so there.
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(Laughter)
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And I like university
professors, but you know,
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we shouldn't hold them up
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as the high-water mark
of all human achievement.
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They're just a form of life,
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another form of life.
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But they're rather curious, and I say this
out of affection for them.
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There's something curious
about professors in my experience --
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not all of them, but typically,
they live in their heads.
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They live up there,
and slightly to one side.
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They're disembodied, you know,
in a kind of literal way.
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They look upon their body as a form
of transport for their heads.
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(Laughter)
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Don't they?
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It's a way of getting
their head to meetings.
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(Laughter)
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If you want real evidence
of out-of-body experiences,
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get yourself along to a residential
conference of senior academics,
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and pop into the discotheque
on the final night.
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(Laughter)
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And there, you will see it.
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Grown men and women
writhing uncontrollably, off the beat.
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(Laughter)
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Waiting until it ends so they can
go home and write a paper about it.
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(Laughter)
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Our education system is predicated
on the idea of academic ability.
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And there's a reason.
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Around the world, there were
no public systems of education,
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really, before the 19th century.
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They all came into being
to meet the needs of industrialism.
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So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas.
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Number one, that the most useful
subjects for work are at the top.
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So you were
probably steered benignly away
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from things at school when you
were a kid, things you liked,
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on the grounds that you would
never get a job doing that. Is that right?
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Don't do music, you're not
going to be a musician;
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don't do art, you won't be an artist.
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Benign advice -- now, profoundly mistaken.
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The whole world
is engulfed in a revolution.
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And the second is academic ability,
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which has really come to dominate
our view of intelligence,
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because the universities designed
the system in their image.
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If you think of it, the whole system
of public education around the world
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is a protracted process
of university entrance.
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And the consequence
is that many highly-talented,
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brilliant, creative
people think they're not,
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because the thing
they were good at at school
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wasn't valued,
or was actually stigmatized.
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And I think we can't afford
to go on that way.
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In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO,
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12:22
more people worldwide will be graduating
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12:25
through education
than since the beginning of history.
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12:27
More people, and it's the combination
of all the things we've talked about --
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3681
12:31
technology and its transformation
effect on work, and demography
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12:34
and the huge explosion in population.
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1804
12:36
Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything.
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2865
12:39
Isn't that true?
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1380
12:40
When I was a student,
if you had a degree, you had a job.
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2753
12:43
If you didn't have a job,
it's because you didn't want one.
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2776
12:46
And I didn't want one, frankly. (Laughter)
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2676
12:49
But now kids with degrees
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745000
4074
12:53
are often heading home
to carry on playing video games,
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3045
12:56
because you need an MA where
the previous job required a BA,
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3198
12:59
and now you need a PhD for the other.
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1787
13:01
It's a process of academic inflation.
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1776
13:03
And it indicates the whole
structure of education
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13:05
is shifting beneath our feet.
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1433
13:06
We need to radically rethink
our view of intelligence.
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2620
13:09
We know three things about intelligence.
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765501
1995
13:11
One, it's diverse.
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1227
13:12
We think about the world in all the ways
that we experience it.
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768771
3005
13:15
We think visually, we think in sound,
we think kinesthetically.
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2976
13:18
We think in abstract terms,
we think in movement.
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2301
13:21
Secondly, intelligence is dynamic.
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777246
1754
13:23
If you look at the interactions
of a human brain,
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2389
13:26
as we heard yesterday
from a number of presentations,
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2976
13:29
intelligence is wonderfully interactive.
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1976
13:31
The brain isn't divided into compartments.
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2238
13:33
In fact, creativity --
which I define as the process
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3103
13:37
of having original ideas
that have value --
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2325
13:39
more often than not comes about
through the interaction
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2652
13:42
of different disciplinary
ways of seeing things.
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3000
13:46
By the way, there's a shaft of nerves
that joins the two halves of the brain
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3666
13:50
called the corpus callosum.
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1491
13:51
It's thicker in women.
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1266
13:53
Following off from Helen yesterday,
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809088
1741
13:54
this is probably why women
are better at multi-tasking.
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3123
13:58
Because you are, aren't you?
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1817
13:59
There's a raft of research,
but I know it from my personal life.
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3207
14:03
If my wife is cooking a meal at home --
which is not often, thankfully.
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819738
5238
14:09
(Laughter)
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2854
14:11
No, she's good at some things,
but if she's cooking,
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2498
14:14
she's dealing with people on the phone,
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830400
1876
14:16
she's talking to the kids,
she's painting the ceiling,
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832300
2556
14:18
she's doing open-heart surgery over here.
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834880
3096
14:22
If I'm cooking, the door
is shut, the kids are out,
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838000
2976
14:25
the phone's on the hook,
if she comes in I get annoyed.
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2976
14:28
I say, "Terry, please,
I'm trying to fry an egg in here."
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3071
14:31
(Laughter)
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6730
14:38
"Give me a break."
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1200
14:39
(Laughter)
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1720
14:41
Actually, do you know
that old philosophical thing,
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857222
2499
14:43
if a tree falls in a forest
and nobody hears it, did it happen?
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859745
3253
14:47
Remember that old chestnut?
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1329
14:48
I saw a great t-shirt
recently, which said,
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864605
2409
14:51
"If a man speaks his mind
in a forest, and no woman hears him,
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867038
3938
14:55
is he still wrong?"
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1396
14:56
(Laughter)
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5606
15:03
And the third thing about intelligence is,
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2000
15:06
it's distinct.
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1369
15:07
I'm doing a new book at the moment
called "Epiphany,"
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883754
2573
15:10
which is based on a series
of interviews with people
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886351
2474
15:12
about how they discovered their talent.
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888849
1920
15:14
I'm fascinated
by how people got to be there.
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890793
2169
15:16
It's really prompted by a conversation
I had with a wonderful woman
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892986
3190
15:20
who maybe most people
have never heard of, Gillian Lynne.
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896200
2676
15:22
Have you heard of her? Some have.
329
898900
1630
15:24
She's a choreographer,
and everybody knows her work.
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2522
15:27
She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera."
331
903100
2001
15:29
She's wonderful.
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905125
978
15:30
I used to be on the board
of The Royal Ballet,
333
906127
2146
15:32
as you can see.
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908297
1201
15:33
Anyway, Gillian and I had
lunch one day and I said,
335
909522
2400
15:36
"How did you get to be a dancer?"
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1800
15:37
It was interesting.
337
913976
1000
15:39
When she was at school,
she was really hopeless.
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915000
2350
15:41
And the school, in the '30s,
wrote to her parents and said,
339
917374
3602
15:45
"We think Gillian
has a learning disorder."
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921000
2000
15:47
She couldn't concentrate;
she was fidgeting.
341
923024
2142
15:49
I think now they'd say she had ADHD.
Wouldn't you?
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925190
3290
15:52
But this was the 1930s, and ADHD
hadn't been invented at this point.
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928504
4059
15:56
It wasn't an available condition.
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932587
2389
15:59
(Laughter)
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2737
16:01
People weren't aware they could have that.
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2060
16:03
(Laughter)
347
939845
2134
16:06
Anyway, she went to see this specialist.
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942003
4278
16:10
So, this oak-paneled room,
and she was there with her mother,
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946305
3722
16:14
and she was led and sat
on this chair at the end,
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950051
2477
16:16
and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes
while this man talked to her mother
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952552
3639
16:20
about the problems
Gillian was having at school.
352
956215
2328
16:22
Because she was disturbing people;
her homework was always late; and so on,
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958567
3677
16:26
little kid of eight.
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962268
1096
16:27
In the end, the doctor
went and sat next to Gillian, and said,
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963388
3055
16:30
"I've listened to all these
things your mother's told me,
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966467
2705
16:33
I need to speak to her privately.
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969196
1619
16:34
Wait here. We'll be back;
we won't be very long,"
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970839
2376
16:37
and they went and left her.
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973239
2325
16:39
But as they went out of the room,
360
975588
1636
16:41
he turned on the radio
that was sitting on his desk.
361
977248
2500
16:44
And when they got out, he said to her
mother, "Just stand and watch her."
362
980342
3430
16:48
And the minute they left the room,
363
984000
2991
16:51
she was on her feet, moving to the music.
364
987015
2484
16:53
And they watched for a few minutes
and he turned to her mother and said,
365
989523
3453
16:57
"Mrs. Lynne, Gillian
isn't sick; she's a dancer.
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3976
17:01
Take her to a dance school."
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997000
1976
17:03
I said, "What happened?"
368
999000
1976
17:05
She said, "She did. I can't tell you
how wonderful it was.
369
1001000
2976
17:08
We walked in this room
and it was full of people like me.
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2753
17:10
People who couldn't sit still.
371
1006777
2199
17:13
People who had to move to think."
Who had to move to think.
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4587
17:17
They did ballet, they did tap, jazz;
they did modern; they did contemporary.
373
1013746
3630
17:21
She was eventually auditioned
for the Royal Ballet School;
374
1017400
2820
17:24
she became a soloist; she had
a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet.
375
1020244
3299
17:27
She eventually graduated
from the Royal Ballet School,
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2608
17:30
founded the Gillian Lynne Dance Company,
377
1026200
1975
17:32
met Andrew Lloyd Webber.
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1028200
1243
17:33
She's been responsible for
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1029568
1409
17:35
some of the most successful
musical theater productions in history,
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1031001
3146
17:38
she's given pleasure to millions,
and she's a multi-millionaire.
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1034172
3072
17:41
Somebody else might have put her
on medication and told her to calm down.
382
1037269
4070
17:45
(Applause)
383
1041364
6782
17:52
What I think it comes to is this:
384
1048575
1601
17:54
Al Gore spoke the other night
385
1050200
1776
17:56
about ecology and the revolution
that was triggered by Rachel Carson.
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4269
18:01
I believe our only hope for the future
387
1057111
2166
18:03
is to adopt a new conception
of human ecology,
388
1059301
3833
18:07
one in which we start
to reconstitute our conception
389
1063158
2818
18:10
of the richness of human capacity.
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1066000
1976
18:12
Our education system has mined our minds
391
1068000
3499
18:15
in the way that we strip-mine the earth:
for a particular commodity.
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3276
18:19
And for the future, it won't serve us.
393
1075188
2484
18:21
We have to rethink
the fundamental principles
394
1077696
2280
18:24
on which we're educating our children.
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1080000
1968
18:26
There was a wonderful quote
by Jonas Salk, who said,
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1082087
2674
18:28
"If all the insects
were to disappear from the Earth,
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1084785
5039
18:33
within 50 years all life
on Earth would end.
398
1089848
2841
18:37
If all human beings
disappeared from the Earth,
399
1093688
3072
18:40
within 50 years all forms
of life would flourish."
400
1096784
2634
18:44
And he's right.
401
1100244
1285
18:46
What TED celebrates is the gift
of the human imagination.
402
1102291
3634
18:50
We have to be careful now
403
1106417
2071
18:52
that we use this gift wisely
404
1108512
2255
18:54
and that we avert some of the scenarios
that we've talked about.
405
1110791
3229
18:58
And the only way we'll do it is by seeing
our creative capacities
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1114044
3932
19:02
for the richness they are
407
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1610
19:03
and seeing our children
for the hope that they are.
408
1119634
3182
19:06
And our task is to educate
their whole being,
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2398
19:09
so they can face this future.
410
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1484
19:10
By the way -- we may not see this future,
411
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2206
19:13
but they will.
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1430
19:14
And our job is to help them
make something of it.
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3079
19:17
Thank you very much.
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1133557
1000
19:18
(Applause)
415
1134581
3000

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ken Robinson - Author/educator
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

Why you should listen

Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. It's a message with deep resonance. Robinson's TED Talk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? "Everyone should watch this."

A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His 2009 book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, is a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 21 languages. A 10th anniversary edition of his classic work on creativity and innovation, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, was published in 2011. His 2013 book, Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life, is a practical guide that answers questions about finding your personal Element. In his latest book, Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education, he argues for an end to our outmoded industrial educational system and proposes a highly personalized, organic approach that draws on today’s unprecedented technological and professional resources to engage all students.

More profile about the speaker
Ken Robinson | Speaker | TED.com