[Music]
[Birds tweeting]
Ever feel like you’re capable
of far more than what society expects of you?
I know I do.
Remember being a teenage
and school being less about a passion to learn
and more about getting good grades?
How many times did you sit in class
bored and desperate to just get away?
Every teen’s felt that.
Albert Einstein acted on it.
Age just 15,
he’s sitting in class,
when all of a sudden,
he decides enough is enough,
gets up and walks right out the door.
He never goes back.
Remember being a kid
and just wanting to play around with stuff,
pull things apart,
knock things together,
and the grown-up saying, “No, no, no,”
or being called good for sitting still
or naughty when you couldn’t bear
to sit still any longer.
It’s all completely well-intentioned, of course.
But that doesn’t make it any less insane,
because the fact is,
our capacity to create and learn
knows no bounds,
and the latest research proves it.
The invention of MRI scans
only in the past 25 years
has allowed scientists to see
which parts of the brain
are used by different kinds of thinking.
We now know infinitely more than we did
about how we learn
and what makes up human intelligence,
and it’s extraordinary.
So want to know what you’re really capable of?
Let’s start at the beginning.
A baby’s brain is amazing.
It doesn’t take nine months to create.
It’s taken 7 million years
and around 350,000 generations.
All the skills, knowledge, and talents
cultivated by our ancestors
are stored inside it.
These are like numerous software programs,
which can only be activated
by the baby engaging with its environment.
Here’s the striking thing.
If not activated at the most appropriate time,
they simply disappear.
Take language.
If a child doesn’t hear language
by around the age of 8,
they may never learn to speak.
So you can see just how important
our interactions are.
They ignite our dormant intelligence,
and they reinforce it too.
There’s something else.
We’ve evolved to learn by looking at things
from different perspectives
and making connections between thing,
and we do that through play.
So wouldn’t it be amazing
if we bore all this in mind when raising kids,
letting them play when they’re little,
and when they’re older too.
Charles Darwin’s teacher said
he’d never amount to much,
because he spent too much time
playing with insects.
So let children play,
because it’s never just play.
Of course, it takes more time and energy
to do this.
But when you’re deciding where to focus
resources for kids learning,
you couldn’t do better
than focusing on pre-puberty.
That’s when we learn by copying
the people around us.
After 12, or there abouts, it’s all change.
Say goodbye to pliable, easy child,
and "Hello, rebellious, challenging teenager."
Lah!. Where did that cute baby go?
Oh, well.
Let’s have another look at that brain.
See what’s happening?
Loads of the connections
made through childhood
are breaking up and reforming.
From around the age of about 12 through to 20,
the equivalent of an earthquake
takes place in a young person’s brain.
No more going along
with what the grown-ups say.
The adolescent brain needs to go its own way.
“Oh, no.” say parents.
“Oh, yes,” say evolutionary scientists,
because if we hadn’t developed this urge
to do things differently,
we would never have made it this far.
Up until about 60 or 70,000 years ago,
it was fine for children
to grow up like their parents.
But then along came the last Ice Age.
Thank goodness for the handful of our ancestors
who chose to break away
from their doomed parents
freezing to death in the ancestral caves.
They built rafts and set off across the ocean,
hoping to find a place with a warmer climate.
Critically, this made risk-taking
the essential feature of adolescence.
We shouldn’t belittle adolescence.
We should be honoring it for what it really is—
the defining struggle;
the moment when the next generation
challenges the status quo
and pioneers new ways of thinking and being
that ensure our survival.
Now, just imagine if we actually gave
adolescents the freedom to undertake
that struggle,
rather than force them to sit passively in class.
How about trusting that their earlier
clone-like learning
now enables adolescence to spread their wings
and work things out for themselves.
If that sounds terrifying,
it needn’t be,
because if we allowed their natural curiosity
to flourish in childhood,
they’ll be bursting with the longing to learn
and climb unscaled mountains of the mind
and that’s not scary.
That’s exhilarating.
This is the way we’ve evolved to be.
It’s what makes us fulfilled,
well-adjusted human begins.
Let’s stop trying to live in a way
that so goes against how we’re hardwired to live.
Let’s allow ourselves and the next generation
to reclaim the incredible gift of our ancestors.
Adolescence is not a problem.
It’s an opportunity.