Bring on the learning revolution! | Ken Robinson

I was here four years ago, and I remember, at the time, that the talks weren't put online. I think they were given

to TEDsters in a box, a box set of DVDs, which they put on their shelves,

where they are now. (Laughter) And actually, Chris called me

a week after I'd given my talk, and said, "We're going to start putting them online.

Can we put yours online?" And I said, "Sure." And four years later, it's been downloaded four million times. So I suppose you could multiply that

by 20 or something to get the number

of people who've seen it. And, as Chris says, there is

a hunger for videos of me. (Laughter) (Applause) Don't you feel? (Laughter) So, this whole event

has been an elaborate build-up to me doing another one

for you, so here it is. (Laughter) Al Gore spoke at the TED conference

I spoke at four years ago and talked about the climate crisis. And I referenced that

at the end of my last talk. So I want to pick up from there because I only had 18 minutes, frankly. (Laughter) So, as I was saying -- (Laughter) You see, he's right. I mean, there is a major

climate crisis, obviously, and I think if people don't believe it,

they should get out more. (Laughter) But I believe there is

a second climate crisis, which is as severe, which has the same origins, and that we have to deal with

with the same urgency. And you may say, by the way, "Look, I'm good. I have one climate crisis,

I don't really need the second one." (Laughter) But this is a crisis of,

not natural resources -- though I believe that's true -- but a crisis of human resources. I believe fundamentally, as many speakers have said

during the past few days, that we make very poor use of our talents. Very many people go

through their whole lives having no real sense

of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of. I meet all kinds of people who don't think

they're really good at anything. Actually, I kind of divide the world

into two groups now. Jeremy Bentham, the great

utilitarian philosopher, once spiked this argument. He said, "There are two types

of people in this world: those who divide the world into two types and those who do not." (Laughter) Well, I do. (Laughter) I meet all kinds of people

who don't enjoy what they do. They simply go through their lives

getting on with it. They get no great pleasure

from what they do. They endure it rather than enjoy it, and wait for the weekend. But I also meet people who love what they do

and couldn't imagine doing anything else. If you said, "Don't do this anymore," they'd wonder what you're talking about. It isn't what they do, it's who they are. They say, "But this is me, you know. It would be foolish to abandon this, because it speaks

to my most authentic self." And it's not true of enough people. In fact, on the contrary, I think

it's still true of a minority of people. And I think there are many

possible explanations for it. And high among them is education, because education, in a way, dislocates very many people

from their natural talents. And human resources

are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they're not just lying around

on the surface. You have to create the circumstances

where they show themselves. And you might imagine

education would be the way that happens, but too often, it's not. Every education system in the world

is being reformed at the moment and it's not enough. Reform is no use anymore, because that's simply improving

a broken model. What we need -- and the word's been used

many times in the past few days -- is not evolution, but a revolution in education. This has to be transformed

into something else. (Applause) One of the real challenges

is to innovate fundamentally in education. Innovation is hard, because it means doing something

that people don't find very easy, for the most part. It means challenging

what we take for granted, things that we think are obvious. The great problem for reform

or transformation is the tyranny of common sense. Things that people think, "It can't be done differently,

that's how it's done." I came across a great quote recently

from Abraham Lincoln, who I thought you'd be pleased

to have quoted at this point. (Laughter) He said this in December 1862

to the second annual meeting of Congress. I ought to explain that I have no idea

what was happening at the time. We don't teach

American history in Britain. (Laughter) We suppress it.

You know, this is our policy. (Laughter) No doubt, something fascinating

was happening then, which the Americans among us

will be aware of. But he said this: "The dogmas of the quiet past

are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion

is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion." I love that. Not rise to it, rise with it. "As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." I love that word, "disenthrall." You know what it means? That there are ideas

that all of us are enthralled to, which we simply take for granted

as the natural order of things, the way things are. And many of our ideas have been formed, not to meet the circumstances

of this century, but to cope with the circumstances

of previous centuries. But our minds

are still hypnotized by them, and we have to disenthrall ourselves

of some of them. Now, doing this is easier said than done. It's very hard to know, by the way,

what it is you take for granted. And the reason

is that you take it for granted. (Laughter) Let me ask you something

you may take for granted. How many of you here

are over the age of 25? That's not what you take for granted,

I'm sure you're familiar with that. Are there any people here

under the age of 25? Great. Now, those over 25, could you put your hands up

if you're wearing your wristwatch? Now that's a great deal of us, isn't it? Ask a room full of teenagers

the same thing. Teenagers do not wear wristwatches. I don't mean they can't, they just often choose not to. And the reason is we were brought up

in a pre-digital culture, those of us over 25. And so for us,

if you want to know the time, you have to wear something to tell it. Kids now live in a world

which is digitized, and the time, for them, is everywhere. They see no reason to do this. And by the way, you don't need either; it's just that you've always done it

and you carry on doing it. My daughter never wears a watch,

my daughter Kate, who's 20. She doesn't see the point. As she says, "It's a single-function device." (Laughter) "Like, how lame is that?" And I say, "No, no,

it tells the date as well." (Laughter) "It has multiple functions." (Laughter) But, you see, there are things

we're enthralled to in education. A couple of examples. One of them is the idea of linearity: that it starts here

and you go through a track and if you do everything right, you will end up set

for the rest of your life. Everybody who's spoken at TED

has told us implicitly, or sometimes explicitly,

a different story: that life is not linear; it's organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances

they help to create for us. But, you know, we have become obsessed

with this linear narrative. And probably the pinnacle for education

is getting you to college. I think we are obsessed

with getting people to college. Certain sorts of college. I don't mean you shouldn't go,

but not everybody needs to go, or go now. Maybe they go later, not right away. And I was up in San Francisco

a while ago doing a book signing. There was this guy buying a book,

he was in his 30s. I said, "What do you do?" And he said, "I'm a fireman." I asked, "How long

have you been a fireman?" "Always. I've always been a fireman." "Well, when did you decide?"

He said, "As a kid. Actually, it was

a problem for me at school, because at school,

everybody wanted to be a fireman." (Laughter) He said, "But I wanted to be a fireman." And he said, "When I got

to the senior year of school, my teachers didn't take it seriously. This one teacher didn't take it seriously. He said I was throwing my life away if that's all I chose to do with it; that I should go to college, I should

become a professional person, that I had great potential and I was wasting my talent to do that." He said, "It was humiliating. It was in front of the whole class

and I felt dreadful. But it's what I wanted,

and as soon as I left school, I applied to the fire service

and I was accepted. You know, I was thinking

about that guy recently, just a few minutes ago when you

were speaking, about this teacher, because six months ago, I saved his life." (Laughter) He said, "He was in a car wreck,

and I pulled him out, gave him CPR, and I saved his wife's life as well." He said, "I think he thinks

better of me now." (Laughter) (Applause) You know, to me, human communities depend

upon a diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability. And at the heart of our challenges -- (Applause) At the heart of the challenge is to reconstitute our sense of ability

and of intelligence. This linearity thing is a problem. When I arrived in L.A.

about nine years ago, I came across a policy statement -- very well-intentioned -- which said, "College

begins in kindergarten." No, it doesn't. (Laughter) It doesn't. If we had time,

I could go into this, but we don't. (Laughter) Kindergarten begins in kindergarten. (Laughter) A friend of mine once said, "A three year-old

is not half a six year-old." (Laughter) (Applause) They're three. But as we just heard in this last session, there's such competition now

to get into kindergarten -- to get to the right kindergarten -- that people are being interviewed

for it at three. Kids sitting in front

of unimpressed panels, you know, with their resumes -- (Laughter) Flicking through and saying,

"What, this is it?" (Laughter) (Applause) "You've been around

for 36 months, and this is it?" (Laughter) "You've achieved nothing -- commit. (Laughter) Spent the first six months

breastfeeding, I can see." (Laughter) See, it's outrageous as a conception. The other big issue is conformity. We have built our education systems

on the model of fast food. This is something Jamie Oliver

talked about the other day. There are two models

of quality assurance in catering. One is fast food,

where everything is standardized. The other is like Zagat

and Michelin restaurants, where everything is not standardized, they're customized to local circumstances. And we have sold ourselves

into a fast-food model of education, and it's impoverishing

our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting

our physical bodies. (Applause) We have to recognize

a couple of things here. One is that human talent

is tremendously diverse. People have very different aptitudes. I worked out recently

that I was given a guitar as a kid at about the same time

that Eric Clapton got his first guitar. (Laughter) It worked out for Eric,

that's all I'm saying. (Laughter) In a way -- it did not for me. I could not get this thing to work no matter how often

or how hard I blew into it. It just wouldn't work. (Laughter) But it's not only about that. It's about passion. Often, people are good at things

they don't really care for. It's about passion, and what excites

our spirit and our energy. And if you're doing the thing

that you love to do, that you're good at, time takes a different course entirely. My wife's just finished writing a novel, and I think it's a great book, but she disappears for hours on end. You know this, if you're doing

something you love, an hour feels like five minutes. If you're doing something

that doesn't resonate with your spirit, five minutes feels like an hour. And the reason so many people

are opting out of education is because it doesn't feed their spirit, it doesn't feed their energy

or their passion. So I think we have to change metaphors. We have to go from what is essentially

an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity

and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more

on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing

is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process. And you cannot predict

the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer,

is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish. So when we look at reforming

education and transforming it, it isn't like cloning a system. There are great ones,

like KIPP's; it's a great system. There are many great models. It's about customizing

to your circumstances and personalizing education

to the people you're actually teaching. And doing that, I think,

is the answer to the future because it's not

about scaling a new solution; it's about creating

a movement in education in which people develop

their own solutions, but with external support

based on a personalized curriculum. Now in this room, there are people who represent

extraordinary resources in business, in multimedia, in the Internet. These technologies, combined with the extraordinary

talents of teachers, provide an opportunity

to revolutionize education. And I urge you to get involved in it because it's vital, not just to ourselves,

but to the future of our children. But we have to change

from the industrial model to an agricultural model, where each school can be

flourishing tomorrow. That's where children experience life. Or at home, if that's what they choose, to be educated

with their families or friends. There's been a lot of talk about dreams

over the course of these few days. And I wanted to just very quickly -- I was very struck

by Natalie Merchant's songs last night, recovering old poems. I wanted to read you

a quick, very short poem from W. B. Yeats,

who some of you may know. He wrote this to his love, Maud Gonne, and he was bewailing the fact that he couldn't really give her

what he thought she wanted from him. And he says, "I've got something else,

but it may not be for you." He says this: "Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with gold and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." And every day, everywhere, our children spread

their dreams beneath our feet. And we should tread softly. Thank you. (Applause) Thank you very much. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause)