WEBVTT 00:00:01.005 --> 00:00:13.215 (Vision - Tomorrow's ideas, Today) 00:00:13.477 --> 00:00:19.321 (Sir Ken Robinson "Changing Paradigms" - recipient of the 2008 RSA Benjamin Franklin Medal) 00:00:19.636 --> 00:00:24.295 Ken Robinson: Thank you very much. Were you surprised when it was actually me who got the medal? 00:00:24.448 --> 00:00:29.402 Were you? You could feel the tension building, couldn't you? "Who will it be?" 00:00:31.813 --> 00:00:35.246 Thank you. I am genuinely humbled to have this award. 00:00:36.045 --> 00:00:39.379 I was thinking earlier that being humbled isn't a normal feeling, is it? 00:00:40.731 --> 00:00:45.962 I don't often feel humbled - disparaged, humiliated, you know, put down 00:00:47.010 --> 00:00:50.946 But humbled is a rather old feeling, isn't it? It's not a modern emotion. 00:00:51.585 --> 00:00:54.977 But I do feel it, and particularly to have this award in the name of Benjamin Franklin 00:00:57.054 --> 00:01:04.162 who was a most remarkable man. He lived nearby, in Craven street. The house is a few minutes away 00:01:04.933 --> 00:01:09.125 and I really recommend you go and take a look at it. It has just been renovated. 00:01:09.692 --> 00:01:12.856 It's a very powerful evocation of the life of this extraordinary figure, 00:01:13.379 --> 00:01:16.310 a man who was deeply involved in the growth of industrialism, 00:01:16.790 --> 00:01:20.905 a part of the Enlightenment, at the heart of the creation of the New World, 00:01:21.610 --> 00:01:23.418 and with a passion for education. 00:01:24.264 --> 00:01:31.102 A man who was also deeply invested in science, in the arts, in the humanities and in politics. 00:01:31.241 --> 00:01:35.064 A polymath, I think, a Renaissance figure in the heart of the Enlightenment - 00:01:35.823 --> 00:01:38.587 and one of the first significant members of the Royal Society of Arts. 00:01:39.002 --> 00:01:43.044 If you don't know this institution, I really encourage you to find more about it. 00:01:43.121 --> 00:01:48.285 It was founded, I think I'm correct in saying, in 1753, by William Shipley, 00:01:48.500 --> 00:01:54.805 and its full name is the Royal Society of Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. 00:01:55.052 --> 00:02:06.371 And it's had a long history in the promotion and advocacy of appropriate forms of public education. 00:02:06.632 --> 00:02:12.541 I have had a long association myself with the RSA. I gave a lecture here 00:02:13.833 --> 00:02:20.821 - even Matthew may not know this - in July of 1990, in this very room. 00:02:21.667 --> 00:02:28.129 And I propose to repeat it word for word, if that's alright? (audience laughs) 00:02:28.221 --> 00:02:30.044 Don't you I should waste time thinking anything fresh for you, frankly? 00:02:30.321 --> 00:02:39.041 No, in 1990, I had been running a national Arts in Schools project 00:02:39.302 --> 00:02:41.998 and I had published a book on the arts in schools. 00:02:42.059 --> 00:02:46.536 I have a great passion for the arts, and we were meeting here, 00:02:46.721 --> 00:02:52.236 shortly after the introduction of the national curriculum in England, 00:02:52.375 --> 00:02:57.459 which profoundly misunderstood the place of the arts in education. 00:02:57.690 --> 00:03:01.805 So I was talking about how the arts could be made part of the main stream of education. 00:03:02.082 --> 00:03:09.100 And here we are, 17 years later - well it's all so different, I feel. 00:03:10.869 --> 00:03:14.854 So I want to say a few words about that, and I want to show you a couple of short movie clips, 00:03:15.223 --> 00:03:16.969 and then to have a conversation with you. 00:03:18.908 --> 00:03:22.033 One of the things that have happened to me since 1990 is that I have moved to live in America 00:03:22.156 --> 00:03:28.341 and I moved there 7 years ago, at the invitation of the Getty Center. 00:03:29.987 --> 00:03:34.402 I didn't flee Great Britain, but put yourself in my place: 00:03:34.587 --> 00:03:41.752 I had a phone call on the 3rd of January 1990, when I was living near Coventry. 00:03:44.567 --> 00:03:52.592 And this guy said: "Would you like to come and live in California?" (audience laughs) 00:03:52.762 --> 00:03:58.359 We left immediately. (audience laughs) I didn't ask what the job was, we just went. 00:03:58.636 --> 00:04:02.775 And - the phone is still swinging on the hook, actually, in the house, 00:04:02.775 --> 00:04:06.218 and we hope some day the children will track us down, but we don't care. 00:04:08.141 --> 00:04:15.038 But I now live in America, and I love it. Who has been to Los Angeles? Here, anyone? 00:04:15.915 --> 00:04:17.308 It's an extraordinary place. 00:04:18.600 --> 00:04:22.410 We were in Las Vegas recently, my wife and I. We've been together for 30 years 00:04:23.487 --> 00:04:26.833 and we decided last year to get married again. 00:04:27.818 --> 00:04:35.821 So we went to the Elvis Chapel (audience laughs). Now, I recommend it. You should do it. 00:04:36.436 --> 00:04:45.769 We had the Blue Hawaii package, but there are others. The Blue Hawaii package, you get the 00:04:46.046 --> 00:04:54.921 Elvis impersonator, 4 songs, the chapel, of course, a puff of smoke as you go in - 00:04:56.336 --> 00:05:04.390 you have to request that - and a hula girl, that was optional, but I opted for it, 00:05:04.729 --> 00:05:07.902 for reasons I was rather pleased about, frankly. 00:05:08.871 --> 00:05:14.402 For another 100 dollars, we could have had a pink Cadillac, but we thought that was a bit tacky. 00:05:17.879 --> 00:05:20.446 We thought that was lowering the tone of the whole occasion, frankly 00:05:20.446 --> 00:05:27.877 but I mention it, because Las Vegas is an iconic example of the things I would like us to talk about. 00:05:27.877 --> 00:05:32.454 Not Las Vegas in itself, but the idea that gave rise to it. 00:05:33.285 --> 00:05:36.885 If you think of it, every other city on earth has a reason to be where it is. 00:05:38.346 --> 00:05:44.136 Like London, you know, it's in a natural basin, so it's good for trade, or it's in a harbour, 00:05:44.136 --> 00:05:50.754 or it's in a valley, so it's good for agriculture, you know, or it's on a hillside, so it's good for defence. 00:05:52.062 --> 00:05:57.323 But none of this is true of Las Vegas. There is no physical reason for it to be there. 00:05:58.123 --> 00:06:02.918 The only reason it's there is the thing that gave rise to this organization, 00:06:03.056 --> 00:06:07.969 that affects every aspect of your life, which makes humanity what it is. 00:06:08.185 --> 00:06:12.379 The only thing, in my opinion, which is the extraordinary power, 00:06:12.379 --> 00:06:17.418 which is bestowed on human beings, that no other species has, so far as we can judge. 00:06:17.987 --> 00:06:23.882 I mean the power of imagination. We take it totally for granted. 00:06:24.329 --> 00:06:26.802 This capacity to bring into mind the things that aren't present, 00:06:27.448 --> 00:06:31.838 and on that base to hypothesize about things that have never been, but could be. 00:06:32.238 --> 00:06:38.998 Every feature of human culture, in my view, is the consequence of this unique capacity. 00:06:38.998 --> 00:06:42.533 Now, other creatures may have something like it, other creatures sing, 00:06:43.102 --> 00:06:49.471 but they don't write operas. Other creatures are agile, but they don't form Olympic Committees. 00:06:50.395 --> 00:06:53.090 They communicate, but they don't have festivals of theatre. 00:06:53.413 --> 00:06:58.615 They have structures, but they don't build buildings and furnish them. 00:06:59.215 --> 00:07:03.152 We are unique in this capacity, a capacity that has produced the most extraordinary diversity 00:07:03.290 --> 00:07:08.452 of human culture, of enterprise, of innovation, 6000 languages currently spoken on earth. 00:07:08.667 --> 00:07:13.956 And the great adventure which produced, among other things, the Royal Society of Arts 00:07:13.956 --> 00:07:15.233 and all of its works. 00:07:16.548 --> 00:07:25.982 But I believe that we systematically destroy this capacity in our children and in ourselves. 00:07:26.290 --> 00:07:30.546 Now, I pick my words carefully. I don't say "deliberately". 00:07:31.331 --> 00:07:35.769 I don't think it's deliberate, but it happens to be systematic. 00:07:35.954 --> 00:07:40.685 We do it routinely, unthinkingly, and that's the worst of it. 00:07:40.977 --> 00:07:46.331 Because we take for granted certain ideas about education, about children, 00:07:46.331 --> 00:07:52.200 about what it is to be educated, about social need and social utility, about economic purpose. 00:07:52.938 --> 00:07:57.031 We take these ideas for granted, and they turn out not to be true. 00:07:57.769 --> 00:08:03.769 Many ideas that seem obvious turn out not to be true. That was really the great adventure of the Enlightenment: 00:08:04.015 --> 00:08:06.454 ideas that seemed obvious that turned out not to be true. 00:08:07.008 --> 00:08:12.315 Ironically though, I believe, the legacy of the Enlightenment is now hampering 00:08:12.438 --> 00:08:14.715 the reforms that are needed in education. 00:08:15.362 --> 00:08:20.482 We have grown up in a system of public education which is dominated by two ideas. 00:08:21.005 --> 00:08:28.464 One of them is a conception of economic utility. And you can illustrate that directly. 00:08:29.264 --> 00:08:35.800 It's implicit in the structure of the school curriculum. It's simply present. 00:08:36.308 --> 00:08:41.171 There is in every school system on earth a hierarchy of subjects. You know it: you went through it. 00:08:41.587 --> 00:08:46.185 If you're in education, you have probably subscribed to it, or you have contributed to it, somehow. 00:08:47.677 --> 00:08:55.631 When we moved to America, we put our kids into high school, and it was recognizable. 00:08:55.969 --> 00:09:01.308 The curriculum is totally recognizable: Math, science and the English language at the top; 00:09:01.308 --> 00:09:03.848 then the humanities, down, and the arts way down at the bottom. 00:09:04.033 --> 00:09:08.587 And in the arts, there is always another hierarchy, art and music are always thought to be more important 00:09:08.587 --> 00:09:10.348 than drama and dance. 00:09:11.318 --> 00:09:15.185 There isn't a school in the country that I know of - a school system, let me be clear - 00:09:15.385 --> 00:09:21.052 there isn't a school system actually anywhere that teaches dance every day, systematically, 00:09:21.282 --> 00:09:27.315 to every child, in the way that we require them to learn mathematics. 00:09:27.638 --> 00:09:34.467 Now I'm not against mathematics, on the contrary. But why is dance such a looser in the system? 00:09:34.852 --> 00:09:39.136 Well, I think, one of the reasons is, people never say any economic point in it. 00:09:39.659 --> 00:09:43.548 So there's an economic judgment that's made in the structure of school curriculum. 00:09:44.533 --> 00:09:48.905 And I'm sure it was true of you: you probably found yourself benignly steered away 00:09:48.905 --> 00:09:53.625 from things you were good at in school, towards things that other people advised would be 00:09:53.625 --> 00:09:55.541 more useful to you. 00:09:55.541 --> 00:10:00.700 So effectively, our school curricula are based on the premiss that there are two sorts of subjects: 00:10:02.115 --> 00:10:08.541 useful ones and useless ones. And the useless ones fall away, eventually. 00:10:08.541 --> 00:10:13.413 And they fall away especially when money starts to become tight, as it always is. 00:10:14.459 --> 00:10:20.071 George Bush was in town, today, wasn't he? I just thought I'd share the pain, that was all. 00:10:22.764 --> 00:10:32.744 I just - I'm feeling it. No: President Bush, as I call him, was responsible, with others, 00:10:32.744 --> 00:10:39.185 for a cross-party piece of legislation in America, to reform public education. 00:10:39.692 --> 00:10:44.769 And I have had lots of conversations about it, now I live in America, which I shall keep saying, by the way, 00:10:44.846 --> 00:10:53.044 to make you feel bad, OK? I live in California and you don't. So there. 00:10:55.754 --> 00:11:00.682 No, when I got to America, I was told that the Americans don't get irony. 00:11:01.852 --> 00:11:07.185 This is not true. This is a British conceit. I feel OK about it, because there are other ones. 00:11:07.323 --> 00:11:09.402 When we went to America, we were given a guidebook 00:11:09.402 --> 00:11:16.671 of how to behave in America - honestly, by our removals agent. How to behave in America. 00:11:16.671 --> 00:11:20.321 I'm handing it out now to all the Americans I meet now, like: "You do it, you do it", you know 00:11:21.552 --> 00:11:25.508 "Let's all behave properly, shall we?" But one of the things that was said in it was: 00:11:25.508 --> 00:11:29.375 "Don't hug people in America. They don't like it." Honestly, it's explicit: 00:11:29.375 --> 00:11:34.033 "Don't hug them, they don't like it." This turns out to be nonsens. They love it. 00:11:34.248 --> 00:11:37.441 People in my experience love getting hugged in America, but we thought they didn't, so 00:11:37.441 --> 00:11:41.659 for the first year, we had kept our arms at our sides at social gatherings, for fear of committing offence 00:11:41.659 --> 00:11:45.718 and this all added to the idea that we tipified British reserve, you know, 00:11:47.010 --> 00:11:50.482 or that we were some refugees from River Dance. 00:11:52.023 --> 00:11:58.795 But I was told the Americans don't get irony. And then I came across this piece of legislation in America, 00:11:58.795 --> 00:12:01.100 called No Child Left Behind. 00:12:02.362 --> 00:12:05.615 And I thought, whoever came up with that title gets irony, because 00:12:06.369 --> 00:12:08.967 this legislation is leaving millions of children behind. 00:12:10.075 --> 00:12:12.175 Of, course, that's not a very attractive name for a legislation, 00:12:12.329 --> 00:12:17.233 "Millions of Children Left Behind"; I can see that, but give or take a twittle, 00:12:17.448 --> 00:12:20.731 it's the 1998 Education Act in this country. 00:12:22.592 --> 00:12:28.844 It was the manifesto, pretty much, that inspired the work of Chris Woodhead, I believe, 00:12:28.844 --> 00:12:30.390 during his time at OFSTED. 00:12:30.682 --> 00:12:36.485 Now I think this is important, because what it represents to me, is the ideology of education, 00:12:36.485 --> 00:12:38.231 written large, and that's the problem. 00:12:38.431 --> 00:12:46.295 So let me talk about changing paradigms. My firm conviction is that we have to do much, much more 00:12:46.402 --> 00:12:50.844 than is currently happening. Every country on earth, at the moment, is reforming public education. 00:12:52.244 --> 00:12:57.146 I don't know of an exception. Mind you, what's new? We've always been reforming public education. 00:12:57.346 --> 00:12:59.946 But we are doing it now consistently and systematically, all over the place. 00:13:00.208 --> 00:13:05.598 There are two reasons for it. The first one is economic. People try to work out 00:13:05.736 --> 00:13:11.333 how do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century? 00:13:11.441 --> 00:13:16.148 How do we do that, even if we can't anticipate what the economy will look like 00:13:16.148 --> 00:13:20.764 at the end of next week, as the recent turmoil is demonstrating. 00:13:21.148 --> 00:13:26.610 How do we do that? The second, though, is cultural. Every country on earth is trying to figure out, 00:13:26.610 --> 00:13:31.033 how do we educate our children so they have a sense of cultural identity 00:13:31.202 --> 00:13:35.000 and so that we can pass on the cultural genes of our communities, 00:13:35.200 --> 00:13:39.898 while being part of the process of globalization? How do we square that circle? 00:13:41.221 --> 00:13:48.069 Most countries, I believe, are doing what we were doing in 1988, operating on the premiss 00:13:48.162 --> 00:13:53.285 that the challenge is to reform education, to make it a better version of what it was. 00:13:54.315 --> 00:14:00.064 In other words, the challenge is just to do better what we did before, but improve. 00:14:00.418 --> 00:14:04.682 And we have to raise standards. And people say we have to raise standards, as if this is a breakthrough. 00:14:05.744 --> 00:14:09.895 Like really, yes, we should. Why would you lower them, you know? 00:14:11.002 --> 00:14:13.862 I haven't come across an argument that persuaded me of lowering them. 00:14:14.169 --> 00:14:19.446 But raising them - of course we should raise them. The problem is that the current system of education, 00:14:20.508 --> 00:14:29.052 in my view and experience, was designed and conceived and structured for a different age. 00:14:30.021 --> 00:14:37.838 It was conceived in the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment, and in the economic circumstances 00:14:37.838 --> 00:14:42.692 of the Industrial Revolution. Before the middle of the 19th century, there were no systems 00:14:42.692 --> 00:14:46.741 of public education - not really, I mean, you could get educated by Jesuits, you know, 00:14:46.741 --> 00:14:52.759 if you had the money. But public education, paid for from taxation, compulsory to everybody 00:14:52.759 --> 00:14:55.564 and free at the point of delivery, that was a revolutionary idea. 00:14:56.333 --> 00:15:02.338 And many people objected to it. They said: "It's not possible for many street kids, 00:15:02.338 --> 00:15:05.662 working-class children, to benefit from public education: they're incapable of learning 00:15:05.662 --> 00:15:07.654 to read and write, and why are we spending time on this?" 00:15:08.038 --> 00:15:11.433 So there is also built into it, the whole series of assumptions about 00:15:11.433 --> 00:15:19.102 social structuring capacity. But it was designed for its purpose, which why, as the public system evolved 00:15:19.287 --> 00:15:26.713 into the 19th and early 20th century, we ended up with a very broad base of elementary education, 00:15:26.882 --> 00:15:31.695 junior schools. Everybody went to that. My father's father, my grandfather, he went to that. 00:15:31.695 --> 00:15:36.267 He left school by the time he was 12. Most people did, then, at the turn of the century. 00:15:37.636 --> 00:15:42.385 And then, gradually, we introduced a layer above it, a secondary education, 00:15:43.015 --> 00:15:46.933 and some people went into that, but my father left school at 14, having gone into that. 00:15:47.179 --> 00:15:50.713 And then, a small university sector, set across the top of it. 00:15:51.036 --> 00:15:55.264 And the assumption was that people would work up and a few would get to the top, 00:15:55.495 --> 00:16:01.746 and would go to university. It was modelled on the economic premisses of industrialism, 00:16:02.023 --> 00:16:07.031 that is, that we needed a broad base of people to do manual, blue-collar work 00:16:07.631 --> 00:16:11.292 and, you know, roughly, they could do language and arithmetic; 00:16:11.462 --> 00:16:16.013 a smaller group who would go to administrative work: that was what the grammar schools were for; 00:16:16.644 --> 00:16:20.892 and an even smaller group who would go off and run the Empire for us, and become 00:16:20.892 --> 00:16:24.648 the lawyers, and the judges, and the doctors - and they were the universities. 00:16:25.510 --> 00:16:28.564 Now, I simplify, but that's essentially how the thing came about. 00:16:28.933 --> 00:16:34.033 And it was driven by an economic imperative of the time, but running right through it, 00:16:35.048 --> 00:16:41.152 was an intellectual model of the mind, which was essentially the Enlightenment's view of intelligence, 00:16:41.459 --> 00:16:45.433 that real intelligence consists in this capacity for a certain type of deductive reasoning, 00:16:45.618 --> 00:16:50.769 and a knowledge of the classics, originally, what we come to think of as academic ability. 00:16:50.938 --> 00:16:55.677 And this is deep in the gene pool of public education, that there are really two types of people: 00:16:55.677 --> 00:16:59.102 academic and non academic; smart people and non smart people. 00:16:59.948 --> 00:17:03.182 And the consequence of that is that many brilliant people think they're not, 00:17:04.152 --> 00:17:07.831 because they're being judged against this particular view of the mind. 00:17:08.138 --> 00:17:16.085 So we have twin pillars: economic and intellectual. And my view is that this model 00:17:16.346 --> 00:17:19.756 has caused chaos in many people's lives. 00:17:19.756 --> 00:17:22.700 It has been great for some: there are people who benefitted wonderfully from it. 00:17:22.792 --> 00:17:27.931 But most people have not, and it has created a massive problem. 00:17:28.454 --> 00:17:31.746 I spoke at a conference a couple of - well, the TED conference that Matthew refered to. 00:17:33.423 --> 00:17:40.000 One of the other speakers was Al Gore, or Al, as I refer to him. 00:17:44.246 --> 00:17:48.256 Al Gore gave the talk at the TED conference - by the way, if you don't know the TED conference, 00:17:48.256 --> 00:17:51.902 I do recommend you visit the website, TED.com: it is fantastic. 00:17:52.672 --> 00:17:57.746 But Al Gore gave the talk that became the movie "Inconvenient Truth". 00:17:58.731 --> 00:18:04.233 Al Gore's view, which isn't his, he'd be the first to say it, it dates back to Rachel Carson 00:18:04.310 --> 00:18:11.492 and earlier. It actually dates back, if you look, even to the work of Linnaeus in the 18th centry, 00:18:11.492 --> 00:18:14.764 it dates back to Franklin, it dates back to the work of this society. 00:18:15.225 --> 00:18:19.648 A concern with the ecology of the natural world, and the sustainability of industrialism 00:18:19.756 --> 00:18:23.933 in the 17th and 18th century, they were concerned about them. 00:18:24.625 --> 00:18:28.482 But his work is an attempt to put the case back into a modern context. 00:18:28.605 --> 00:18:36.500 I believe he's right, and it's not just his view. A group of geologists have recently published a paper, 00:18:36.623 --> 00:18:42.782 in which they argue that the earth has entered a new geological period. 00:18:44.059 --> 00:18:50.123 Classically, the view is that since the end of the last Ice Age, about 12'000 years ago, 00:18:50.123 --> 00:18:52.848 we are in a period called the Holocene period. 00:18:53.264 --> 00:18:57.556 They believe we've entered a new period. And they say, if people were to - a future generation 00:18:57.556 --> 00:19:01.341 of geologists were to come to earth, they would see the evidence of it, 00:19:01.341 --> 00:19:06.669 of a change in the earth's geological personality. They would see it in the evidence of 00:19:07.285 --> 00:19:11.415 carbon deposits in the earth's crust, the acidification of oceans, 00:19:11.600 --> 00:19:16.767 the evidence of the mass extinction of species, the change in the earth's atmosphere, 00:19:17.013 --> 00:19:18.713 and hundreds of other indicators. 00:19:19.667 --> 00:19:23.575 They say it's unmistakably, in their view, a new geological period. 00:19:23.575 --> 00:19:30.171 A series of Nobel scientists have agreed to this view. They are provisionally calling this, not the holocene 00:19:30.171 --> 00:19:38.115 but the anthropocene. What they mean by that is a geological age created by the activities of people, 00:19:39.269 --> 00:19:42.748 as in anthropos. And they say there is no historical questioning of this. 00:19:43.025 --> 00:19:50.113 And this is really what I want to get to. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, William Shipley, 00:19:50.421 --> 00:19:54.564 the great figures of the Enlightenment, both in politics and science, and the arts, 00:19:55.748 --> 00:20:01.164 were conceiving public education, and civic structures, and politics of duty 00:20:02.071 --> 00:20:08.613 at a time of revolutionary turmoil. It was the age of revolutions in France, in America, 00:20:08.921 --> 00:20:11.582 not long after our civil disturbance here, 00:20:11.905 --> 00:20:16.300 at a time of extraordinary intellectual adventures and new horizons, extraordinary innovation. 00:20:16.715 --> 00:20:20.682 Before them, there was nothing, really, that ever lead to an age of such innovation 00:20:20.821 --> 00:20:23.864 and such extraordinary change - the rate of it. 00:20:24.264 --> 00:20:27.382 And it was a fair caracterization of the times. 00:20:28.613 --> 00:20:32.444 But there is every evidence to show now that what was happening then is as nothing 00:20:32.444 --> 00:20:33.598 to what is happening now. 00:20:34.036 --> 00:20:38.225 I believe the changes taking place on earth now are without precedent, 00:20:38.702 --> 00:20:41.746 in terms of their character and their implications. 00:20:41.962 --> 00:20:48.256 And our best salvation is to develop this capacity for imagination, and do it systematically 00:20:48.256 --> 00:20:52.167 through public education, and to connect people with their true talents. 00:20:52.259 --> 00:20:55.367 We simply can't afford this devastation anymore. 00:20:56.567 --> 00:20:59.975 So when Al Gore talks about this, I believe him. And I think that if you don't think that 00:20:59.975 --> 00:21:03.854 there is a crisis in the world's natural environment, then you're not paying attention. 00:21:04.300 --> 00:21:08.031 And I would take the option to leave the planet soon, right? 00:21:09.769 --> 00:21:13.833 You see, I believe that there is a parallel climate crisis. 00:21:15.248 --> 00:21:17.546 Now one of them is probably enough for you, honestly. 00:21:17.869 --> 00:21:21.682 You know: I think now I'm fine, one is good. I don't need a second one. 00:21:22.098 --> 00:21:26.625 But there is a second one, and it's what my work is about, and I guess what many of you 00:21:26.687 --> 00:21:30.067 will be concerned about, and I know, what Edge is concerned about, 00:21:30.129 --> 00:21:32.292 and what Matthew and the RSA's committee are concerned about. 00:21:32.523 --> 00:21:36.069 But let me put it in a particular way to you. I believe there is a global crisis, 00:21:36.069 --> 00:21:41.485 not only in natural resources, though I believe it - a global crisis in human resources. 00:21:43.223 --> 00:21:47.533 I believe that the parallel with the crisis in the natural world is exact. 00:21:48.287 --> 00:21:51.246 And the costs of clearing this up are catastrophic. 00:21:51.400 --> 00:21:58.864 I'll give you a couple of quick examples. In California, the State Government last year spent 00:21:59.695 --> 00:22:04.877 about 3 billion dollars on the State University system. 00:22:04.877 --> 00:22:11.682 These are public figures. They spent over 9 billion dollars on the State prison system. 00:22:13.067 --> 00:22:18.954 Now, I cannot believe that more potential criminals are born every year in California 00:22:18.954 --> 00:22:25.579 than potential college graduates. What you have are people in bad conditions going bad. 00:22:26.102 --> 00:22:28.756 I remember Bernard Levin, once, he wrote in one of his articles in the Times 00:22:28.756 --> 00:22:33.413 and he said he'd been at a dinner party, and he was asked - the question round the dinner table was: 00:22:33.413 --> 00:22:34.959 "Are people mainly good or mainly bad?". 00:22:35.852 --> 00:22:38.315 And he said, without hesitation, they're mainly good. 00:22:38.592 --> 00:22:42.336 He said I was astonished to find I was in a minority round the table, a minority of one. 00:22:42.675 --> 00:22:46.590 But he believed with Viktor Frankl, who survived the Holocaust 00:22:46.605 --> 00:22:50.264 and saw his parents die, that for all of that, people are fundamentally good. 00:22:50.495 --> 00:22:55.798 I believe they are fundamentally good, but there are people living in very bad circumstances and conditions. 00:22:56.952 --> 00:23:01.282 And if you put people in poor conditions, they behave in particular ways. 00:23:01.559 --> 00:23:04.833 So we spend a lot of our time remediating the damage. 00:23:05.156 --> 00:23:09.548 And meanwhile, I think that the other exact parallel is that pharmaceutical companies 00:23:10.564 --> 00:23:14.985 are reaping a gold rush from this distress. 00:23:16.108 --> 00:23:23.648 If you look at the growth of antidepressants, of prescription drugs to treat depression, 00:23:23.848 --> 00:23:27.359 to suppress people's feelings, this is a gold rush, I mean pharmaceutical companies 00:23:27.359 --> 00:23:29.998 don't want to cure depression, on the contrary. 00:23:31.198 --> 00:23:37.677 I mean also, one of the things I saw recently is that suicide rates among 15-30 year olds 00:23:37.677 --> 00:23:42.200 have increased over 60% globally since the 1960's. 00:23:42.692 --> 00:23:44.931 It's one of the largest causes of death among the young people. 00:23:45.423 --> 00:23:50.331 What is that? You know, people born with hope and optimism, who decide to check out, 00:23:50.423 --> 00:23:51.623 because they can't cope. 00:23:51.905 --> 00:23:56.095 Now, I don't say education is part of that, or responsible for it, 00:23:56.310 --> 00:23:59.648 but it contributes to it. That's really all I want to say. 00:23:59.648 --> 00:24:04.762 So this crisis of human resources is, I think, absolutely urgent and palpable. 00:24:05.008 --> 00:24:11.746 So the challenge, to me, is not to reform education, but to transform it into something else. 00:24:12.346 --> 00:24:15.664 I think we have to come to a definite set of assumptions. 00:24:16.064 --> 00:24:18.952 Now, I say this advisedly, because I have been involved in all kinds of initiatives 00:24:20.105 --> 00:24:25.552 over my professional life. I started out in drama work, I moved and began some school's project, 00:24:25.782 --> 00:24:28.987 some of the people in the room I've known for years and worked with for the years, 00:24:29.002 --> 00:24:30.610 and I've had a long association here. 00:24:30.764 --> 00:24:36.031 One of the great initiatives of the RSA, in the 1980's, was "Education for Capability". 00:24:36.477 --> 00:24:40.046 You should look at "Education for Capability", it said extraordinary useful and practical things, 00:24:40.138 --> 00:24:44.846 and there were wonderful people around it: Charles Handy, whom I got to know recently, 00:24:44.915 --> 00:24:49.813 well, not recently, but I've got to know well in recent years: he was chairman here, of the RSA; 00:24:49.936 --> 00:24:54.121 Tyrell Burgess, Corelli Barnet, Patrick Lutchens, 00:24:54.121 --> 00:24:57.498 I shared an appartment, when I was a student, with Patrick's son - 00:24:59.021 --> 00:25:05.998 and - a kind of galaxy of really powerful thinkers - John Tomlinson who was chairman here for a while, 00:25:06.105 --> 00:25:07.605 who was with me at Warwick University. 00:25:08.452 --> 00:25:12.631 There's been a long tradition of arguing for the change, arguing for the alternative. 00:25:12.738 --> 00:25:16.464 And yet successive governments come in and do what they did before 00:25:17.171 --> 00:25:22.115 And this really worries me - and I speak personally - you know, that after all the optimism I felt 00:25:22.223 --> 00:25:29.133 10 years ago, I feel that we've had, of the past 10 years - a kind of myriads of policies, 00:25:30.256 --> 00:25:34.413 but too few principles. I can't see what they've added up to. 00:25:35.167 --> 00:25:38.523 And I say that because I didn't see it before, and I don't see it anywhere else. 00:25:38.523 --> 00:25:41.323 I mean there are some countries, which I feel are getting this right, but we're not. 00:25:41.323 --> 00:25:45.823 And the reason is, because we're not fundamentally changing the underlying assumptions of the system, 00:25:45.823 --> 00:25:50.379 which should deal with intelligence, ability, economic purpose and what people need. 00:25:50.533 --> 00:25:54.836 We still educate people from the outside in. We figure out what the country needs 00:25:54.836 --> 00:26:00.200 and we try and get it to conform with it, rather than seeing what makes people drive forward 00:26:00.338 --> 00:26:05.446 and building education systems around a model of personhood, which is what I think we should come to. 00:26:05.708 --> 00:26:11.190 So let me - I just want to show you a couple of quick slides to - I don't have to, 00:26:11.190 --> 00:26:13.744 but as I've gone through the trouble of preparing them, frankly - 00:26:17.559 --> 00:26:19.629 I just want to give you an example of a couple of things, here. 00:26:20.029 --> 00:26:22.905 Oh, by the way, so many things that Matthew kindly said, are in this book. 00:26:23.090 --> 00:26:32.752 This book, by the way, is terrific. OK? You cound't do better than buying this book. 00:26:32.905 --> 00:26:34.975 That is, unless you buy this book, 00:26:36.590 --> 00:26:40.944 which is a new book, which is coming out in January from Penguin. I'm very excited about this book. 00:26:40.944 --> 00:26:44.300 This book is about the nature of human talent and how people discover it. 00:26:44.623 --> 00:26:49.582 It's based on the premiss that people do their best when they do the thing they love, 00:26:49.736 --> 00:26:56.844 when they are in their element. So I was trying to get to what that is. What is it to be in your element? 00:26:56.844 --> 00:27:01.513 And I spoke to scientists and artists and business leaders and poets and parents and kids. 00:27:01.821 --> 00:27:06.423 And it seems to me, the evidence is absolutely persuasive, when people connect to this 00:27:06.423 --> 00:27:11.552 powerful sense of talent in themselves, discover what it is they can do, they become somebody else. 00:27:11.829 --> 00:27:15.713 And that, to me, is the premiss of building a new education system. 00:27:15.836 --> 00:27:19.746 It's not about bringing force in the old model, but reconstituting our sense of self. 00:27:19.931 --> 00:27:27.515 And it happens to synergize - errh, is that a verb? I'm not sure - with the new economic purposes. 00:27:30.792 --> 00:27:34.667 There are 2 big drives of change, currently: one is technology, you know that? 00:27:35.744 --> 00:27:40.702 This is a brain cell. What I want to draw on it, what I want to underline, 00:27:40.702 --> 00:27:44.598 is that technology is moving faster than most people really, truthfully, understand. 00:27:44.844 --> 00:27:49.929 Can I ask you, how many of you here consider yourselves to be baby-boomers or older? 00:27:51.082 --> 00:27:58.700 I thought so. All of you - who is not? who consider yourselves to be a generation X or millenial? OK 00:27:58.992 --> 00:28:03.502 You boomer types or older - Actually, no. If you are over 30, would you put your hand up 00:28:03.502 --> 00:28:05.977 if you are wearing a wristwatch? 00:28:06.869 --> 00:28:14.248 There we go, thank you. Just curious. No, this is interesting. 00:28:14.479 --> 00:28:19.467 Ask a roomful of teenagers the same question. Ask them if they wear wristwatches. They mainly don't. 00:28:19.836 --> 00:28:24.471 And the reason is - I wanted to make 2 points - the reason they don't wear wristwateches 00:28:24.471 --> 00:28:27.882 is because they don't see the point. Because for them, time is everywhere. 00:28:28.036 --> 00:28:31.882 You know, it's on their iPhones, their iPods their mobiles - it's everywhere. 00:28:32.175 --> 00:28:37.431 No, why would you wear this? And my daughter comes on: "Why should I put a special device 00:28:37.431 --> 00:28:45.764 on my wrist to tell the time?" And she said, "Plus, it only does one thing." you know, like, 00:28:46.025 --> 00:28:51.479 "How lame is that? A single-function device, so you - have you cranked up?" 00:28:53.248 --> 00:28:58.179 But we take it for granted, don't we? You have other options, but this thing I mean about 00:28:58.179 --> 00:29:01.856 taking for granted is important. It's the things we take for granted that we need to kind of 00:29:01.856 --> 00:29:05.131 identify and question. I mean, did you think about putting your warch on this morning? 00:29:05.254 --> 00:29:12.487 Truthfully, was it like an agony? "Shall I" - you know - "Is it a 'watchy' day? I just don't know, really. 00:29:12.487 --> 00:29:15.282 I'll put it on to be safe, you know." You don't: you just do it. 00:29:15.467 --> 00:29:18.908 Our kids don't, and the point is of some importance. A guy called Mark Prensky made this point, 00:29:18.954 --> 00:29:23.459 that our children live in a different world. He made - talks about the difference between 00:29:23.459 --> 00:29:25.864 digital natives and digital immigrants. 00:29:25.864 --> 00:29:30.156 If you were born - If you're under 20, you're an immigrant - you're a native. 00:29:30.156 --> 00:29:33.818 You speak digital, you were born with this stuff and it's in your head, like a first language. 00:29:34.171 --> 00:29:37.600 We're less so. But the point is, this is getting faster and faster and faster. 00:29:37.769 --> 00:29:43.775 One of the new horizons is likely to be the merging of human intelligence with information systems. 00:29:43.790 --> 00:29:46.867 That's a brain cell, and that's a brain cell growing on a silicon chip. 00:29:47.559 --> 00:29:52.631 Well, we see. But there are things that lie ahead, for which there are no precedent. 00:29:53.738 --> 00:29:57.386 And the impact on culture promises to be extraordinary. 00:29:58.402 --> 00:30:02.182 This is the other thing I want to point to, which is the curve of the wold's population. 00:30:03.090 --> 00:30:07.256 You see, 1750, when the RSA was being established, and William Shipley was wondering 00:30:07.256 --> 00:30:14.156 what to do in the evenings, there were about a billion people on the whole of the earth: 00:30:14.418 --> 00:30:20.018 pretty evenly distributed, mostly in the far-flung parts of what became the Empire, 00:30:20.279 --> 00:30:23.559 but a lot of them in the industrialized - what would become the industrialized economies. 00:30:23.559 --> 00:30:26.885 About a billion people. London was a tiny place, by comparison. 00:30:28.562 --> 00:30:34.236 Now, if you look at this curve, we are at around 6 billion, and the big jump happened in 1970. 00:30:35.436 --> 00:30:40.769 Well, from 1970 to the year 2000, where the population on earth increased by over 3 million. 00:30:42.092 --> 00:30:46.318 1968, remember, was the Summer of love. It's probably a coincidence. 00:30:46.471 --> 00:30:50.667 Yes but - but we all did our bit, you know. That's all right. 00:30:51.529 --> 00:30:56.595 But this is interesting: the dot line is the growth of population in the developed economies. 00:30:56.595 --> 00:30:58.464 The real growth is happening in the emergent economies: 00:30:58.633 --> 00:31:03.121 Asia, Africa, parts of South America and so on. And it's heading to 9 billion. 00:31:03.305 --> 00:31:06.100 The other thing that's happening is that the world is becoming increasingly urbanized. 00:31:06.346 --> 00:31:15.733 At the beginning of the 18th century, until 19th century, most people lived in the countryside. 00:31:15.933 --> 00:31:20.700 About 3% of people lived in the cities. Of course, the great social movement of industrialism 00:31:20.854 --> 00:31:22.708 was the migration to the cities. 00:31:23.000 --> 00:31:28.587 But even so, at the turn of the 20th century, still, something less than 20% of the people lived in cities. 00:31:28.848 --> 00:31:34.748 Currently, 50% of the world's population lives in cities. 50% of the 6 billion, 00:31:34.810 --> 00:31:39.621 and we are heading to 60% of nine billion people living in cities - 00:31:39.744 --> 00:31:47.082 not here, not in UK, not in America, not in the rest of Europe, but in the emergent economies. 00:31:47.221 --> 00:31:50.252 Now, this massive migration is without precedent. 00:31:51.052 --> 00:31:56.048 So these aren't going to be groovy cities, you know, with information booths and property taxes and Starbucks. 00:31:56.218 --> 00:32:00.915 These are massive, sprawling, vernacular cities, probably more like this. 00:32:02.100 --> 00:32:07.933 This is Caracas, in Venezuela. A massive and rapidly growing metropolis. 00:32:08.456 --> 00:32:14.102 The greater Tokyo, at the moment, has a population of 35 million people, which is more 00:32:14.102 --> 00:32:17.754 than the entire population of Canada, in one place. 00:32:17.908 --> 00:32:22.798 Now about the middle of the century, there may be 20 megacities, over 500 cities over a million. 00:32:22.952 --> 00:32:27.667 You can see my point, here, that these are unprecedented circumstances, 00:32:27.729 --> 00:32:33.467 an unprecedented drain on the earth's resources, an unprecedented demand for innovation, 00:32:33.467 --> 00:32:38.885 for fresh thinking, fresh social systems, fresh ways forgetting people to connect with themselves 00:32:38.885 --> 00:32:41.169 and have lives with purpose and meaning. 00:32:43.538 --> 00:32:49.198 Education is a major part of the solution. The problem is, I believe, we are backing the wrong horses. 00:32:49.705 --> 00:32:53.998 Now, there was a report by McKinsey recently, which showed this 00:32:54.259 --> 00:33:01.141 These are American figures. In America, since 1980 more or less, spending on education 00:33:01.279 --> 00:33:05.964 has increased 73% in real money. 00:33:07.010 --> 00:33:10.698 Class sizes have gone down to historically low levels. 00:33:11.698 --> 00:33:17.715 But on this indicator, literacy, there has been no change in achievement. 00:33:17.885 --> 00:33:19.831 More money, smaller classes, no change. 00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:26.967 Drop-put rates are increasing, graduation rates are declining: it's a major problem. 00:33:27.182 --> 00:33:32.152 The problem is, they're trying to meet the future by doing what they did in the past. 00:33:32.275 --> 00:33:37.682 And on the way, they're alienating millions of kids who don't see any purpose in going to school. 00:33:37.990 --> 00:33:42.092 When we went to school, we were kept there with a story, which was that if you worked hard 00:33:42.092 --> 00:33:45.167 and did well, and got a college degree, you would have a job. 00:33:45.444 --> 00:33:48.862 Our kids don't believe that. And they're right not to, by the way. 00:33:48.862 --> 00:33:53.562 You're better having a degree than not, but it's not a guarantee anymore, and particularly not if 00:33:53.562 --> 00:33:57.846 the route to it marginalizes most of the things that you think are important about yourself. 00:33:57.954 --> 00:34:01.941 And one thing that sits right in the middle of this is this idea 00:34:01.941 --> 00:34:04.856 that there are academic and non academic kids, that something called vocational training, 00:34:05.056 --> 00:34:11.585 which is not as good as academic education, that people with theoretical degrees 00:34:11.585 --> 00:34:20.202 are inherently better people than those who can do real craft and the kind of work which 00:34:20.264 --> 00:34:22.118 previously would have been venerated in Guild systems. 00:34:22.548 --> 00:34:27.033 We have this intellectual apartheid running through education. 00:34:27.187 --> 00:34:30.282 And so, lots of people try to defend it or to repair it. 00:34:30.405 --> 00:34:34.667 I think we just got to reconize its mythical. And we have to strip it out of our thinking. 00:34:36.775 --> 00:34:39.985 This is one of the consequences of it. Let me ask you another question. 00:34:40.215 --> 00:34:49.748 How many of you who are not - how many of you over 30 have had your tonsils removed? Be frank with me. 00:34:49.948 --> 00:34:57.902 Come. OK. I ask you this for a reason, connected with things we take for granted. 00:34:58.102 --> 00:35:05.302 People of my generation, and I was born in 1950. Now, I know you don't believe that. 00:35:05.918 --> 00:35:08.118 I can see the sense of incredulity sweeping through the room, eh? 00:35:09.841 --> 00:35:13.115 "How could it be?", you're saying to yourselves. Well, I live in Los Angeles, you know. 00:35:15.792 --> 00:35:26.338 I have worked on it, what can I tell you? But er, no but people of my generation, in the 50's and 60's, 00:35:26.338 --> 00:35:32.271 and in the 40's, I guess. The minute they had a sore throat, somebody pounced on them 00:35:32.271 --> 00:35:38.110 and took their tonsils out. That's true, isn't it? It was routine to have your tonsils removed. 00:35:38.110 --> 00:35:42.479 You could not afford to have a ticklish cough in the 1950's, 00:35:43.125 --> 00:35:47.131 or somebody would reach for your throat, and hey pronto, would remove your tonsils. 00:35:47.792 --> 00:35:51.882 It was routine. Millions of tonsils were removed in that period. 00:35:52.098 --> 00:35:57.352 What happened to them? We don't know. I mean - I believe it's a scandal, I don't know, but - 00:35:57.475 --> 00:36:00.395 It's one of those things like Rockwell, you know, like area 56. 00:36:00.395 --> 00:36:03.982 Somewhere in America, in a desert, there is this stockpile. Anyway. 00:36:05.336 --> 00:36:10.515 Now the thing about this is this, that nowadays, people do have tonsilectomies, 00:36:11.885 --> 00:36:19.452 but it's not common. It's unusual to have it done. You have to have a chronic case, 00:36:20.621 --> 00:36:24.333 with no hope of it being repaired in some other way, to have your tonsils taken out. 00:36:24.671 --> 00:36:27.015 When I was growing up, they were thought to be totally disposable. 00:36:27.138 --> 00:36:29.975 We just wipped them out and let's not have anymore nonsense out them. 00:36:29.975 --> 00:36:33.198 And some people voluntarily had it done, so that they could get the ice cream. 00:36:35.229 --> 00:36:41.600 Our children, this generation, do not suffer the plague of tonsilectomies. 00:36:41.754 --> 00:36:48.067 Instead, they suffer this: this is the modern epidemic, and it is as misplaced, and it's as fictitious. 00:36:48.421 --> 00:36:57.092 This is the plague of ADHD. Now, this is a map of the incidence of ADHD in America, 00:36:57.092 --> 00:37:03.415 or prescriptions for ADHD. Don't mistake me: I don't mean to say there is no such thing 00:37:03.462 --> 00:37:08.379 as Attention Deficit Disorder. I'm not qualified to say if there is such a thing. 00:37:08.533 --> 00:37:12.587 I know that a great majority of psychologists and pediatricians think there is such a thing. 00:37:13.525 --> 00:37:15.302 But it's still a matter of debate. 00:37:17.133 --> 00:37:24.802 What I do know for a fact, is it's not an epidemic. I believe that these kids are being medicated 00:37:25.048 --> 00:37:30.515 as routinely as we had our tonsils taken out, and on the same whimsical basis, 00:37:30.654 --> 00:37:33.348 and for the same reason: medical fashion. 00:37:34.071 --> 00:37:41.013 Our children are living in the most intense, intensely stimulating period in the history of the earth. 00:37:42.029 --> 00:37:46.213 They are being besieged with information and calls to their attention 00:37:46.321 --> 00:37:51.429 from every platform: computers, from iPhones, from advertising hoardings, 00:37:51.429 --> 00:37:52.913 from hundreds of television channels. 00:37:52.913 --> 00:37:55.979 And we are penalizing them now for getting distracted. 00:37:57.179 --> 00:38:02.364 from what? you know, boring stuff at school, for the most part. 00:38:02.487 --> 00:38:06.838 It seems to me it's not a coincidence, totally, that the incidence of ADHD has risen in parallel 00:38:06.838 --> 00:38:08.400 with the growth of standardized testing. 00:38:09.508 --> 00:38:13.433 Now, these kids are being given Ritalin, and Adrol and all manner of things - 00:38:13.510 --> 00:38:17.464 often quite dangerous drugs - to get them focused and calm them down. 00:38:19.125 --> 00:38:21.748 Now, I know this is nonsense, immediately you see this thing, 00:38:22.256 --> 00:38:24.915 because the light areas are where there isn't much of it. 00:38:24.915 --> 00:38:31.831 Now I live in California and people there won't pay attention for more than a minute and a half, 00:38:31.985 --> 00:38:36.854 you know, so - but according to this, Attention Deficit Disorder increases 00:38:36.854 --> 00:38:38.538 as you travel East across the country. 00:38:38.708 --> 00:38:41.013 People start losing interest in Oklahoma, 00:38:47.721 --> 00:38:49.544 they can hardly think straight in Arkansas, 00:38:50.744 --> 00:38:53.400 and by the time you get to Washington, they've lost it completely. 00:38:54.615 --> 00:38:56.469 And there are separate reasons for that, I believe. 00:38:58.054 --> 00:39:03.441 It's a fictitious disease. I'm sorry, I don't want to say it's a fictitious condition, 00:39:03.441 --> 00:39:04.741 it's a fictitious epidemic. 00:39:04.941 --> 00:39:07.659 As I was saying earlier, I have a big interest in the arts 00:39:07.659 --> 00:39:15.356 And if you think of it, the arts - and I don't say it's exclusively the arts, I think 00:39:15.356 --> 00:39:19.629 it's also true of science and of math - but let me - I say about the arts, particularly, because 00:39:19.629 --> 00:39:23.367 they are the victims of this mentality, currently, particularly. 00:39:24.090 --> 00:39:30.448 The arts especially address the idea of aesthetic experience. 00:39:30.541 --> 00:39:35.333 An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak. 00:39:35.410 --> 00:39:40.138 When you're present in the current moment, when you're resonating with the excitement of this thing 00:39:40.138 --> 00:39:43.015 that you're experiencing, when you are fully alive. 00:39:43.938 --> 00:39:49.685 And anaesthetic is when you shut your senses off and deaden yourself to what's happening. 00:39:49.885 --> 00:39:56.248 And a lot of these drugs are that. We are getting our children through education by anaesthetizing them. 00:39:57.018 --> 00:40:00.292 And I think we should be doing the exact opposite. We shouldn't be putting them asleep, 00:40:00.292 --> 00:40:03.167 we should be waking them up to what they have inside of themselves. 00:40:03.567 --> 00:40:09.715 But the model we have is this: its - I believe we have a system of education that is modeled on 00:40:09.777 --> 00:40:14.085 the interest of industrialism, and in the image of it. 00:40:14.715 --> 00:40:19.100 I'll give you a couple of examples. Schools are still pretty much organized on factory lines: 00:40:19.208 --> 00:40:24.218 ringing bells, separate facilities, specialized into separate subjects. 00:40:24.925 --> 00:40:30.685 We still educate children by batches, you know, we put them through the system by age group. 00:40:30.915 --> 00:40:36.231 Why do we do that? you know, Why is there this assumption that the most important thing 00:40:36.262 --> 00:40:40.444 kids have in common is how old they are? You know, it's like the most important thing about them 00:40:40.444 --> 00:40:45.125 is their date of manufacture. I mean, well I know kids who are much better than an other kids 00:40:45.125 --> 00:40:49.064 of the same age in different disciplines, you know, or at different times of the day. 00:40:49.156 --> 00:40:52.698 Or better in small groups than in large groups. Or sometimes, they want to be on their own. 00:40:52.852 --> 00:40:57.067 If you're interested in the model of learning, you don't start from this production line mentality. 00:40:57.113 --> 00:40:59.556 These are some of the keywords in the industrial model: 00:40:59.556 --> 00:41:04.805 Utility, which shapes the curriculum; linearity, which informs choices and the assumptions 00:41:04.805 --> 00:41:06.567 of what matters and what doesn't. 00:41:06.567 --> 00:41:10.062 It's essentially about conformity, increasingly, it's about that, if you look at the growth 00:41:10.077 --> 00:41:14.364 of standardized testing and standardized curricula. And it's about standardization. 00:41:14.995 --> 00:41:17.195 Now, for reasons we'll come to before we're done, 00:41:17.195 --> 00:41:18.695 I believe we have to go in the exact opposite direction. 00:41:19.048 --> 00:41:23.585 That's what I mean by changing the paradigm. We have to question what we take for granted. 00:41:23.862 --> 00:41:27.052 The problem in questioning what we take for granted is that we don't know what it is. 00:41:27.267 --> 00:41:29.029 Let's have a quick read of this. 00:41:29.167 --> 00:41:32.085 (B Russell: man as 4 astronomer or 4 Hamlet or both?) 00:41:32.085 --> 00:41:35.948 I love this quote. As you can see, it's from Bertrand Russell. 00:41:37.564 --> 00:41:42.752 And it seems to me to be the quintessential question of Western philosophy, you know. 00:41:43.090 --> 00:41:49.967 When it comes to it, what is this? Are we all that Hamlet thought we were, 00:41:50.090 --> 00:41:53.198 or are we just a kind of cosmic accident of no importance? 00:41:53.475 --> 00:41:59.333 I got very interested in this first part of the question, this "small, unimportant planet". 00:42:01.702 --> 00:42:05.398 Well, how small, you know, how unimportant is this planet? 00:42:05.521 --> 00:42:10.148 It's hard to get an image of this, isn't it, because, if you think of it, 00:42:10.271 --> 00:42:14.254 the distances of space are so vast, you know, like for example, this is an image from the Hubble telescope. 00:42:14.454 --> 00:42:16.354 This is the Magellanic cloud. 00:42:18.046 --> 00:42:24.136 Well, you know, distance in space is measured in light-years, distance that light travels in a year, 00:42:24.382 --> 00:42:30.800 which is far, truthfully. I mean that's farther than Brighton, you know, really. 00:42:32.046 --> 00:42:37.631 Now that's 170'000 light years. I mean, can you get your head round them? 00:42:37.815 --> 00:42:39.315 It's just: oh, it's big. 00:42:40.346 --> 00:42:42.062 On Wednesday .... all of that 00:42:42.169 --> 00:42:45.387 The problem with getting any sense of how big the earth is, or small is, the distances are so immense 00:42:45.387 --> 00:42:49.267 that they blear our perception of relative size. So I came across this image. 00:42:49.513 --> 00:42:51.936 ... it is on the internet, I just quickly want to show them to you. 00:42:52.198 --> 00:42:55.302 I think they are fantastic. I had them rerendered for your benefit. 00:42:56.441 --> 00:43:01.802 These are pictures of - somebody had the brilliant idea of taking the Earth out of the sky 00:43:03.233 --> 00:43:05.813 and lining it up with the other - with some other planets in the solar system 00:43:05.813 --> 00:43:12.871 for purpose of comparison of size. So it's like a team photo, you know, of some of the planets 00:43:12.871 --> 00:43:15.433 in the solar system and beyond. It starts with this: 00:43:18.733 --> 00:43:24.987 ..... I love that image. ..... I think we're looking good, that's what the first example is. 00:43:27.341 --> 00:43:30.454 There are a couple of things I want to say about - a couple of things I want to say about this. 00:43:30.454 --> 00:43:34.764 The first is that I think we are less concerned than we were about being invaded by Martian hoards. 00:43:36.902 --> 00:43:43.341 Aren't we? I mean, bring it on, I feel, like, you and whose army - I think we are feeling. 00:43:45.818 --> 00:43:49.941 The second thing is that Pluto is no longer a planet. And frankly, we can see why, now, can't we? 00:43:49.941 --> 00:43:53.815 I mean, what were we thinking, you know, it's a boulder, frankly. 00:43:55.169 --> 00:44:01.175 So pull back a bit. though. And it's a bit less encouraging, isn't it? 00:44:05.498 --> 00:44:09.423 don't you think? A bit less encouraging. And Pluto is a kind of cosmic embarassment now, 00:44:09.454 --> 00:44:18.202 so we don't seem to (contr). But we know the sun is a big deal. But how big exactly is the sun, 00:44:18.402 --> 00:44:22.362 compared to the earth? So this is - I checked this with some astrophysicists, they said, 00:44:22.362 --> 00:44:26.033 yes, this would be about right. Here we are with the sun in the picture. 00:44:29.941 --> 00:44:34.213 Did you know that? But keep your eye on the sun, because that's not the biggest thing on the block. 00:44:35.905 --> 00:44:40.377 This the sun against some other objects not in our solar system, 00:44:40.377 --> 00:44:41.785 but that you can see in the night sky. 00:44:44.077 --> 00:44:50.056 So Jupiter is one pixel, now, and the earth is gone. So we ought to be friends with Arcturus. 00:44:53.395 --> 00:44:55.141 But keep your eye on Arcturus for a minute. 00:44:59.110 --> 00:45:01.121 So I think our bet is on Antares. 00:45:01.382 --> 00:45:04.064 I mean, that's extraordinary, isn't it? 00:45:04.818 --> 00:45:13.402 So, go back to that, and we are infinitesimally, pitifully tiny in the great cosmic scheme. 00:45:13.802 --> 00:45:15.656 Now, I just want to say a couple of things, quickly. 00:45:15.979 --> 00:45:24.402 The first is, whatever you woke up worrying about, this morning, really, get over it. 00:45:24.725 --> 00:45:29.279 Honestly, make the call and move on. 00:45:30.941 --> 00:45:40.048 But the second thing is this: that this may be, but we do have this extraodinary power. 00:45:40.279 --> 00:45:46.256 And I can put it this way: we have a power, which enables us to conceive 00:45:46.256 --> 00:45:47.664 of our own insignificance. 00:45:48.818 --> 00:45:54.518 No other species on earth is sitting around, getting anxiety attacks over these images, you know. 00:45:54.748 --> 00:46:00.590 You don't see other species, in little forest clearings, saying, "I have no idea that you have - 00:46:00.729 --> 00:46:07.290 I mean, trust me. I wasn't expecting this." They won't. And they didn't produce these images either. 00:46:07.290 --> 00:46:15.064 We have this extraordinary human power to conceive of objects outside of our current experience 00:46:15.279 --> 00:46:21.085 and to express them in conceptual, symbolic forms, in ways that other people can engage with and grasp. 00:46:21.454 --> 00:46:27.044 And we are therefore the species that did produce Hamlet and the work of Mozart 00:46:27.244 --> 00:46:30.933 and the Industrial Revolution, and this extraordinary building, with its amazing images 00:46:31.133 --> 00:46:37.354 and hip hop, and jazz, and quantum mechanics, and the theory of relativity, and air travel, 00:46:37.354 --> 00:46:43.129 and the jet engine, and all the things that characterize the extraordinary ascent of human culture. 00:46:43.175 --> 00:46:48.615 But we destroy it in the way we educate, but I just want to end it and open up for some conversation 00:46:48.615 --> 00:46:54.787 by giving an example of something. There was a great study done recently of divergent thinking. 00:46:56.402 --> 00:47:00.715 It was published a couple of years ago. Divergent thinking isn't the same thing as creativity. 00:47:00.931 --> 00:47:05.448 I define creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value. 00:47:05.895 --> 00:47:12.818 Divergent thinking isn't a synonym, but it is an essential capacity for creativity. 00:47:13.310 --> 00:47:20.475 It's the ability to - to see lots of possible answers to a question, lots of possible ways 00:47:20.475 --> 00:47:24.467 of interpreting a question, to think whatever de Bono would call laterally, 00:47:26.082 --> 00:47:29.882 to think not just in linear or convergent ways. 00:47:30.436 --> 00:47:34.210 To see multiple answers, not one. So I made a little test for this, 00:47:34.210 --> 00:47:37.169 I mean one kind of counterexample would be, people might be asked to say 00:47:37.431 --> 00:47:42.487 how many uses can you think of for a paper clip. That's routine questions. 00:47:42.841 --> 00:47:46.667 Most people might come with 10 or 15. People who are good at this might come with 200. 00:47:47.482 --> 00:47:51.815 And they do that by saying, well, could the paper clip be turned - could be made out of foam rubber, 00:47:52.177 --> 00:47:54.915 you know, like, does this have to be a paper clip as we know it, jim, you know. 00:47:56.100 --> 00:48:00.210 Now, there are tests of this, and I gave them to 1500 people, it is in a bok called 00:48:00.210 --> 00:48:05.048 "Break Point and Beyond". And on the protocol of the text, if you score above a certain level, 00:48:05.679 --> 00:48:08.648 you'd be considered to be a genius at divergent thinking. 00:48:10.002 --> 00:48:16.031 So my question to you is what percentage of the people tested, of the 1500, 00:48:16.031 --> 00:48:18.733 scored at genius level for divergent thinking? 00:48:19.041 --> 00:48:24.031 Now you need to know one more thing about them: these were kndergarden children, OK? 00:48:24.262 --> 00:48:27.264 So what do you think? What percentage at genius level? 00:48:27.448 --> 00:48:30.900 (from the audience: 80) KR: 80 - 80 OK? 00:48:35.162 --> 00:48:40.633 It's not correct. 98%. Now, the thing about this was it was a longitudinal study. 00:48:41.525 --> 00:48:46.648 So they re-tested the same children 5 years later, age of 8 to 10. 00:48:46.648 --> 00:48:47.941 What do you think? 00:48:50.000 --> 00:49:01.213 50? They retested them again 5 years later, ages 13 to 15. You can see a trend here, can't you? 00:49:04.782 --> 00:49:11.515 They tested 200'000 adults, 25 years and older, just once, as a control. What do you think? 00:49:12.931 --> 00:49:14.346 Yes, you know. 00:49:15.815 --> 00:49:18.492 Now, I always say, if you are in business, these are the people you're hiring, OK? 00:49:18.600 --> 00:49:26.038 So now, this tells an interesting story, because you could have imagined it going the other way. 00:49:26.408 --> 00:49:30.823 Couldn't you? You start of not being very good, but you get better as you get older. 00:49:31.162 --> 00:49:37.915 But this shows two things. One is, we all have this capacity, and two, it mostly deteriorates. 00:49:38.131 --> 00:49:41.485 Now, lots of things have happened to these kids as they've grown up, a lot. 00:49:41.823 --> 00:49:46.864 But one of the most important things out of them, I'm convinced, is that by now, they've become educated. 00:49:47.218 --> 00:49:50.700 You know, they've spent 10 years at school, being told that there's one answer, it's at the back. 00:49:50.915 --> 00:49:56.600 And don't look. And don't copy, because that's cheating. 00:49:56.815 --> 00:50:01.467 I mean, outside school, that's called collaboration, you know, but inside schools. 00:50:01.744 --> 00:50:05.833 Now this isn't because teachers want to do it this way. It's just because it happens that way. 00:50:07.156 --> 00:50:10.698 It's because it's in the gene pool of education. 00:50:11.467 --> 00:50:13.431 And to transform it, we have to think differently 00:50:13.431 --> 00:50:14.900 Well let me just quickly save this - about that - 00:50:15.054 --> 00:50:17.429 we have to think differently about human capacity 00:50:17.582 --> 00:50:22.095 This is what in my book "The Element" is about. We have to get over this old conception 00:50:22.395 --> 00:50:26.354 of academic, non academic, abstract, theoretical 00:50:26.508 --> 00:50:30.413 vocational, and see it for what it is: a myth 00:50:31.902 --> 00:50:35.082 Second, we have to recognize that most great learning happens in groups 00:50:35.764 --> 00:50:41.756 that collaboration is the stuff of growth, you know, if we atomize people and separate them 00:50:42.029 --> 00:50:47.929 and judge them separately, we form a kind of disjunction between them and their natural learning environment. 00:50:48.664 --> 00:50:53.148 And thirdly, it's crucially about the culture of our institutions, the habits of the institutions, 00:50:53.541 --> 00:50:58.125 and the habitats that they occupy. Let me just put my hand on it. 00:50:58.744 --> 00:51:03.425 A great quote recently, which seemed to me to capture some of this, 00:51:03.710 --> 00:51:08.440 about this distinction between ourselves and the species. 00:51:10.555 --> 00:51:19.995 and it says - just find it - probably in my other suit, isn't it? It's about - here we go: 00:51:21.925 --> 00:51:27.729 I rather like this, as a view. It says that when we come to assess people, we should be fairer with ourselves 00:51:28.513 --> 00:51:33.833 It says: "After all, human beings were born of risen apes, not fallen angels. 00:51:35.102 --> 00:51:41.177 And so what shall we wonder at? Our massacres? Our missiles? Or our symphones? 00:51:42.518 --> 00:51:47.410 The miracle of human kind is not how far we have sunk, but how magnificently we have risen. 00:51:47.633 --> 00:51:52.779 We will be known among the stars, not by our corpses, but by our poems." 00:51:53.848 --> 00:51:55.510 And I believe there's a fair amount of profound truth in that. 00:51:57.348 --> 00:52:02.305 We have it in our grasp to form systems of education based on these different principles 00:52:03.095 --> 00:52:10.587 But it means a shift from the industrial metaphor of education to what I think of as the - an agricultural metaphor. 00:52:10.918 --> 00:52:14.546 If you think of it, if you look at the organizational chart of most companies and organizations, 00:52:15.271 --> 00:52:21.969 it looks a bit like a wiring diagram, doesn't it, if you look at the structure, like boxes and things that are connected 00:52:22.982 --> 00:52:26.895 But human organizations are not like mechanisms, 00:52:27.105 --> 00:52:30.244 even though these charts suggest the metaphor that they are. 00:52:30.323 --> 00:52:32.795 Human organizations are much more like organisms. 00:52:34.138 --> 00:52:39.436 That's to say, they depend upon feelings and relationships, and motivation, 00:52:39.925 --> 00:52:44.552 and value, self-value, and a sense of identity, and of community. 00:52:44.877 --> 00:52:49.346 You know the way you work in an organization is you're deeply affected by your feeling for it. 00:52:51.144 --> 00:52:56.933 Therefore, I think, a much better metaphor is not industrialism but agriculture or an organic metaphor. 00:52:57.259 --> 00:53:02.864 I'm doing a whole project in the State of Oklahoma, where I'm trying to develop these ideas across the whole State. 00:53:02.864 --> 00:53:05.929 But I mentioned Las Vegas at the beginning. I want to show a last image of this now. 00:53:06.256 --> 00:53:10.615 Not far from Las Vegas there is a place called Death Valley. 00:53:10.746 --> 00:53:14.929 Death Valley is the hottest place in America. Not much rse in Death Valley. 00:53:16.136 --> 00:53:22.305 Because it doesn't rain. In the Winter of 2004, something remarkable happened. 00:53:22.305 --> 00:53:30.662 It rained. 7 inches. And in the Spring of 2005, there was a phenomenon. The whole flora of Death Valley 00:53:31.244 --> 00:53:36.675 was coated with Spring flowers. Photographers and botanist scientists came from all across of America 00:53:37.192 --> 00:53:41.829 to witness this thing they might not see again. What it demonstrated was that Death Valley 00:53:42.095 --> 00:53:47.713 wasn't dead. It was asleep. Right beneath the surface were these seeds of growth 00:53:47.941 --> 00:53:51.723 waiting for conditions. And I believe it's exactly the same way with human beings. 00:53:51.967 --> 00:53:56.910 If we create the right conditions in our schools - if we create the right incentives, 00:53:56.964 --> 00:54:01.995 if we value each learner for themselves and properly, growth will happen. 00:54:02.129 --> 00:54:06.836 And the growth always happens before - I don't know, I wanted to show you a couple of very short videos, 00:54:06.836 --> 00:54:09.398 that will demonstrate, but we are going to our discussion, ... just now 00:54:10.375 --> 00:54:15.059 But I think we need to shift from this industrial paradigm to an organic paradigm. 00:54:15.205 --> 00:54:19.721 And I think it's perfectly doable. We need to conceive institutions individually, 00:54:19.721 --> 00:54:26.990 not systemized, as ones that don't just value utility, but respect and promote living vitality, 00:54:27.121 --> 00:54:31.018 the energy of the organization and its potential to be transformative, 00:54:31.018 --> 00:54:36.077 that doesn't think in terms of linearity but thinks of creativity and multiple options and lots of possibilities for everybody in it, 00:54:36.246 --> 00:54:41.708 that's not about conformity but about diversity and is critically about customization. 00:54:41.867 --> 00:54:46.646 This is Death Valley in the Spring of 2005. I think all our schools could be like that. 00:54:46.810 --> 00:54:50.298 Somebody once said: "The problem of human beings is not that we aim too high and fail, 00:54:50.559 --> 00:54:53.744 it's we aim too low and succeed." 00:54:54.013 --> 00:54:58.475 And I think we owe it to William Shipley and Benjamin Franklin to aim high. 00:54:58.521 --> 00:55:02.795 Benjamin Franklin once notably said: "There are three sorts of people in the world: 00:55:04.069 --> 00:55:10.133 Those who are immovable, those who are movable, and those who move." 00:55:10.662 --> 00:55:19.762 And I encourage you, with the RSA, to move, and get a move on. Thank you. (Applause)