Sound minds and sound bodies | Maxted Neal | TEDxHultLondon

Tomorrow’s education is crucial to creating a more informed, more able and well-rounded population. But how can we try and predict tomorrow’s education?

In this TEDx talk, Maxted argues that tomorrow’s education is already all around us and viewable through 'signals of change'. Maxted sets out a vision of how education can create Sound Minds in Sound Bodies for a better tomorrow. Max is an Adjunct Professor at Hult International Business School, teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as delivering resilience and performance sessions at the executive level with their executive education arm, Ashridge. Max is also Head of Professional Services for Neal Training. Outside of education, Max has consulted for organisations across the Middle East, the United States and in the UK, working with multinational corporations, governmental departments, the military, and elite sports teams. His specialist area is the use of technology to measure and analyse burnout, recovery and stress. By analysing physiological data, Max builds a personalised picture of the brain-body connection to take a data-based approach to improving resilience, performance and well-being.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Hello everyone.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

So, what I want to do today
is I want to share with you an idea

about the industry that I'm lucky
enough to find myself in.

I want to share with you an idea
about the future of education.

But the next 15 minutes I'm not going
to be getting out my crystal ball

and making a wise,
mystical prediction of the future,

nor am I going to throw up
an Excel spread sheet

and give you a data-driven,
analytical forecast of the future.

What I want to do over the next 15 minutes
is I want to set out a vision

of what education can be,
looking forward to the future,

while understanding what's around us now
and what's behind us.

I want to set out a vision

of how education can create
sound minds and sound bodies.

So, as Vera said, my name is Maxted Neal,
and over the course of my career,

I've operated across a wide variety
of different educational contexts.

I have coached sport.

I've taught undergraduate
and postgraduate education.

I have facilitated executive education.

And over the course of this career,

something's been nagging away
in the back of my mind,

something I can't quite ignore anymore,

something that's telling me that education
in its current form is failing our youth.

And where this started
is when I failed in education,

and I failed quite spectacularly.

I went to three different
secondary schools.

I struggled with mental health.

I never ever thought I'd make it
to higher education and university,

let alone become an educator.

I was so convinced
that I wouldn't make it to university

that while most of my colleagues
found out their A-level,

or secondary school results
with their families,

I found out mine
on a break from a night shift,

where I was working at that time.

But by some miracle
I managed to get to university.

Unfortunately this is where my failure
in education dropped off a cliff,

and I really suffered with mental health,

really, really struggled, to the point
where I dropped out after a year -

no purpose, no direction, no idea
of who I was or where I wanted to go.

And if it hadn't been for the support
of my amazing family,

as well as four fantastic educators -
Andy, Toby, Brendan and Jake,

I wouldn't be where I was today -
or where I am today.

But the problem is that not everyone gets
an amazing supportive family.

Not everyone gets a Jake,
Andy, Brendan, and Toby.

So how can we go from a system
that is systematically failing our youth

to one that is systematically
succeeding for our youth.

In order to do that we need
to understand what's coming up.

We need to understand
what education can be like in the future.

And the way we can do that is looking at
something called signals of change.

Now, the reason why
I'm not making a prediction,

the reason why I'm not making a forecast
of what education can be like,

is because the Institute for the Future

suggests that the future
is already all around us

and visible in something
called "signals of change."

Now, signals of change can be anything.

Signals of change
can be a disruptive new product,

an innovative new organization,
or ground-breaking new government policy.

And the crucial part
of understanding the future

is seeking out these signals of change,
and adapting to them, and embracing them.

Let me tell you a story of what happens
when this goes wrong.

It's a story about a man
called William Orton.

And William Orton was the president
of the Western Union in 1867.

And he was presented by a young inventor
with a signal of change, a new invention.

The inventor was a chap
called Alexander Graham Bell,

and he was presenting the telephone.

And when he presented
the telephone to William Orton,

William said,

"That's not going to catch on.

It's little more than a toy."

And he had the opportunity to buy
the patent for the telephone for $100,000,

and he passed it up.

Two years later he bought
that patent, for slightly more,

in fact, $24,900,000 more,
and he called it a bargain.

And this is what we need to do.

Those of us who seek out,

those of us who engage with
and willingly adapt to signals of change

will be the pioneers of the future.

Those of us who ignore, disparage,
and dismiss signals of change

will be left behind.

So where are these signals
of change within education?

Well, the first signal of change
happened over 2300 years ago.

I said we were going to be looking back,

I just neglected to mention
quite how far back.

So when education was first conceptualized
or thought about as a philosophy

by Socrates and Plato,

they set out the purpose
of education very clearly.

And what they said was
it was to attain knowledge.

The purpose of education
is to attain knowledge.

Which is great, and absolutely, yes it is,

and that is still a belief
that prevails to this day.

But our first signal of change comes
when Aristotle develops his own divergent,

disruptive, innovative
philosophy of education.

Aristotle said, yes, absolutely,

the purpose of education
was to attain knowledge,

but it was also to achieve goodness -

goodness of intellect
and goodness of character.

The irony is that we still
have not adapted to this signal of change

almost 2300 years later.

Crucially, what they all
agreed upon, however,

was that the definition of education
was to create sound mind and sound bodies.

You impressed that I made it
this far through a TED Talk

without giving you
a definition of something? I am.

But this principle, this philosophy
of education forms the foundation

upon which this idea for the vision
the future is built on.

And it has three pillars
of what education can be like

in order to achieve
sound minds and sound bodies.

And the first of these is the idea
that we need to develop skills

through teaching knowledge.

As I'm sure you've heard from
the speakers that have come before me,

employers are crying out
for skilled individuals.

What we're seeing now is that students
and people leaving education

are no longer valuable because
of their knowledge they have

but the skills they have.

So what is the signal of change
that means that we need this?

Well, it's something called
the democratization of knowledge.

And in describing it I've fallen foul

of one of the problems
with education at the moment

in that we use jargon
and we use academic language

in order to gatekeep this knowledge.

So what do I mean by
'democratization of knowledge'?

Well, let me ask you:
If you want to find something out,

if you want to learn something new,
what do you do? Where do you go?

Do you consult your old
exercise books from school,

have a look through your textbooks

or give Mrs Smith
from year three a quick call?

'Hi, Mrs Smith, I was just wondering,
do you know anything about Bitcoin?

It's Max from year three. Excuse me.'

No, you don't, you go on Google
at the first level; you search it.

And then, once you've googled it
you might go on YouTube

and watch an introductory video about it.

If you really want to know about it,
on the second level,

you might go to something
like the Khan Academy or Udemy

and get some real in-depth knowledge.

But the real signal of change
that we have to adapt to

is the open access movement
within academic journals.

Previously, this academic knowledge,

the frontiers of human knowledge
had been gate-kept -

you can only access it
for quite a large fee

or through formal education,

but now, anyone can go on the internet,
type in what they'd like to learn about,

and access the frontiers
of human knowledge,

and this is something we have to adapt to.

We have to teach our students
how to be creative, how to collaborate,

how to communicate effectively
and think critically,

because this is what
employers are asking for,

they're not asking for students
who can perform trigonometry.

We need to develop skills
through knowledge.

The reason why I say that
is because this is not to say

there is no value in acquiring knowledge.

I absolutely wouldn't want to disparage
the ideas of Socrates and Plato.

I don't think I'm quite
qualified to do that.

But what we need to do is we need to
use knowledge as a vehicle

through which we can teach skills
and build skills.

So that's the first pillar of this idea,
this vision for the future of education.

And the second one is the idea
that we need to teach students

not what to learn but how to learn.

We need to teach students
to learn to learn.

The other speakers that have been
on stage today are going to talk about,

and have already spoken about,
how rapidly the world is changing,

at a pace we've never seen before.

And we have to be able
to adapt to these changes,

adapt to the way in which
the world is changing.

So what's the signal of change here?

We know it's changing
but how can we see this?

Well, again I'll ask you a question.

How many times did you interact
with a screen today?

As you were finding out
how to get to this venue,

as you were buying your ticket,

accessing your ticket and showing it.

How many times did you interact
with your screen today vs. five years ago?

10 years ago? 15 years ago?

The world is changing
at an unbelievable pace,

and we, to be honest,
we don't know what's coming.

So we have to be able to learn to learn.

What we start learning,

what we start teaching
at the beginning of a four year degree,

could be outdated by the end of it.

What we need to do
is we need to teach students

how to turn events into experience.

Employers are crying out
for people with experience.

But that doesn't come from just
being present at an event,

it comes from actively learning,

knowing how to learn and turning
those events into experience.

So that's the second pillar -

we need to teach students
how to learn to learn.

The third pillar of this vision
for the future of education

is one that's most personal to me
and one that I think is most important.

It's the idea of 'enriching the self'.

So if we go back to Aristotle,

what we want to develop in our students

is we want to create this goodness
of intellect and goodness of character.

Creating sound minds and sound bodies.

Education should not just provide
purpose and direction,

but empower students to find their own.

But more concerningly,
the signal of change

is that mental health issues
are on the rise.

Something that I experienced.

A study by the American Psychological
Association looks at mental health issues

within adolescents, looking at individuals
from 12 to 17 years old,

and what they found was really worrying.

A 72% increase in serious
psychological distress,

a 54% increase in a clinical
diagnosis of depression,

and a 47% increase in suicidal thoughts.

And that's just over the last 10 years.

This is not an acceptable
state of affairs.

This is not just a signal of change,

but a signal that we must change
what we do in education.

We simulate the pressures
of life fantastically,

with the exams and pressures
and the social aspects of education,

but we do a terrible job
at teaching students how to cope with it.

Teaching them resilience,

teaching them to find
their purpose, find their direction,

what motivates them, giving them a reason
to be in our classrooms

other than the fact that they are forced
to be in our classrooms.

There is a reason that Aristotle included
music, arts, theater and sports

as a key part of the curriculum.

But this relentless focus that we have in
education on exam results and lead tables,

and judging our students
by their ability to pass exams

it is robbing our youth
of their formative years,

and not enriching the self.

There's a famous proverb

that if you judge a fish
by its ability to climb a tree,

you will forever think it's stupid.

So how are we judging our fish?

Not just our fish but our elephants,
our rhinos, our ants,

all the different animals
because academia isn't right for everyone.

These three pillars are fundamentally
intertwined and inherently work together.

Skills can be developed through
the process of enriching the self.

We have to learn to learn
in order to generate these skills,

in order to take
these skills away from us.

Education can be better.

If we want to create sound minds
and sound bodies we must be better.

We must deliver skills through knowledge.

We must teach students
how to learn to learn.

If we want to create sound minds and sound
bodies, we have to enrich the self.

And also, we must do this if we want
better leaders leading better people,

inhabiting a better society.

(Applause)