| 1 | Good morning . |
| 2 | How are you ? |
| 3 | It 's been great , has n't it ? |
| 4 | I 've been blown away by the whole thing . |
| 5 | In fact , I 'm leaving . |
| 6 | There have been three themes running through the conference which are relevant to what I want to talk about . |
| 7 | One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity in all of the presentations that we 've had and in all of the people here . |
| 8 | Just the variety of it and the range of it . |
| 9 | The second is that it 's put us in a place where we have no idea what 's going to happen , in terms of the future . |
| 10 | No idea how this may play out . |
| 11 | I have an interest in education . |
| 12 | Actually , what I find is everybody has an interest in education . |
| 13 | Do n't you ? |
| 14 | I find this very interesting . |
| 15 | If you 're at a dinner party , and you say you work in education -- |
| 16 | Actually , you 're not often at dinner parties , frankly . |
| 17 | If you work in education , you 're not asked . |
| 18 | And you 're never asked back , curiously . |
| 19 | That 's strange to me . |
| 20 | But if you are , and you say to somebody , you know , they say , “ What do you do ? ” and you say you work in education , you can see the blood run from their face . |
| 21 | They 're like , Oh my God , ” you know , “ Why me ? ” |
| 22 | “ My one night out all week . ” |
| 23 | But if you ask about their education , they pin you to the wall . |
| 24 | Because it 's one of those things that goes deep with people , am I right ? |
| 25 | Like religion , and money and other things . |
| 26 | So I have a big interest in education , and I think we all do . |
| 27 | We have a huge vested interest in it , partly because it 's education that 's meant to take us into this future that we ca n't grasp . |
| 28 | If you think of it , children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065 . |
| 29 | Nobody has a clue , despite all the expertise that 's been on parade for the past four days , what the world will look like in five years ' time . |
| 30 | And yet we 're meant to be educating them for it . |
| 31 | So the unpredictability , I think , is extraordinary . |
| 32 | And the third part of this is that we 've all agreed , nonetheless , on the really extraordinary capacities that children have -- their capacities for innovation . |
| 33 | I mean , Sirena last night was a marvel , was n't she ? |
| 34 | Just seeing what she could do . |
| 35 | And she 's exceptional , but I think she 's not , so to speak , exceptional in the whole of childhood . |
| 36 | What you have there is a person of extraordinary dedication who found a talent . |
| 37 | And my contention is , all kids have tremendous talents . |
| 38 | And we squander them , pretty ruthlessly . |
| 39 | So I want to talk about education and I want to talk about creativity . |
| 40 | My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy , and we should treat it with the same status . |
| 41 | Thank you . |
| 42 | That was it , by the way . |
| 43 | Thank you very much . |
| 44 | So , 15 minutes left . |
| 45 | Well , I was born ... no . |
| 46 | I heard a great story recently -- I love telling it -- of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson . |
| 47 | She was six , and she was at the back , drawing , and the teacher said this girl hardly ever paid attention , and in this drawing lesson , she did . |
| 48 | The teacher was fascinated . |
| 49 | She went over to her , and she said , “ What are you drawing ? ” |
| 50 | And the girl said , “ I 'm drawing a picture of God . ” |
| 51 | And the teacher said , “ But nobody knows what God looks like . ” |
| 52 | And the girl said , “ They will , in a minute . ” |
| 53 | When my son was four in England -- |
| 54 | Actually , he was four everywhere , to be honest . |
| 55 | If we 're being strict about it , wherever he went , he was four that year . |
| 56 | He was in the Nativity play . |
| 57 | Do you remember the story ? |
| 58 | No , it was big , it was a big story . |
| 59 | Mel Gibson did the sequel , you may have seen it . |
| 60 | “ Nativity II . ” |
| 61 | But James got the part of Joseph , which we were thrilled about . |
| 62 | We considered this to be one of the lead parts . |
| 63 | We had the place crammed full of agents in T - shirts : |
| 64 | “ James Robinson IS Joseph ! ” |
| 65 | He did n't have to speak , but you know the bit where the three kings come in ? |
| 66 | They come in bearing gifts , gold , frankincense and myrrh . |
| 67 | This really happened . |
| 68 | We were sitting there and I think they just went out of sequence , because we talked to the little boy afterward and we said , “ You OK with that ? ” |
| 69 | And he said , “ Yeah , why ? Was that wrong ? ” |
| 70 | They just switched . |
| 71 | The three boys came in , four - year - olds with tea towels on their heads , and they put these boxes down , and the first boy said , “ I bring you gold . ” |
| 72 | And the second boy said , “ I bring you myrrh . ” |
| 73 | And the third boy said , “ Frank sent this . ” |
| 74 | What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance . |
| 75 | If they do n't know , they 'll have a go . |
| 76 | Am I right ? |
| 77 | They 're not frightened of being wrong . |
| 78 | I do n't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative . |
| 79 | What we do know is , if you 're not prepared to be wrong , you 'll never come up with anything original -- if you 're not prepared to be wrong . |
| 80 | And by the time they get to be adults , most kids have lost that capacity . |
| 81 | They have become frightened of being wrong . |
| 82 | And we run our companies like this . |
| 83 | We stigmatize mistakes . |
| 84 | And we 're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make . |
| 85 | And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities . |
| 86 | Picasso once said this , he said that all children are born artists . |
| 87 | The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up . |
| 88 | I believe this passionately , that we do n't grow into creativity , we grow out of it . |
| 89 | Or rather , we get educated out of it . |
| 90 | So why is this ? |
| 91 | I lived in Stratford - on - Avon until about five years ago . |
| 92 | In fact , we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles . |
| 93 | So you can imagine what a seamless transition that was . |
| 94 | Actually , we lived in a place called Snitterfield , just outside Stratford , which is where Shakespeare 's father was born . |
| 95 | Are you struck by a new thought ? |
| 96 | I was . |
| 97 | You do n't think of Shakespeare having a father , do you ? |
| 98 | Do you ? |
| 99 | Because you do n't think of Shakespeare being a child , do you ? |
| 100 | Shakespeare being seven ? |
| 101 | I never thought of it . |
| 102 | I mean , he was seven at some point . |
| 103 | He was in somebody 's English class , was n't he ? |
| 104 | How annoying would that be ? |
| 105 | “ Must try harder . ” |
| 106 | Being sent to bed by his dad , you know , to Shakespeare , “ Go to bed , now ! |
| 107 | And put the pencil down . ” |
| 108 | “ And stop speaking like that . ” |
| 109 | “ It 's confusing everybody . ” |
| 110 | Anyway , we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles , and I just want to say a word about the transition . |
| 111 | My son did n't want to come . |
| 112 | I 've got two kids ; he 's 21 now , my daughter 's 16 . |
| 113 | He did n't want to come to Los Angeles . |
| 114 | He loved it , but he had a girlfriend in England . |
| 115 | This was the love of his life , Sarah . |
| 116 | He 'd known her for a month . |
| 117 | Mind you , they 'd had their fourth anniversary , because it 's a long time when you 're 16 . |
| 118 | He was really upset on the plane , he said , “ I 'll never find another girl like Sarah . ” |
| 119 | And we were rather pleased about that , frankly -- Because she was the main reason we were leaving the country . |
| 120 | But something strikes you when you move to America and travel around the world : |
| 121 | Every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects . |
| 122 | Every one . |
| 123 | Does n't matter where you go . |
| 124 | You 'd think it would be otherwise , but it is n't . |
| 125 | At the top are mathematics and languages , then the humanities , and at the bottom are the arts . |
| 126 | Everywhere on Earth . |
| 127 | And in pretty much every system too , there 's a hierarchy within the arts . |
| 128 | Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools than drama and dance . |
| 129 | There is n't an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics . |
| 130 | Why ? |
| 131 | Why not ? |
| 132 | I think this is rather important . |
| 133 | I think math is very important , but so is dance . |
| 134 | Children dance all the time if they 're allowed to , we all do . |
| 135 | We all have bodies , do n't we ? |
| 136 | Did I miss a meeting ? |
| 137 | Truthfully , what happens is , as children grow up , we start to educate them progressively from the waist up . |
| 138 | And then we focus on their heads . |
| 139 | And slightly to one side . |
| 140 | If you were to visit education , as an alien , and say “ What 's it for , public education ? ” |
| 141 | I think you 'd have to conclude , if you look at the output , who really succeeds by this , who does everything that they should , who gets all the brownie points , who are the winners -- |
| 142 | I think you 'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors . |
| 143 | Is n't it ? |
| 144 | They 're the people who come out the top . |
| 145 | And I used to be one , so there . |
| 146 | And I like university professors , but you know , we should n't hold them up as the high - water mark of all human achievement . |
| 147 | They 're just a form of life , another form of life . |
| 148 | But they 're rather curious , and I say this out of affection for them . |
| 149 | There 's something curious about professors in my experience -- |
| 150 | not all of them , but typically , they live in their heads . |
| 151 | They live up there , and slightly to one side . |
| 152 | They 're disembodied , you know , in a kind of literal way . |
| 153 | They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads . |
| 154 | Do n't they ? |
| 155 | It 's a way of getting their head to meetings . |
| 156 | If you want real evidence of out - of - body experiences , get yourself along to a residential conference of senior academics , and pop into the discotheque on the final night . |
| 157 | And there , you will see it . |
| 158 | Grown men and women writhing uncontrollably , off the beat . |
| 159 | Waiting until it ends so they can go home and write a paper about it . |
| 160 | Our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability . |
| 161 | And there 's a reason . |
| 162 | Around the world , there were no public systems of education , really , before the 19th century . |
| 163 | They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism . |
| 164 | So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas . |
| 165 | Number one , that the most useful subjects for work are at the top . |
| 166 | So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid , things you liked , on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that . |
| 167 | Is that right ? |
| 168 | Do n't do music , you 're not going to be a musician ; do n't do art , you wo n't be an artist . |
| 169 | Benign advice -- now , profoundly mistaken . |
| 170 | The whole world is engulfed in a revolution . |
| 171 | And the second is academic ability , which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence , because the universities designed the system in their image . |
| 172 | If you think of it , the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance . |
| 173 | And the consequence is that many highly - talented , brilliant , creative people think they 're not , because the thing they were good at at school was n't valued , or was actually stigmatized . |
| 174 | And I think we ca n't afford to go on that way . |
| 175 | In the next 30 years , according to UNESCO , more people worldwide will be graduating through education than since the beginning of history . |
| 176 | More people , and it 's the combination of all the things we 've talked about -- technology and its transformation effect on work , and demography and the huge explosion in population . |
| 177 | Suddenly , degrees are n't worth anything . |
| 178 | Is n't that true ? |
| 179 | When I was a student , if you had a degree , you had a job . |
| 180 | If you did n't have a job , it 's because you did n't want one . |
| 181 | And I did n't want one , frankly . |
| 182 | But now kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games , because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA , and now you need a PhD for the other . |
| 183 | It 's a process of academic inflation . |
| 184 | And it indicates the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet . |
| 185 | We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence . |
| 186 | We know three things about intelligence . |
| 187 | One , it 's diverse . |
| 188 | We think about the world in all the ways that we experience it . |
| 189 | We think visually , we think in sound , we think kinesthetically . |
| 190 | We think in abstract terms , we think in movement . |
| 191 | Secondly , intelligence is dynamic . |
| 192 | If you look at the interactions of a human brain , as we heard yesterday from a number of presentations , intelligence is wonderfully interactive . |
| 193 | The brain is n't divided into compartments . |
| 194 | In fact , creativity -- which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value -- more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things . |
| 195 | By the way , there 's a shaft of nerves that joins the two halves of the brain called the corpus callosum . |
| 196 | It 's thicker in women . |
| 197 | Following off from Helen yesterday , this is probably why women are better at multi - tasking . |
| 198 | Because you are , are n't you ? |
| 199 | There 's a raft of research , but I know it from my personal life . |
| 200 | If my wife is cooking a meal at home -- which is not often , thankfully . |
| 201 | No , she 's good at some things , but if she 's cooking , she 's dealing with people on the phone , she 's talking to the kids , she 's painting the ceiling , she 's doing open - heart surgery over here . |
| 202 | If I 'm cooking , the door is shut , the kids are out , the phone 's on the hook , if she comes in I get annoyed . |
| 203 | I say , “ Terry , please , I 'm trying to fry an egg in here . ” |
| 204 | “ Give me a break . ” |
| 205 | Actually , do you know that old philosophical thing , if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it , did it happen ? |
| 206 | Remember that old chestnut ? |
| 207 | I saw a great t - shirt recently , which said , “ If a man speaks his mind in a forest , and no woman hears him , is he still wrong ? ” |
| 208 | And the third thing about intelligence is , it 's distinct . |
| 209 | I 'm doing a new book at the moment called “ Epiphany , ” which is based on a series of interviews with people about how they discovered their talent . |
| 210 | I 'm fascinated by how people got to be there . |
| 211 | It 's really prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman who maybe most people have never heard of , Gillian Lynne . |
| 212 | Have you heard of her ? |
| 213 | Some have . |
| 214 | She 's a choreographer , and everybody knows her work . |
| 215 | She did “ Cats ” and “ Phantom of the Opera . ” |
| 216 | She 's wonderful . |
| 217 | I used to be on the board of The Royal Ballet , as you can see . |
| 218 | Anyway , Gillian and I had lunch one day and I said , “ How did you get to be a dancer ? ” |
| 219 | It was interesting . |
| 220 | When she was at school , she was really hopeless . |
| 221 | And the school , in the '30s , wrote to her parents and said , “ We think Gillian has a learning disorder . ” |
| 222 | She could n't concentrate ; she was fidgeting . |
| 223 | I think now they 'd say she had ADHD . |
| 224 | Would n't you ? |
| 225 | But this was the 1930s , and ADHD had n't been invented at this point . |
| 226 | It was n't an available condition . |
| 227 | People were n't aware they could have that . |
| 228 | Anyway , she went to see this specialist . |
| 229 | So , this oak - paneled room , and she was there with her mother , and she was led and sat on this chair at the end , and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this man talked to her mother about the problems Gillian was having at school . |
| 230 | Because she was disturbing people ; her homework was always late ; and so on , little kid of eight . |
| 231 | In the end , the doctor went and sat next to Gillian , and said , “ I 've listened to all these things your mother 's told me , I need to speak to her privately . Wait here . We 'll be back ; we wo n't be very long , ” and they went and left her . |
| 232 | But as they went out of the room , he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk . |
| 233 | And when they got out , he said to her mother , “ Just stand and watch her . ” |
| 234 | And the minute they left the room , she was on her feet , moving to the music . |
| 235 | And they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said , “ Mrs. Lynne , Gillian is n't sick ; she 's a dancer . Take her to a dance school . ” |
| 236 | I said , “ What happened ? ” |
| 237 | She said , “ She did . |
| 238 | I ca n't tell you how wonderful it was . |
| 239 | We walked in this room and it was full of people like me . |
| 240 | People who could n't sit still . |
| 241 | People who had to move to think . ” |
| 242 | Who had to move to think . |
| 243 | They did ballet , they did tap , jazz ; they did modern ; they did contemporary . |
| 244 | She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School ; she became a soloist ; she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet . |
| 245 | She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School , founded the Gillian Lynne Dance Company , met Andrew Lloyd Webber . |
| 246 | She 's been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history , she 's given pleasure to millions , and she 's a multi - millionaire . |
| 247 | Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down . |
| 248 | What I think it comes to is this : |
| 249 | Al Gore spoke the other night about ecology and the revolution that was triggered by Rachel Carson . |
| 250 | I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology , one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity . |
| 251 | Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip - mine the earth : for a particular commodity . |
| 252 | And for the future , it wo n't serve us . |
| 253 | We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we 're educating our children . |
| 254 | There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk , who said , “ If all the insects were to disappear from the Earth , within 50 years all life on Earth would end . If all human beings disappeared from the Earth , within 50 years all forms of life would flourish . ” |
| 255 | And he 's right . |
| 256 | What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination . |
| 257 | We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely and that we avert some of the scenarios that we 've talked about . |
| 258 | And the only way we 'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are and seeing our children for the hope that they are . |
| 259 | And our task is to educate their whole being , so they can face this future . |
| 260 | By the way -- we may not see this future , but they will . |
| 261 | And our job is to help them make something of it . |
| 262 | Thank you very much . |