0:00:01.000,0:00:03.000
I was here four years ago,

0:00:03.000,0:00:05.000
and I remember, at the time,

0:00:05.000,0:00:08.000
that the talks weren't put online.

0:00:08.000,0:00:12.000
I think they were given to TEDsters in a box,

0:00:12.000,0:00:14.000
a box set of DVDs,

0:00:14.000,0:00:17.000
which they put on their shelves, where they are now.

0:00:17.000,0:00:19.000
(Laughter)

0:00:19.000,0:00:21.000
And actually, Chris called me

0:00:21.000,0:00:23.000
a week after I'd given my talk

0:00:23.000,0:00:25.000
and he said, "We're going to start putting them online.

0:00:25.000,0:00:28.000
Can we put yours online?" And I said, "Sure."

0:00:28.000,0:00:30.000
And four years later,

0:00:30.000,0:00:32.000
as I said, it's been seen by four ...

0:00:32.000,0:00:35.000
Well, it's been downloaded four million times.

0:00:35.000,0:00:38.000
So I suppose you could multiply that by 20 or something

0:00:38.000,0:00:40.000
to get the number of people who've seen it.

0:00:40.000,0:00:44.000
And, as Chris says, there is a hunger

0:00:44.000,0:00:46.000
for videos of me.

0:00:46.000,0:00:49.000
(Laughter)

0:00:49.000,0:00:52.000
(Applause)

0:00:54.000,0:00:55.000
... don't you feel?

0:00:55.000,0:00:58.000
(Laughter)

0:01:00.000,0:01:03.000
So, this whole event has been an elaborate build-up

0:01:03.000,0:01:07.000
to me doing another one for you, so here it is.

0:01:07.000,0:01:08.000
(Laughter)

0:01:10.000,0:01:12.000
Al Gore spoke

0:01:12.000,0:01:15.000
at the TED conference I spoke at four years ago

0:01:15.000,0:01:17.000
and talked about the climate crisis.

0:01:17.000,0:01:19.000
And I referenced that

0:01:19.000,0:01:21.000
at the end of my last talk.

0:01:21.000,0:01:23.000
So I want to pick up from there

0:01:23.000,0:01:26.000
because I only had 18 minutes, frankly.

0:01:26.000,0:01:28.000
So, as I was saying...

0:01:28.000,0:01:33.000
(Laughter)

0:01:36.000,0:01:38.000
You see, he's right.

0:01:38.000,0:01:41.000
I mean, there is a major climate crisis, obviously,

0:01:41.000,0:01:44.000
and I think if people don't believe it, they should get out more.

0:01:44.000,0:01:47.000
(Laughter)

0:01:47.000,0:01:50.000
But I believe there's a second climate crisis,

0:01:51.000,0:01:53.000
which is as severe,

0:01:53.000,0:01:56.000
which has the same origins,

0:01:56.000,0:01:59.000
and that we have to deal with with the same urgency.

0:01:59.000,0:02:01.000
And I mean by this --

0:02:01.000,0:02:03.000
and you may say, by the way, "Look, I'm good.

0:02:03.000,0:02:05.000
I have one climate crisis;

0:02:05.000,0:02:08.000
I don't really need the second one."

0:02:08.000,0:02:10.000
But this is a crisis of, not natural resources --

0:02:10.000,0:02:13.000
though I believe that's true --

0:02:13.000,0:02:15.000
but a crisis of human resources.

0:02:15.000,0:02:17.000
I believe fundamentally,

0:02:17.000,0:02:19.000
as many speakers have said during the past few days,

0:02:19.000,0:02:22.000
that we make very poor use

0:02:22.000,0:02:25.000
of our talents.

0:02:25.000,0:02:27.000
Very many people go through their whole lives

0:02:27.000,0:02:30.000
having no real sense of what their talents may be,

0:02:30.000,0:02:32.000
or if they have any to speak of.

0:02:32.000,0:02:34.000
I meet all kinds of people

0:02:34.000,0:02:37.000
who don't think they're really good at anything.

0:02:38.000,0:02:41.000
Actually, I kind of divide the world into two groups now.

0:02:41.000,0:02:44.000
Jeremy Bentham, the great utilitarian philosopher,

0:02:44.000,0:02:46.000
once spiked this argument.

0:02:46.000,0:02:48.000
He said, "There are two types of people in this world:

0:02:48.000,0:02:50.000
those who divide the world into two types

0:02:50.000,0:02:52.000
and those who do not."

0:02:52.000,0:02:55.000
(Laughter)

0:02:57.000,0:02:59.000
Well, I do.

0:02:59.000,0:03:01.000
(Laughter)

0:03:04.000,0:03:06.000
I meet all kinds of people

0:03:06.000,0:03:09.000
who don't enjoy what they do.

0:03:09.000,0:03:11.000
They simply go through their lives

0:03:11.000,0:03:13.000
getting on with it.

0:03:13.000,0:03:15.000
They get no great pleasure from what they do.

0:03:15.000,0:03:18.000
They endure it rather than enjoy it

0:03:18.000,0:03:21.000
and wait for the weekend.

0:03:21.000,0:03:23.000
But I also meet people

0:03:23.000,0:03:25.000
who love what they do

0:03:25.000,0:03:27.000
and couldn't imagine doing anything else.

0:03:27.000,0:03:30.000
If you said to them, "Don't do this anymore," they'd wonder what you were talking about.

0:03:30.000,0:03:33.000
Because it isn't what they do, it's who they are. They say,

0:03:33.000,0:03:35.000
"But this is me, you know.

0:03:35.000,0:03:37.000
It would be foolish for me to abandon this, because

0:03:37.000,0:03:39.000
it speaks to my most authentic self."

0:03:39.000,0:03:42.000
And it's not true of enough people.

0:03:42.000,0:03:44.000
In fact, on the contrary, I think

0:03:44.000,0:03:46.000
it's still true of a minority of people.

0:03:46.000,0:03:48.000
I think there are many

0:03:48.000,0:03:50.000
possible explanations for it.

0:03:50.000,0:03:52.000
And high among them

0:03:52.000,0:03:54.000
is education,

0:03:54.000,0:03:56.000
because education, in a way,

0:03:56.000,0:03:58.000
dislocates very many people

0:03:58.000,0:04:00.000
from their natural talents.

0:04:00.000,0:04:03.000
And human resources are like natural resources;

0:04:03.000,0:04:05.000
they're often buried deep.

0:04:05.000,0:04:07.000
You have to go looking for them,

0:04:07.000,0:04:09.000
they're not just lying around on the surface.

0:04:09.000,0:04:12.000
You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.

0:04:12.000,0:04:14.000
And you might imagine

0:04:14.000,0:04:16.000
education would be the way that happens,

0:04:16.000,0:04:18.000
but too often it's not.

0:04:18.000,0:04:20.000
Every education system in the world

0:04:20.000,0:04:22.000
is being reformed at the moment

0:04:22.000,0:04:24.000
and it's not enough.

0:04:24.000,0:04:26.000
Reform is no use anymore,

0:04:26.000,0:04:29.000
because that's simply improving a broken model.

0:04:29.000,0:04:31.000
What we need --

0:04:31.000,0:04:33.000
and the word's been used many times during the course of the past few days --

0:04:33.000,0:04:35.000
is not evolution,

0:04:35.000,0:04:38.000
but a revolution in education.

0:04:38.000,0:04:40.000
This has to be transformed

0:04:40.000,0:04:42.000
into something else.

0:04:42.000,0:04:47.000
(Applause)

0:04:48.000,0:04:50.000
One of the real challenges

0:04:50.000,0:04:52.000
is to innovate fundamentally

0:04:52.000,0:04:54.000
in education.

0:04:54.000,0:04:56.000
Innovation is hard

0:04:56.000,0:04:58.000
because it means doing something

0:04:58.000,0:05:00.000
that people don't find very easy, for the most part.

0:05:00.000,0:05:03.000
It means challenging what we take for granted,

0:05:03.000,0:05:06.000
things that we think are obvious.

0:05:06.000,0:05:08.000
The great problem for reform

0:05:08.000,0:05:10.000
or transformation

0:05:10.000,0:05:12.000
is the tyranny of common sense;

0:05:12.000,0:05:14.000
things that people think,

0:05:14.000,0:05:16.000
"Well, it can't be done any other way because that's the way it's done."

0:05:16.000,0:05:19.000
I came across a great quote recently from Abraham Lincoln,

0:05:19.000,0:05:22.000
who I thought you'd be pleased to have quoted at this point.

0:05:22.000,0:05:24.000
(Laughter)

0:05:24.000,0:05:27.000
He said this in December 1862

0:05:27.000,0:05:30.000
to the second annual meeting of Congress.

0:05:31.000,0:05:34.000
I ought to explain that I have no idea what was happening at the time.

0:05:36.000,0:05:38.000
We don't teach American history in Britain.

0:05:38.000,0:05:40.000
(Laughter)

0:05:40.000,0:05:43.000
We suppress it. You know, this is our policy.

0:05:43.000,0:05:45.000
(Laughter)

0:05:46.000,0:05:48.000
So, no doubt, something fascinating was happening in December 1862,

0:05:48.000,0:05:50.000
which the Americans among us

0:05:50.000,0:05:52.000
will be aware of.

0:05:53.000,0:05:55.000
But he said this:

0:05:55.000,0:05:57.000
"The dogmas

0:05:57.000,0:05:59.000
of the quiet past

0:05:59.000,0:06:02.000
are inadequate to the stormy present.

0:06:02.000,0:06:04.000
The occasion

0:06:04.000,0:06:06.000
is piled high with difficulty,

0:06:06.000,0:06:09.000
and we must rise with the occasion."

0:06:09.000,0:06:11.000
I love that.

0:06:11.000,0:06:14.000
Not rise to it, rise with it.

0:06:15.000,0:06:17.000
"As our case is new,

0:06:17.000,0:06:20.000
so we must think anew

0:06:20.000,0:06:23.000
and act anew.

0:06:23.000,0:06:26.000
We must disenthrall ourselves,

0:06:26.000,0:06:29.000
and then we shall save our country."

0:06:29.000,0:06:31.000
I love that word, "disenthrall."

0:06:31.000,0:06:33.000
You know what it means?

0:06:33.000,0:06:36.000
That there are ideas that all of us are enthralled to,

0:06:36.000,0:06:38.000
which we simply take for granted

0:06:38.000,0:06:40.000
as the natural order of things, the way things are.

0:06:40.000,0:06:42.000
And many of our ideas

0:06:42.000,0:06:45.000
have been formed, not to meet the circumstances of this century,

0:06:45.000,0:06:48.000
but to cope with the circumstances of previous centuries.

0:06:48.000,0:06:50.000
But our minds are still hypnotized by them,

0:06:50.000,0:06:53.000
and we have to disenthrall ourselves of some of them.

0:06:53.000,0:06:56.000
Now, doing this is easier said than done.

0:06:56.000,0:06:59.000
It's very hard to know, by the way, what it is you take for granted. (Laughter)

0:06:59.000,0:07:02.000
And the reason is that you take it for granted.

0:07:02.000,0:07:05.000
So let me ask you something you may take for granted.

0:07:05.000,0:07:08.000
How many of you here are over the age of 25?

0:07:08.000,0:07:10.000
That's not what I think you take for granted,

0:07:10.000,0:07:12.000
I'm sure you're familiar with that already.

0:07:12.000,0:07:15.000
Are there any people here under the age of 25?

0:07:15.000,0:07:18.000
Great. Now, those over 25,

0:07:18.000,0:07:21.000
could you put your hands up if you're wearing your wristwatch?

0:07:21.000,0:07:24.000
Now that's a great deal of us, isn't it?

0:07:24.000,0:07:27.000
Ask a room full of teenagers the same thing.

0:07:27.000,0:07:29.000
Teenagers do not wear wristwatches.

0:07:29.000,0:07:31.000
I don't mean they can't or they're not allowed to,

0:07:31.000,0:07:33.000
they just often choose not to.

0:07:33.000,0:07:35.000
And the reason is, you see, that we were brought up

0:07:35.000,0:07:38.000
in a pre-digital culture, those of us over 25.

0:07:38.000,0:07:40.000
And so for us, if you want to know the time

0:07:40.000,0:07:42.000
you have to wear something to tell it.

0:07:42.000,0:07:45.000
Kids now live in a world which is digitized,

0:07:45.000,0:07:47.000
and the time, for them, is everywhere.

0:07:47.000,0:07:49.000
They see no reason to do this.

0:07:49.000,0:07:51.000
And by the way, you don't need to do it either;

0:07:51.000,0:07:54.000
it's just that you've always done it and you carry on doing it.

0:07:54.000,0:07:57.000
My daughter never wears a watch, my daughter Kate, who's 20.

0:07:57.000,0:07:59.000
She doesn't see the point.

0:07:59.000,0:08:02.000
As she says, "It's a single function device."

0:08:02.000,0:08:07.000
(Laughter)

0:08:07.000,0:08:10.000
"Like, how lame is that?"

0:08:10.000,0:08:12.000
And I say, "No, no, it tells the date as well."

0:08:12.000,0:08:16.000
(Laughter)

0:08:17.000,0:08:20.000
"It has multiple functions."

0:08:20.000,0:08:23.000
But, you see, there are things we're enthralled to in education.

0:08:23.000,0:08:25.000
Let me give you a couple of examples.

0:08:25.000,0:08:28.000
One of them is the idea of linearity:

0:08:28.000,0:08:31.000
that it starts here and you go through a track

0:08:31.000,0:08:33.000
and if you do everything right, you will end up

0:08:33.000,0:08:35.000
set for the rest of your life.

0:08:37.000,0:08:39.000
Everybody who's spoken at TED has told us implicitly,

0:08:39.000,0:08:42.000
or sometimes explicitly, a different story:

0:08:42.000,0:08:45.000
that life is not linear; it's organic.

0:08:45.000,0:08:47.000
We create our lives symbiotically

0:08:47.000,0:08:49.000
as we explore our talents

0:08:49.000,0:08:52.000
in relation to the circumstances they help to create for us.

0:08:52.000,0:08:54.000
But, you know, we have become obsessed

0:08:54.000,0:08:56.000
with this linear narrative.

0:08:56.000,0:08:58.000
And probably the pinnacle for education

0:08:58.000,0:09:00.000
is getting you to college.

0:09:00.000,0:09:03.000
I think we are obsessed with getting people to college.

0:09:03.000,0:09:05.000
Certain sorts of college.

0:09:05.000,0:09:07.000
I don't mean you shouldn't go to college, but not everybody needs to go

0:09:07.000,0:09:09.000
and not everybody needs to go now.

0:09:09.000,0:09:11.000
Maybe they go later, not right away.

0:09:11.000,0:09:13.000
And I was up in San Francisco a while ago

0:09:13.000,0:09:15.000
doing a book signing.

0:09:15.000,0:09:17.000
There was this guy buying a book, he was in his 30s.

0:09:17.000,0:09:19.000
And I said, "What do you do?"

0:09:19.000,0:09:22.000
And he said, "I'm a fireman."

0:09:22.000,0:09:24.000
And I said, "How long have you been a fireman?"

0:09:24.000,0:09:26.000
He said, "Always. I've always been a fireman."

0:09:26.000,0:09:28.000
And I said, "Well, when did you decide?"

0:09:28.000,0:09:31.000
He said, "As a kid." He said, "Actually, it was a problem for me at school,

0:09:31.000,0:09:34.000
because at school, everybody wanted to be a fireman."

0:09:34.000,0:09:37.000
He said, "But I wanted to be a fireman."

0:09:37.000,0:09:40.000
And he said, "When I got to the senior year of school,

0:09:40.000,0:09:43.000
my teachers didn't take it seriously.

0:09:43.000,0:09:45.000
This one teacher didn't take it seriously.

0:09:45.000,0:09:47.000
He said I was throwing my life away

0:09:47.000,0:09:49.000
if that's all I chose to do with it;

0:09:49.000,0:09:52.000
that I should go to college, I should become a professional person,

0:09:52.000,0:09:54.000
that I had great potential

0:09:54.000,0:09:56.000
and I was wasting my talent to do that."

0:09:56.000,0:09:58.000
And he said, "It was humiliating because

0:09:58.000,0:10:00.000
he said it in front of the whole class and I really felt dreadful.

0:10:00.000,0:10:02.000
But it's what I wanted, and as soon as I left school,

0:10:02.000,0:10:05.000
I applied to the fire service and I was accepted."

0:10:05.000,0:10:07.000
And he said, "You know, I was thinking about that guy recently,

0:10:07.000,0:10:10.000
just a few minutes ago when you were speaking, about this teacher,"

0:10:10.000,0:10:12.000
he said, "because six months ago,

0:10:12.000,0:10:14.000
I saved his life."

0:10:14.000,0:10:16.000
(Laughter)

0:10:16.000,0:10:18.000
He said, "He was in a car wreck,

0:10:18.000,0:10:21.000
and I pulled him out, gave him CPR,

0:10:21.000,0:10:24.000
and I saved his wife's life as well."

0:10:24.000,0:10:26.000
He said, "I think he thinks better of me now."

0:10:26.000,0:10:28.000
(Laughter)

0:10:28.000,0:10:33.000
(Applause)

0:10:34.000,0:10:36.000
You know, to me,

0:10:36.000,0:10:38.000
human communities depend upon

0:10:38.000,0:10:40.000
a diversity of talent,

0:10:40.000,0:10:43.000
not a singular conception of ability.

0:10:43.000,0:10:45.000
And at the heart of our challenges --

0:10:45.000,0:10:47.000
(Applause)

0:10:47.000,0:10:49.000
At the heart of the challenge

0:10:49.000,0:10:51.000
is to reconstitute our sense of ability

0:10:51.000,0:10:53.000
and of intelligence.

0:10:53.000,0:10:55.000
This linearity thing is a problem.

0:10:55.000,0:10:57.000
When I arrived in L.A.

0:10:57.000,0:10:59.000
about nine years ago,

0:10:59.000,0:11:02.000
I came across a policy statement --

0:11:02.000,0:11:04.000
very well-intentioned --

0:11:04.000,0:11:07.000
which said, "College begins in kindergarten."

0:11:09.000,0:11:11.000
No, it doesn't.

0:11:11.000,0:11:14.000
(Laughter)

0:11:14.000,0:11:16.000
It doesn't.

0:11:16.000,0:11:19.000
If we had time, I could go into this, but we don't.

0:11:19.000,0:11:21.000
(Laughter)

0:11:21.000,0:11:23.000
Kindergarten begins in kindergarten.

0:11:23.000,0:11:25.000
(Laughter)

0:11:25.000,0:11:27.000
A friend of mine once said,

0:11:27.000,0:11:30.000
"You know, a three year-old is not half a six year-old."

0:11:30.000,0:11:32.000
(Laughter)

0:11:32.000,0:11:37.000
(Applause)

0:11:37.000,0:11:39.000
They're three.

0:11:39.000,0:11:41.000
But as we just heard in this last session,

0:11:41.000,0:11:44.000
there's such competition now to get into kindergarten --

0:11:44.000,0:11:46.000
to get to the right kindergarten --

0:11:46.000,0:11:49.000
that people are being interviewed for it at three.

0:11:51.000,0:11:53.000
Kids sitting in front of unimpressed panels,

0:11:53.000,0:11:55.000
you know, with their resumes,

0:11:55.000,0:11:58.000
(Laughter)

0:11:58.000,0:12:00.000
flipping through and saying, "Well, this is it?"

0:12:00.000,0:12:02.000
(Laughter)

0:12:02.000,0:12:05.000
(Applause)

0:12:05.000,0:12:08.000
"You've been around for 36 months, and this is it?"

0:12:08.000,0:12:15.000
(Laughter)

0:12:15.000,0:12:18.000
"You've achieved nothing -- commit.

0:12:18.000,0:12:21.000
Spent the first six months breastfeeding, the way I can see it."

0:12:21.000,0:12:24.000
(Laughter)

0:12:26.000,0:12:29.000
See, it's outrageous as a conception, but it [unclear].

0:12:29.000,0:12:31.000
The other big issue is conformity.

0:12:31.000,0:12:33.000
We have built our education systems

0:12:33.000,0:12:35.000
on the model of fast food.

0:12:35.000,0:12:38.000
This is something Jamie Oliver talked about the other day.

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You know there are two models of quality assurance in catering.

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One is fast food,

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where everything is standardized.

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The other are things like Zagat and Michelin restaurants,

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where everything is not standardized,

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they're customized to local circumstances.

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And we have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education,

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and it's impoverishing our spirit and our energies

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as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.

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(Applause)

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

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One is that human talent is tremendously diverse.

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People have very different aptitudes.

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I worked out recently that

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I was given a guitar as a kid

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at about the same time that Eric Clapton got his first guitar.

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You know, it worked out for Eric, that's all I'm saying.

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(Laughter)

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In a way, it did not for me.

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I could not get this thing to work

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

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(Laughter) It just wouldn't work.

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But it's not only about that.

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It's about passion.

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

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It's about passion,

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and what excites our spirit and our energy.

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

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time takes a different course entirely.

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My wife's just finished writing a novel,

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and I think it's a great book,

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but she disappears for hours on end.

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

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an hour feels like five minutes.

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If you're doing something that doesn't resonate with your spirit,

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five minutes feels like an hour.

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And the reason so many people are opting out of education

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is because it doesn't feed their spirit,

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it doesn't feed their energy or their passion.

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So I think we have to change metaphors.

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We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education,

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a manufacturing model,

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which is based on linearity

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and conformity and batching people.

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We have to move to a model

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that is based more on principles of agriculture.

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We have to recognize that human flourishing

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is not a mechanical process;

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it's an organic process.

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And you cannot predict the outcome of human development.

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All you can do, like a farmer,

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is create the conditions under which

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they will begin to flourish.

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So when we look at reforming education and transforming it,

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it isn't like cloning a system.

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There are great ones, like KIPP's; it's a great system.

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There are many great models.

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It's about customizing to your circumstances

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and personalizing education

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to the people you're actually teaching.

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And doing that, I think,

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is the answer to the future

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because it's not about scaling a new solution;

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it's about creating a movement in education

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in which people develop their own solutions,

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but with external support based on a personalized curriculum.

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Now in this room,

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there are people who represent

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extraordinary resources in business,

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in multimedia, in the Internet.

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These technologies,

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combined with the extraordinary talents of teachers,

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provide an opportunity to revolutionize education.

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And I urge you to get involved in it

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because it's vital, not just to ourselves,

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but to the future of our children.

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But we have to change from the industrial model

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to an agricultural model,

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where each school can be flourishing tomorrow.

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That's where children experience life.

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

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with their families or their friends.

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There's been a lot of talk about dreams

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over the course of this few days.

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And I wanted to just very quickly ...

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

0:16:10.000,0:16:12.000
recovering old poems.

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I wanted to read you a quick, very short poem

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

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He wrote this to his love,

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Maud Gonne,

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and he was bewailing the fact that

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he couldn't really give her what he thought she wanted from him.

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And he says, "I've got something else, but it may not be for you."

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He says this:

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"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

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Enwrought with gold

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and silver light,

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The blue and the dim

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and the dark cloths

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Of night and light and the half-light,

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I would spread the cloths under your feet:

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But I, being poor,

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have only my dreams;

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I have spread my dreams under your feet;

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Tread softly

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because you tread on my dreams."

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And every day, everywhere,

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our children spread their dreams beneath our feet.

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And we should tread softly.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

0:17:31.000,0:17:33.000
Thank you very much.