Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!

http://www.ted.com In this poignant, funny follow-up to his fabled 2006 talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning -- creating conditions where kids' natural talents can flourish.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

(gentle music)

(applauding)

- Al Gore spoke at the TED conference

I spoke at four years ago,

and talked about the climate crisis,

and I referenced that at
the end of my last talk.

So I want to pick up from there

because I only had 18 minutes, frankly.

(laughing)

So, as I was saying --

(laughing)

You see, he's right.

I mean, there is a major
climate crisis, obviously,

and I think if people don't believe it,

they should get out more.

(laughing)

But I believe there is
a second climate crisis,

which is as severe,

which has the same origins,

and that we have to deal
with with the same urgency.

And I mean by this, you
may say, by the way,

"Look, I'm good.

"I have one climate crisis,

"I don't really the second one."

But this is a crisis of,
not natural resources,

though I believe that's true,

but a crisis of human resources.

I believe fundamentally,
as many speakers have said

during the past few days,

that we make very poor use of our talents.

Very many people go
through their whole lives

having no real sense of
what their talents may be,

or if they have any to speak of.

I meet all kinds of people who

don't think they're
really good at anything.

Actually, I kind of divide
the world into two groups now.

Jeremy Bentham, the great
utilitarian philosopher,

once spiked this argument.

He said, "There are two types
of people in this world,

"those who divide the world into two types

"and those who do not."

(laughing)

Well, I do.

(laughing)

I meet all kinds of people who

don't enjoy what they do.

They simply go through their
lives getting on with it.

They get no great pleasure
from what they do.

They endure it rather than enjoy it,

and wait for the weekend.

But I also meet people
who love what they do

and couldn't imagine doing anything else.

If you said, "Don't do this anymore,"

they'd wonder what you're talking about.

Because it isn't what they
do, it's who they are.

They say, "But this is me, you know.

"It would be foolish to abandon this,

"because it speaks to
my most authentic self."

And it's not true of enough people.

In fact, on the contrary,

I think it's still true
of a minority of people.

And I think there are many
possible explanations for it.

And high among them is education,

because education, in a way,

dislocates very many people
from their natural talents.

And human resources are
like natural resources,

they're often buried deep.

You have to go looking for them,

they're not just lying
around on the surface.

You have to create the circumstances

where they show themselves.

You might imagine education
would be the way that happens,

but too often, it's not.

Every education system in
the world is being reformed

at the moment and it's not enough.

Reform is no use anymore,

because that's simply
improving a broken model.

What we need,

and the word's been used many
times in the past few days,

is not evolution, but a
revolution in education.

This has to be transformed
into something else.

(applauding)

One of the

real challenges is to innovate
fundamentally in education.

Innovation is hard,

because it means doing something

that people don't find very
easy, for the most part.

It means challenging
what we take for granted,

things that we think are obvious.

The great problem for
reform or transformation

is the tyranny of common sense.

Things that people think,

"Well it can't be done any other way,

"because that's the way it's done."

I came across a great quote
recently from Abraham Lincoln,

who I thought you'd be pleased
to have quoted at this point.

(laughing)

He said this in December 1862

to the second annual meeting of Congress.

I ought to explain that I have no idea

what was happening at the time.

We don't teach American
history in Britain.

(laughing)

We suppress it.

You know, this is our policy.

(laughing)

No doubt, something
fascinating was happening

in December 1862, which
the Americans among us

will be aware of.

But he said this.

"The dogmas of the quiet past

"are inadequate to the stormy present.

"The occasion is piled
high with difficulty,

"and we must rise with the occasion."

I love that.

Not rise to it, rise with it.

"As our case is new,

"so we must think anew

"and act anew.

"We must disenthrall ourselves,

"and then we shall save our country."

I love that word, disenthrall.

You know what it means?

That there are ideas that
all of us are enthralled to,

which we simply take for granted

as the natural order of
things, the way things are.

And many of our ideas have been formed,

not to meet the circumstances
of this century,

but to cope with the circumstances
of previous centuries.

But our minds are still
hypnotized by them,

and we have to disenthrall
ourselves of some of them.

Now, doing this is easier said than done.

It's very hard to know, by the way,

what it is you take for granted.

And the reason is that
you take it for granted.

(laughing)

Let me ask you something
you may take for granted.

How many of you here
are over the age of 25?

That's not what I think
you take for granted,

I'm sure you're familiar
with that already.

Are there any people
here under the age of 25?

Great.

Now, those over 25, could
you put your hands up

if you're wearing a wristwatch?

Now that's a great deal of us, isn't it?

Ask a room full of
teenagers the same thing.

Teenagers do not wear wristwatches.

I don't mean they can't,
or they're not allowed,

they just often choose not to.

And the reason is you see,

that we were brought up
in a pre-digital culture,

those of us over 25, and so for us,

if you want to know the time,

you have to wear something to tell it.

Kids now live in a world
which is digitized,

and the time, for them, is everywhere.

They see no reason to do this.

And by the way, you don't
need to do it either,

it's just that you've always done it

and you carry on doing it.

My daughter never wears a watch,
my daughter Kate, who's 20.

She doesn't see the point.

As she says, "It's a
single-function device."

(laughing)

Like, "How lame is that?"

And I say, "No, no, it
tells the date as well.

(laughing)

"It has multiple functions."

But, you see, there are
things we're enthralled to

in education.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

One of them is the idea of linearity.

That it starts here and
you go through a track,

and if you do everything right,

you will end up set for
the rest of your life.

Everybody who's spoken at
TED has told us implicitly,

or sometimes explicitly,
a different story.

That life is not linear, it's organic.

We create our lives symbiotically
as we explore our talents

in relation to the circumstances
they help to create for us.

But, you know, we have become obsessed

with this linear narrative.

And probably the pinnacle for education

is getting you to college.

I think we are obsessed with
getting people to college.

Certain sorts of college.

I don't mean you shouldn't go to college,

but not everybody needs to go,

and not everybody needs to go now.

Maybe they go later, not right away.

And I was up in San Francisco a while ago

doing a book signing.

There was this guy buying a book,

he was in his 30s.

I said, "What do you do?"

And he said, "I'm a fireman."

I said, "How long have
you been a fireman?"

He said, "Always.

"I've always been a fireman."

I said, "Well, when did you decide?"

He said, "As a kid.

"Actually, it was a
problem for me at school,

"because at school, everybody
wanted to be a fireman."

(laughing)

He said, "But I wanted to be a fireman."

And he said, "When I got
to be a senior at school,

"my teachers didn't take it seriously.

"This one teacher didn't
take it seriously."

He said, "I was throwing my life away

"if that's all I chose to do with it.

"that I should go to college,

"I should become a professional person,

"I had great potential and
I was wasting my talent

"to do that."

He said, "It was humiliating.

"It was in front of the whole class

"and I really felt dreadful.

"But it's what I wanted, and
as soon as I left school,

"I applied to the fire
service and I was accepted."

He said, "You know, I was
thinking about that guy recently,

"just a few minutes ago
when you were speaking,

"about this teacher,
because six months ago,

"I saved his life."

(laughing)

He said, "He was in a car
wreck, and I pulled him out,

"gave him CPR, and I saved
his wife's life as well."

He said, "I think he
thinks better of me now."

(laughing)

(applauding)

You know, to me,

human communities depend
upon a diversity of talent,

not a singular conception of ability.

And at the heart of our challenges--

(applauding)

At the heart of the challenge
is to reconstitute our sense

of ability and of intelligence.

This linearity thing is a problem.

When I arrived in LA about nine years ago,

I came across,

a policy statement,

very well-intentioned which said,

"College begins in kindergarten."

No, it doesn't.

(laughing)

It doesn't.

If we had time, I could go
into this, but we don't.

(laughing)

Kindergarten begins in kindergarten.

(laughing)

A friend of mine once said,

"A three year-old is not
half a six year-old."

(laughing)

(applauding)

They're three.

But as we just heard in this last session,

there's such competition now
to get into kindergarten,

to get to the right kindergarten,

that people are being
interviewed for it at three.

Kids sitting in front
of unimpressed panels,

you know, with their resumes.

(laughing)

Flicking through and
saying, "What, this is it?"

(laughing)
(applauding)

"You've been around for 36
months, and this is it?"

(laughing)

"You've achieved nothing, commit."

(laughing)

"Spent the first six months breastfeeding,

"from what I can see."

(laughing)

See, it's outrageous as a
conception, but it tracks through.

The other big issue is conformity.

We have built our education systems

on the model of fast food.

This is something Jamie Oliver
talked about the other day.

There are two models of
quality assurance in catering.

One is fast food, where
everything is standardized.

The other is like Zagat
and Michelin restaurants,

where everything is not standardized,

they're customized to local circumstances.

And we have sold ourselves
into a fast-food model

of education,

and it's impoverishing our
spirit and our energies

as much as fast food is
depleting our physical bodies.

(applauding)

I think we have to recognize
a couple of things here.

One is that human talent
is tremendously diverse.

People have very different aptitudes.

I worked out recently
that I was given a guitar

as a kid at about the same
time that Eric Clapton

got his first guitar.

It worked out for Eric,
that's all I'm saying.

(laughing)

It did not for me.

I could not get this thing to work.

No matter how often or
how hard I blew into it.

It just wouldn't work.

(laughing)

But it's not only about that.

It's about passion.

Often, people are good at things
they don't really care for.

It's about passion,

and what excites our
spirit and our energy.

And if you're doing the
thing that you love to do,

that you're good at,

time takes a different course entirely.

My wife's just finished writing a novel,

and I think it's a great book,

but she disappears for hours on end.

You know this, if you're
doing something you love,

an hour feels like five minutes.

If you're doing something
that doesn't resonate

with your spirit,

five minutes feels like an hour.

And the reason so many people
are opting out of education

is because it doesn't feed their spirit,

it doesn't feed their
energy or their passion.

So I think we have to change metaphors.

We have to go from what is essentially

an industrial model of education,

a manufacturing model,

which is based on linearity and conformity

and batching people.

We have to move to a model that is based

more on principles of agriculture.

We have to recognize
that human flourishing

is not a mechanical process,

it's an organic process.

And you cannot predict the
outcome of human development.

All you can do is, like a farmer,

is create the conditions under which

they will begin to flourish.

So when we look at reforming
education and transforming it,

it isn't like cloning a system.

There are great ones, like KIPP's,

it's a great system.

There are many great models.

It's about customizing
to your circumstances

and personalizing education for people

you're actually teaching.

And doing that, I think,

is the answer to the future,

because it's not about
scaling a new solution,

it's about creating a
movement in education

in which people develop
their own solutions,

but with external support based

on a personalized curriculum.

Now in this room,

there are people who represent
extraordinary resources

in business, in multimedia,
in the internet.

These technologies,

combined with the extraordinary
talents of teachers,

provide an opportunity to
revolutionize education.

And I urge you to get involved in it,

because it's vital, not just to ourselves,

but to the future of our children.

But we have to change
from the industrial model

to an agricultural model,

where each school can
be flourishing tomorrow.

That's where children experience life.

Or at home, if that's what
they choose to be educated

with their families or friends.

There's been a lot of talk about dreams

over the course of these few days.

And I wanted to just very quickly,

I was very struck by Natalie
Merchant's songs last night,

Recovering Old Poems.

I wanted to read you a
quick, very short poem

from W. B. Yeats, who
some of you may know.

He wrote this to his love,

Maud Gonne,

and he was

bewailing the fact that he
couldn't really give her

what he thought she wanted from him.

And he says, "I've got something else,

"but it may not be for you."

He says this,

"Had I the heavens embroidered cloths,

"enwrought with gold and silver light,

"of blue and the dim and the dark cloths

"of night and light and the half-light,

"I would spread the
cloths under your feet,

"but I,

"being poor,

"have only my dreams,

"I have spread my dreams under your feet,

"tread softly

"because you tread on my dreams."

And every day, everywhere,

our children spread their
dreams beneath our feet.

And we should tread softly.

Thank you.

(applauding)

Thank you very much.

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(chuckling)

(phone ringing)

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(laughing)

(dog whining)
(laughing)

(phone ringing)

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