00:00:27
Good morning. How are you?
00:00:29
(Audience) Good.
00:00:31
It's been great, hasn't it?
00:00:33
I've been blown away by the whole thing.
00:00:35
In fact, I'm leaving.
00:00:37
(Laughter)
00:00:43
There have been three themes
running through the conference,
00:00:46
which are relevant
to what I want to talk about.
00:00:48
One is the extraordinary
evidence of human creativity
00:00:53
in all of the presentations that we've had
00:00:55
and in all of the people here;
00:00:57
just the variety of it
and the range of it.
00:01:01
The second is that it's put us in a place
00:01:03
where we have no idea
what's going to happen
00:01:05
in terms of the future.
00:01:07
No idea how this may play out.
00:01:10
I have an interest in education.
00:01:11
Actually, what I find is,
everybody has an interest in education.
00:01:16
Don't you?
00:01:17
I find this very interesting.
00:01:19
If you're at a dinner party,
and you say you work in education --
00:01:23
actually, you're not often
at dinner parties, frankly.
00:01:25
(Laughter)
00:01:29
If you work in education,
you're not asked.
00:01:32
(Laughter)
00:01:35
And you're never asked back, curiously.
That's strange to me.
00:01:39
But if you are, and you say to somebody,
00:01:41
you know, they say, "What do you do?"
00:01:43
and you say you work in education,
00:01:45
you can see the blood run from their face.
00:01:47
They're like, "Oh my God. Why me?"
00:01:48
(Laughter)
00:01:51
"My one night out all week."
00:01:52
(Laughter)
00:01:55
But if you ask about their education,
they pin you to the wall,
00:01:58
because it's one of those things
that goes deep with people, am I right?
00:02:02
Like religion and money and other things.
00:02:05
So I have a big interest in education,
and I think we all do.
00:02:10
We have a huge vested interest in it,
00:02:11
partly because it's education
that's meant to take us into this future
00:02:15
that we can't grasp.
00:02:16
If you think of it,
00:02:18
children starting school this year
will be retiring in 2065.
00:02:25
Nobody has a clue,
00:02:26
despite all the expertise that's been
on parade for the past four days,
00:02:30
what the world will look like
in five years' time.
00:02:33
And yet, we're meant
to be educating them for it.
00:02:35
So the unpredictability,
I think, is extraordinary.
00:02:37
And the third part of this
is that we've all agreed, nonetheless,
00:02:41
on the really extraordinary
capacities that children have --
00:02:46
their capacities for innovation.
00:02:49
I mean, Sirena last night
was a marvel, wasn't she?
00:02:51
Just seeing what she could do.
00:02:53
And she's exceptional, but I think
she's not, so to speak,
00:02:59
exceptional in the whole of childhood.
00:03:02
What you have there is a person
of extraordinary dedication
00:03:04
who found a talent.
00:03:06
And my contention is,
all kids have tremendous talents,
00:03:08
and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.
00:03:11
So I want to talk about education,
00:03:13
and I want to talk about creativity.
00:03:14
My contention is that creativity now
is as important in education as literacy,
00:03:21
and we should treat it
with the same status.
00:03:23
(Applause)
00:03:24
Thank you.
00:03:26
(Applause)
00:03:30
That was it, by the way.
Thank you very much.
00:03:32
(Laughter)
00:03:34
So, 15 minutes left.
00:03:36
(Laughter)
00:03:39
"Well, I was born ... "
00:03:41
(Laughter)
00:03:45
I heard a great story recently --
I love telling it --
00:03:47
of a little girl
who was in a drawing lesson.
00:03:50
She was six, and she was
at the back, drawing,
00:03:52
and the teacher said this girl
hardly ever paid attention,
00:03:55
and in this drawing lesson, she did.
00:03:56
The teacher was fascinated.
00:03:58
She went over to her,
and she said, "What are you drawing?"
00:04:01
And the girl said,
"I'm drawing a picture of God."
00:04:04
And the teacher said, "But nobody
knows what God looks like."
00:04:07
And the girl said,
"They will in a minute."
00:04:10
(Laughter)
00:04:21
When my son was four in England --
00:04:24
actually, he was four
everywhere, to be honest.
00:04:26
(Laughter)
00:04:28
If we're being strict about it,
wherever he went, he was four that year.
00:04:31
He was in the Nativity play.
Do you remember the story?
00:04:34
(Laughter)
00:04:35
No, it was big, it was a big story.
00:04:37
Mel Gibson did the sequel,
you may have seen it.
00:04:39
(Laughter)
00:04:41
"Nativity II."
00:04:42
But James got the part of Joseph,
which we were thrilled about.
00:04:46
We considered this to be
one of the lead parts.
00:04:49
We had the place crammed
full of agents in T-shirts:
00:04:52
"James Robinson IS Joseph!"
00:04:53
(Laughter)
00:04:54
He didn't have to speak, but you know
the bit where the three kings come in?
00:04:58
They come in bearing gifts,
gold, frankincense and myrrh.
00:05:00
This really happened.
00:05:02
We were sitting there, and I think
they just went out of sequence,
00:05:05
because we talked to the little boy
afterward and said,
00:05:07
"You OK with that?" They said,
"Yeah, why? Was that wrong?"
00:05:10
They just switched.
00:05:11
The three boys came in, four-year-olds
with tea towels on their heads.
00:05:15
They put these boxes down, and the first
boy said, "I bring you gold."
00:05:18
And the second boy said,
"I bring you myrrh."
00:05:20
And the third boy said, "Frank sent this."
00:05:22
(Laughter)
00:05:35
What these things have in common
is that kids will take a chance.
00:05:38
If they don't know, they'll have a go.
00:05:42
Am I right? They're not
frightened of being wrong.
00:05:45
I don't mean to say that being wrong
is the same thing as being creative.
00:05:49
What we do know is,
if you're not prepared to be wrong,
00:05:53
you'll never come up
with anything original --
00:05:55
if you're not prepared to be wrong.
00:05:57
And by the time they get to be adults,
most kids have lost that capacity.
00:06:02
They have become
frightened of being wrong.
00:06:04
And we run our companies like this.
00:06:06
We stigmatize mistakes.
00:06:08
And we're now running
national education systems
00:06:10
where mistakes are the worst
thing you can make.
00:06:13
And the result is that
we are educating people
00:06:16
out of their creative capacities.
00:06:19
Picasso once said this, he said
that all children are born artists.
00:06:23
The problem is to remain
an artist as we grow up.
00:06:26
I believe this passionately,
that we don't grow into creativity,
00:06:30
we grow out of it.
00:06:31
Or rather, we get educated out of it.
00:06:34
So why is this?
00:06:37
I lived in Stratford-on-Avon
until about five years ago.
00:06:39
In fact, we moved from Stratford
to Los Angeles.
00:06:42
So you can imagine
what a seamless transition this was.
00:06:45
(Laughter)
00:06:47
Actually, we lived in a place
called Snitterfield,
00:06:49
just outside Stratford,
00:06:50
which is where
Shakespeare's father was born.
00:06:53
Are you struck by a new thought? I was.
00:06:55
You don't think of Shakespeare
having a father, do you?
00:06:58
Do you?
00:06:59
Because you don't think
of Shakespeare being a child, do you?
00:07:02
Shakespeare being seven?
00:07:03
I never thought of it.
00:07:04
I mean, he was seven at some point.
00:07:06
He was in somebody's
English class, wasn't he?
00:07:08
(Laughter)
00:07:15
How annoying would that be?
00:07:17
(Laughter)
00:07:24
"Must try harder."
00:07:26
(Laughter)
00:07:30
Being sent to bed by his dad,
to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now!"
00:07:33
To William Shakespeare.
00:07:34
"And put the pencil down!"
00:07:36
(Laughter)
00:07:37
"And stop speaking like that."
00:07:38
(Laughter)
00:07:42
"It's confusing everybody."
00:07:43
(Laughter)
00:07:48
Anyway, we moved
from Stratford to Los Angeles,
00:07:54
and I just want to say a word
about the transition.
00:07:56
Actually, my son didn't want to come.
00:07:58
I've got two kids;
he's 21 now, my daughter's 16.
00:08:00
He didn't want to come to Los Angeles.
00:08:03
He loved it, but he had
a girlfriend in England.
00:08:06
This was the love of his life, Sarah.
00:08:09
He'd known her for a month.
00:08:11
(Laughter)
00:08:12
Mind you, they'd had
their fourth anniversary,
00:08:15
because it's a long time when you're 16.
00:08:17
He was really upset on the plane.
00:08:19
He said, "I'll never find
another girl like Sarah."
00:08:21
And we were rather pleased
about that, frankly --
00:08:24
(Laughter)
00:08:32
because she was the main reason
we were leaving the country.
00:08:35
(Laughter)
00:08:41
But something strikes you
when you move to America
00:08:43
and travel around the world:
00:08:44
every education system on earth
has the same hierarchy of subjects.
00:08:48
Every one. Doesn't matter where you go.
00:08:50
You'd think it would be
otherwise, but it isn't.
00:08:52
At the top are mathematics and languages,
then the humanities.
00:08:55
At the bottom are the arts.
Everywhere on earth.
00:08:58
And in pretty much every system, too,
there's a hierarchy within the arts.
00:09:02
Art and music are normally given
a higher status in schools
00:09:05
than drama and dance.
00:09:06
There isn't an education
system on the planet
00:09:08
that teaches dance every day to children
00:09:10
the way we teach them mathematics.
00:09:12
Why?
00:09:13
Why not?
00:09:14
I think this is rather important.
00:09:16
I think math is very important,
but so is dance.
00:09:18
Children dance all the time
if they're allowed to, we all do.
00:09:21
We all have bodies, don't we?
Did I miss a meeting?
00:09:24
(Laughter)
00:09:27
Truthfully, what happens is,
as children grow up,
00:09:29
we start to educate them progressively
from the waist up.
00:09:32
And then we focus on their heads.
00:09:34
And slightly to one side.
00:09:37
If you were to visit education as an alien
00:09:39
and say "What's it for, public education?"
00:09:42
I think you'd have to conclude,
if you look at the output,
00:09:44
who really succeeds by this,
00:09:46
who does everything they should,
00:09:48
who gets all the brownie points,
who are the winners --
00:09:50
I think you'd have to conclude
the whole purpose of public education
00:09:54
throughout the world
00:09:55
is to produce university professors.
00:09:57
Isn't it?
00:09:58
They're the people who come out the top.
00:10:00
And I used to be one, so there.
00:10:02
(Laughter)
00:10:06
And I like university professors,
00:10:08
but, you know, we shouldn't hold them up
00:10:10
as the high-water mark
of all human achievement.
00:10:13
They're just a form of life.
00:10:15
Another form of life.
00:10:16
But they're rather curious.
00:10:18
And I say this out of affection for them:
00:10:19
there's something curious
about professors.
00:10:22
In my experience -- not all of them,
but typically -- they live in their heads.
00:10:25
They live up there
and slightly to one side.
00:10:28
They're disembodied, you know,
in a kind of literal way.
00:10:31
They look upon their body as a form
of transport for their heads.
00:10:35
(Laughter)
00:10:41
Don't they?
00:10:42
It's a way of getting
their head to meetings.
00:10:44
(Laughter)
00:10:50
If you want real evidence
of out-of-body experiences, by the way,
00:10:53
get yourself along to a residential
conference of senior academics
00:10:57
and pop into the discotheque
on the final night.
00:10:59
(Laughter)
00:11:02
And there, you will see it.
00:11:03
Grown men and women
writhing uncontrollably, off the beat.
00:11:08
(Laughter)
00:11:10
Waiting until it ends, so they can
go home and write a paper about it.
00:11:14
(Laughter)
00:11:16
Our education system is predicated
on the idea of academic ability.
00:11:20
And there's a reason.
00:11:21
Around the world, there were
no public systems of education,
00:11:24
really, before the 19th century.
00:11:27
They all came into being
to meet the needs of industrialism.
00:11:30
So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas.
00:11:32
Number one, that the most useful
subjects for work are at the top.
00:11:37
So you were probably steered benignly away
from things at school
00:11:40
when you were a kid,
00:11:41
things you liked,
00:11:42
on the grounds you would never
get a job doing that.
00:11:44
Is that right?
00:11:46
"Don't do music, you're not
going to be a musician;
00:11:48
don't do art, you won't be an artist."
00:11:50
Benign advice -- now, profoundly mistaken.
00:11:53
The whole world
is engulfed in a revolution.
00:11:55
And the second is academic ability,
00:11:57
which has really come to dominate
our view of intelligence,
00:12:00
because the universities design
the system in their image.
00:12:03
If you think of it,
00:12:04
the whole system of public education
around the world is a protracted process
00:12:07
of university entrance.
00:12:09
And the consequence is
that many highly talented,
00:12:11
brilliant, creative people
think they're not,
00:12:13
because the thing
they were good at at school
00:12:16
wasn't valued,
or was actually stigmatized.
00:12:18
And I think we can't afford
to go on that way.
00:12:20
In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO,
00:12:23
more people worldwide will be
graduating through education
00:12:26
than since the beginning of history.
00:12:28
More people.
00:12:29
And it's the combination
of all the things we've talked about:
00:12:32
technology and its
transformational effect on work,
00:12:35
and demography and the huge
explosion in population.
00:12:37
Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything.
00:12:40
Isn't that true?
00:12:41
When I was a student,
if you had a degree, you had a job.
00:12:44
If you didn't have a job,
it's because you didn't want one.
00:12:47
And I didn't want one, frankly.
00:12:50
(Laughter)
00:12:51
But now kids with degrees
are often heading home
00:12:55
to carry on playing video games,
00:12:57
because you need an MA
where the previous job required a BA,
00:13:00
and now you need a PhD for the other.
00:13:02
It's a process of academic inflation.
00:13:04
And it indicates the whole structure
of education is shifting beneath our feet.
00:13:07
We need to radically rethink
our view of intelligence.
00:13:10
We know three things about intelligence.
00:13:12
One, it's diverse.
00:13:13
We think about the world in all the ways
that we experience it.
00:13:16
We think visually, we think in sound,
we think kinesthetically.
00:13:19
We think in abstract terms,
we think in movement.
00:13:21
Secondly, intelligence is dynamic.
00:13:24
If you look at the interactions
of a human brain,
00:13:27
as we heard yesterday
from a number of presentations,
00:13:30
intelligence is wonderfully interactive.
00:13:32
The brain isn't divided into compartments.
00:13:34
In fact, creativity --
00:13:36
which I define as the process of having
original ideas that have value --
00:13:40
more often than not comes about
00:13:42
through the interaction of different
disciplinary ways of seeing things.
00:13:47
By the way, there's a shaft of nerves
that joins the two halves of the brain,
00:13:51
called the corpus callosum.
00:13:52
It's thicker in women.
00:13:54
Following off from Helen yesterday,
00:13:56
this is probably why women
are better at multitasking.
00:13:59
Because you are, aren't you?
00:14:01
There's a raft of research,
but I know it from my personal life.
00:14:04
If my wife is cooking a meal
at home, which is not often ...
00:14:09
thankfully.
00:14:10
(Laughter)
00:14:13
No, she's good at some things.
00:14:14
But if she's cooking,
she's dealing with people on the phone,
00:14:17
she's talking to the kids,
she's painting the ceiling --
00:14:20
(Laughter)
00:14:21
she's doing open-heart surgery over here.
00:14:23
If I'm cooking, the door
is shut, the kids are out,
00:14:26
the phone's on the hook,
00:14:27
if she comes in, I get annoyed.
00:14:29
I say, "Terry, please,
I'm trying to fry an egg in here."
00:14:32
(Laughter)
00:14:39
"Give me a break."
00:14:40
(Laughter)
00:14:42
Actually, do you know
that old philosophical thing,
00:14:44
"If a tree falls in a forest,
and nobody hears it, did it happen?"
00:14:48
Remember that old chestnut?
00:14:49
I saw a great T-shirt
recently, which said,
00:14:52
"If a man speaks his mind in a forest,
and no woman hears him,
00:14:56
is he still wrong?"
00:14:57
(Laughter)
00:15:05
And the third thing about intelligence is,
00:15:07
it's distinct.
00:15:09
I'm doing a new book at the moment
called "Epiphany,"
00:15:11
which is based on a series
of interviews with people
00:15:14
about how they discovered their talent.
00:15:15
I'm fascinated by
how people got to be there.
00:15:18
It's really prompted by a conversation
I had with a wonderful woman
00:15:21
who maybe most people
have never heard of, Gillian Lynne.
00:15:24
Have you heard of her? Some have.
00:15:25
She's a choreographer,
and everybody knows her work.
00:15:28
She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera."
00:15:30
She's wonderful.
00:15:31
I used to be on the board
of The Royal Ballet, as you can see.
00:15:34
(Laughter)
00:15:36
Gillian and I had lunch one day.
I said, "How did you get to be a dancer?"
00:15:39
It was interesting.
00:15:41
When she was at school,
she was really hopeless.
00:15:43
And the school, in the '30s,
wrote to her parents and said,
00:15:46
"We think Gillian
has a learning disorder."
00:15:48
She couldn't concentrate;
she was fidgeting.
00:15:50
I think now they'd say she had ADHD.
00:15:52
Wouldn't you?
00:15:53
But this was the 1930s, and ADHD
hadn't been invented at this point.
00:15:57
It wasn't an available condition.
00:15:59
(Laughter)
00:16:03
People weren't aware they could have that.
00:16:05
(Laughter)
00:16:07
Anyway, she went to see this specialist.
00:16:11
So, this oak-paneled room,
and she was there with her mother,
00:16:15
and she was led and sat
on this chair at the end,
00:16:17
and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes,
00:16:19
while this man talked to her mother
00:16:21
about all the problems
Gillian was having at school,
00:16:23
because she was disturbing people,
her homework was always late, and so on.
00:16:27
Little kid of eight.
00:16:28
In the end, the doctor went
and sat next to Gillian and said,
00:16:31
"I've listened to all these
things your mother's told me.
00:16:34
I need to speak to her privately.
00:16:36
Wait here. We'll be back.
We won't be very long,"
00:16:38
and they went and left her.
00:16:41
But as they went out of the room,
00:16:42
he turned on the radio
that was sitting on his desk.
00:16:45
And when they got out of the room,
00:16:47
he said to her mother,
"Just stand and watch her."
00:16:49
And the minute they left the room,
00:16:52
she was on her feet, moving to the music.
00:16:54
And they watched for a few minutes,
and he turned to her mother and said,
00:16:58
"Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick.
00:17:00
She's a dancer.
00:17:03
Take her to a dance school."
00:17:04
I said, "What happened?"
00:17:06
She said, "She did. I can't tell you
how wonderful it was.
00:17:09
We walked in this room,
and it was full of people like me --
00:17:11
people who couldn't sit still,
00:17:14
people who had to move to think."
00:17:17
Who had to move to think.
00:17:18
They did ballet, they did tap, jazz;
they did modern; they did contemporary.
00:17:22
She was eventually auditioned
for the Royal Ballet School.
00:17:25
She became a soloist; she had
a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet.
00:17:28
She eventually graduated
from the Royal Ballet School,
00:17:31
founded the Gillian Lynne Dance Company,
00:17:33
met Andrew Lloyd Webber.
00:17:34
She's been responsible for
00:17:35
some of the most successful
musical theater productions in history,
00:17:38
she's given pleasure to millions,
00:17:40
and she's a multimillionaire.
00:17:41
Somebody else might have put her
on medication and told her to calm down.
00:17:45
(Applause)
00:17:53
What I think it comes to is this:
00:17:55
Al Gore spoke the other night
00:17:57
about ecology and the revolution
that was triggered by Rachel Carson.
00:18:02
I believe our only hope for the future
00:18:04
is to adopt a new conception
of human ecology,
00:18:08
one in which we start
to reconstitute our conception
00:18:10
of the richness of human capacity.
00:18:13
Our education system has mined our minds
00:18:16
in the way that we strip-mine the earth
for a particular commodity.
00:18:20
And for the future, it won't serve us.
00:18:22
We have to rethink
the fundamental principles
00:18:25
on which we're educating our children.
00:18:27
There was a wonderful quote
by Jonas Salk, who said,
00:18:29
"If all the insects
were to disappear from the Earth,
00:18:34
within 50 years,
all life on Earth would end.
00:18:38
If all human beings
disappeared from the Earth,
00:18:41
within 50 years,
all forms of life would flourish."
00:18:45
And he's right.
00:18:47
What TED celebrates is the gift
of the human imagination.
00:18:51
We have to be careful now
that we use this gift wisely,
00:18:55
and that we avert some of the scenarios
that we've talked about.
00:18:59
And the only way we'll do it
is by seeing our creative capacities
00:19:02
for the richness they are
00:19:04
and seeing our children
for the hope that they are.
00:19:07
And our task is to educate
their whole being,
00:19:10
so they can face this future.
00:19:11
By the way -- we may not see this future,
00:19:14
but they will.
00:19:15
And our job is to help them
make something of it.
00:19:18
Thank you very much.
00:19:19
(Applause)
