Do Schools Kill Creativity? — Sir Ken Robinson

00:27Good morning. How are you?

00:29(Audience) Good.

00:31It's been great, hasn't it?

00:33I've been blown away by the whole thing.

00:35In fact, I'm leaving.

00:37(Laughter)

00:43There have been three themes running through the conference,

00:46which are relevant to what I want to talk about.

00:48One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity

00:53in all of the presentations that we've had

00:55and in all of the people here;

00:57just the variety of it and the range of it.

01:01The second is that it's put us in a place

01:03where we have no idea what's going to happen

01:05in terms of the future.

01:07No idea how this may play out.

01:10I have an interest in education.

01:11Actually, what I find is, everybody has an interest in education.

01:16Don't you?

01:17I find this very interesting.

01:19If you're at a dinner party, and you say you work in education --

01:23actually, you're not often at dinner parties, frankly.

01:25(Laughter)

01:29If you work in education, you're not asked.

01:32(Laughter)

01:35And you're never asked back, curiously. That's strange to me.

01:39But if you are, and you say to somebody,

01:41you know, they say, "What do you do?"

01:43and you say you work in education,

01:45you can see the blood run from their face.

01:47They're like, "Oh my God. Why me?"

01:48(Laughter)

01:51"My one night out all week."

01:52(Laughter)

01:55But if you ask about their education, they pin you to the wall,

01:58because it's one of those things that goes deep with people, am I right?

02:02Like religion and money and other things.

02:05So I have a big interest in education, and I think we all do.

02:10We have a huge vested interest in it,

02:11partly because it's education that's meant to take us into this future

02:15that we can't grasp.

02:16If you think of it,

02:18children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065.

02:25Nobody has a clue,

02:26despite all the expertise that's been on parade for the past four days,

02:30what the world will look like in five years' time.

02:33And yet, we're meant to be educating them for it.

02:35So the unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary.

02:37And the third part of this is that we've all agreed, nonetheless,

02:41on the really extraordinary capacities that children have --

02:46their capacities for innovation.

02:49I mean, Sirena last night was a marvel, wasn't she?

02:51Just seeing what she could do.

02:53And she's exceptional, but I think she's not, so to speak,

02:59exceptional in the whole of childhood.

03:02What you have there is a person of extraordinary dedication

03:04who found a talent.

03:06And my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents,

03:08and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.

03:11So I want to talk about education,

03:13and I want to talk about creativity.

03:14My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy,

03:21and we should treat it with the same status.

03:23(Applause)

03:24Thank you.

03:26(Applause)

03:30That was it, by the way. Thank you very much.

03:32(Laughter)

03:34So, 15 minutes left.

03:36(Laughter)

03:39"Well, I was born ... "

03:41(Laughter)

03:45I heard a great story recently -- I love telling it --

03:47of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson.

03:50She was six, and she was at the back, drawing,

03:52and the teacher said this girl hardly ever paid attention,

03:55and in this drawing lesson, she did.

03:56The teacher was fascinated.

03:58She went over to her, and she said, "What are you drawing?"

04:01And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God."

04:04And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like."

04:07And the girl said, "They will in a minute."

04:10(Laughter)

04:21When my son was four in England --

04:24actually, he was four everywhere, to be honest.

04:26(Laughter)

04:28If we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was four that year.

04:31He was in the Nativity play. Do you remember the story?

04:34(Laughter)

04:35No, it was big, it was a big story.

04:37Mel Gibson did the sequel, you may have seen it.

04:39(Laughter)

04:41"Nativity II."

04:42But James got the part of Joseph, which we were thrilled about.

04:46We considered this to be one of the lead parts.

04:49We had the place crammed full of agents in T-shirts:

04:52"James Robinson IS Joseph!"

04:53(Laughter)

04:54He didn't have to speak, but you know the bit where the three kings come in?

04:58They come in bearing gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh.

05:00This really happened.

05:02We were sitting there, and I think they just went out of sequence,

05:05because we talked to the little boy afterward and said,

05:07"You OK with that?" They said, "Yeah, why? Was that wrong?"

05:10They just switched.

05:11The three boys came in, four-year-olds with tea towels on their heads.

05:15They put these boxes down, and the first boy said, "I bring you gold."

05:18And the second boy said, "I bring you myrrh."

05:20And the third boy said, "Frank sent this."

05:22(Laughter)

05:35What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance.

05:38If they don't know, they'll have a go.

05:42Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong.

05:45I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative.

05:49What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong,

05:53you'll never come up with anything original --

05:55if you're not prepared to be wrong.

05:57And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity.

06:02They have become frightened of being wrong.

06:04And we run our companies like this.

06:06We stigmatize mistakes.

06:08And we're now running national education systems

06:10where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.

06:13And the result is that we are educating people

06:16out of their creative capacities.

06:19Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born artists.

06:23The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.

06:26I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity,

06:30we grow out of it.

06:31Or rather, we get educated out of it.

06:34So why is this?

06:37I lived in Stratford-on-Avon until about five years ago.

06:39In fact, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles.

06:42So you can imagine what a seamless transition this was.

06:45(Laughter)

06:47Actually, we lived in a place called Snitterfield,

06:49just outside Stratford,

06:50which is where Shakespeare's father was born.

06:53Are you struck by a new thought? I was.

06:55You don't think of Shakespeare having a father, do you?

06:58Do you?

06:59Because you don't think of Shakespeare being a child, do you?

07:02Shakespeare being seven?

07:03I never thought of it.

07:04I mean, he was seven at some point.

07:06He was in somebody's English class, wasn't he?

07:08(Laughter)

07:15How annoying would that be?

07:17(Laughter)

07:24"Must try harder."

07:26(Laughter)

07:30Being sent to bed by his dad, to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now!"

07:33To William Shakespeare.

07:34"And put the pencil down!"

07:36(Laughter)

07:37"And stop speaking like that."

07:38(Laughter)

07:42"It's confusing everybody."

07:43(Laughter)

07:48Anyway, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles,

07:54and I just want to say a word about the transition.

07:56Actually, my son didn't want to come.

07:58I've got two kids; he's 21 now, my daughter's 16.

08:00He didn't want to come to Los Angeles.

08:03He loved it, but he had a girlfriend in England.

08:06This was the love of his life, Sarah.

08:09He'd known her for a month.

08:11(Laughter)

08:12Mind you, they'd had their fourth anniversary,

08:15because it's a long time when you're 16.

08:17He was really upset on the plane.

08:19He said, "I'll never find another girl like Sarah."

08:21And we were rather pleased about that, frankly --

08:24(Laughter)

08:32because she was the main reason we were leaving the country.

08:35(Laughter)

08:41But something strikes you when you move to America

08:43and travel around the world:

08:44every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects.

08:48Every one. Doesn't matter where you go.

08:50You'd think it would be otherwise, but it isn't.

08:52At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities.

08:55At the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on earth.

08:58And in pretty much every system, too, there's a hierarchy within the arts.

09:02Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools

09:05than drama and dance.

09:06There isn't an education system on the planet

09:08that teaches dance every day to children

09:10the way we teach them mathematics.

09:12Why?

09:13Why not?

09:14I think this is rather important.

09:16I think math is very important, but so is dance.

09:18Children dance all the time if they're allowed to, we all do.

09:21We all have bodies, don't we? Did I miss a meeting?

09:24(Laughter)

09:27Truthfully, what happens is, as children grow up,

09:29we start to educate them progressively from the waist up.

09:32And then we focus on their heads.

09:34And slightly to one side.

09:37If you were to visit education as an alien

09:39and say "What's it for, public education?"

09:42I think you'd have to conclude, if you look at the output,

09:44who really succeeds by this,

09:46who does everything they should,

09:48who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners --

09:50I think you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education

09:54throughout the world

09:55is to produce university professors.

09:57Isn't it?

09:58They're the people who come out the top.

10:00And I used to be one, so there.

10:02(Laughter)

10:06And I like university professors,

10:08but, you know, we shouldn't hold them up

10:10as the high-water mark of all human achievement.

10:13They're just a form of life.

10:15Another form of life.

10:16But they're rather curious.

10:18And I say this out of affection for them:

10:19there's something curious about professors.

10:22In my experience -- not all of them, but typically -- they live in their heads.

10:25They live up there and slightly to one side.

10:28They're disembodied, you know, in a kind of literal way.

10:31They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads.

10:35(Laughter)

10:41Don't they?

10:42It's a way of getting their head to meetings.

10:44(Laughter)

10:50If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, by the way,

10:53get yourself along to a residential conference of senior academics

10:57and pop into the discotheque on the final night.

10:59(Laughter)

11:02And there, you will see it.

11:03Grown men and women writhing uncontrollably, off the beat.

11:08(Laughter)

11:10Waiting until it ends, so they can go home and write a paper about it.

11:14(Laughter)

11:16Our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability.

11:20And there's a reason.

11:21Around the world, there were no public systems of education,

11:24really, before the 19th century.

11:27They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism.

11:30So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas.

11:32Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top.

11:37So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school

11:40when you were a kid,

11:41things you liked,

11:42on the grounds you would never get a job doing that.

11:44Is that right?

11:46"Don't do music, you're not going to be a musician;

11:48don't do art, you won't be an artist."

11:50Benign advice -- now, profoundly mistaken.

11:53The whole world is engulfed in a revolution.

11:55And the second is academic ability,

11:57which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence,

12:00because the universities design the system in their image.

12:03If you think of it,

12:04the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process

12:07of university entrance.

12:09And the consequence is that many highly talented,

12:11brilliant, creative people think they're not,

12:13because the thing they were good at at school

12:16wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized.

12:18And I think we can't afford to go on that way.

12:20In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO,

12:23more people worldwide will be graduating through education

12:26than since the beginning of history.

12:28More people.

12:29And it's the combination of all the things we've talked about:

12:32technology and its transformational effect on work,

12:35and demography and the huge explosion in population.

12:37Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything.

12:40Isn't that true?

12:41When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job.

12:44If you didn't have a job, it's because you didn't want one.

12:47And I didn't want one, frankly.

12:50(Laughter)

12:51But now kids with degrees are often heading home

12:55to carry on playing video games,

12:57because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA,

13:00and now you need a PhD for the other.

13:02It's a process of academic inflation.

13:04And it indicates the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet.

13:07We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.

13:10We know three things about intelligence.

13:12One, it's diverse.

13:13We think about the world in all the ways that we experience it.

13:16We think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically.

13:19We think in abstract terms, we think in movement.

13:21Secondly, intelligence is dynamic.

13:24If you look at the interactions of a human brain,

13:27as we heard yesterday from a number of presentations,

13:30intelligence is wonderfully interactive.

13:32The brain isn't divided into compartments.

13:34In fact, creativity --

13:36which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value --

13:40more often than not comes about

13:42through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.

13:47By the way, there's a shaft of nerves that joins the two halves of the brain,

13:51called the corpus callosum.

13:52It's thicker in women.

13:54Following off from Helen yesterday,

13:56this is probably why women are better at multitasking.

13:59Because you are, aren't you?

14:01There's a raft of research, but I know it from my personal life.

14:04If my wife is cooking a meal at home, which is not often ...

14:09thankfully.

14:10(Laughter)

14:13No, she's good at some things.

14:14But if she's cooking, she's dealing with people on the phone,

14:17she's talking to the kids, she's painting the ceiling --

14:20(Laughter)

14:21she's doing open-heart surgery over here.

14:23If I'm cooking, the door is shut, the kids are out,

14:26the phone's on the hook,

14:27if she comes in, I get annoyed.

14:29I say, "Terry, please, I'm trying to fry an egg in here."

14:32(Laughter)

14:39"Give me a break."

14:40(Laughter)

14:42Actually, do you know that old philosophical thing,

14:44"If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody hears it, did it happen?"

14:48Remember that old chestnut?

14:49I saw a great T-shirt recently, which said,

14:52"If a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no woman hears him,

14:56is he still wrong?"

14:57(Laughter)

15:05And the third thing about intelligence is,

15:07it's distinct.

15:09I'm doing a new book at the moment called "Epiphany,"

15:11which is based on a series of interviews with people

15:14about how they discovered their talent.

15:15I'm fascinated by how people got to be there.

15:18It's really prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman

15:21who maybe most people have never heard of, Gillian Lynne.

15:24Have you heard of her? Some have.

15:25She's a choreographer, and everybody knows her work.

15:28She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera."

15:30She's wonderful.

15:31I used to be on the board of The Royal Ballet, as you can see.

15:34(Laughter)

15:36Gillian and I had lunch one day. I said, "How did you get to be a dancer?"

15:39It was interesting.

15:41When she was at school, she was really hopeless.

15:43And the school, in the '30s, wrote to her parents and said,

15:46"We think Gillian has a learning disorder."

15:48She couldn't concentrate; she was fidgeting.

15:50I think now they'd say she had ADHD.

15:52Wouldn't you?

15:53But this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn't been invented at this point.

15:57It wasn't an available condition.

15:59(Laughter)

16:03People weren't aware they could have that.

16:05(Laughter)

16:07Anyway, she went to see this specialist.

16:11So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her mother,

16:15and she was led and sat on this chair at the end,

16:17and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes,

16:19while this man talked to her mother

16:21about all the problems Gillian was having at school,

16:23because she was disturbing people, her homework was always late, and so on.

16:27Little kid of eight.

16:28In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian and said,

16:31"I've listened to all these things your mother's told me.

16:34I need to speak to her privately.

16:36Wait here. We'll be back. We won't be very long,"

16:38and they went and left her.

16:41But as they went out of the room,

16:42he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk.

16:45And when they got out of the room,

16:47he said to her mother, "Just stand and watch her."

16:49And the minute they left the room,

16:52she was on her feet, moving to the music.

16:54And they watched for a few minutes, and he turned to her mother and said,

16:58"Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick.

17:00She's a dancer.

17:03Take her to a dance school."

17:04I said, "What happened?"

17:06She said, "She did. I can't tell you how wonderful it was.

17:09We walked in this room, and it was full of people like me --

17:11people who couldn't sit still,

17:14people who had to move to think."

17:17Who had to move to think.

17:18They did ballet, they did tap, jazz; they did modern; they did contemporary.

17:22She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School.

17:25She became a soloist; she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet.

17:28She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School,

17:31founded the Gillian Lynne Dance Company,

17:33met Andrew Lloyd Webber.

17:34She's been responsible for

17:35some of the most successful musical theater productions in history,

17:38she's given pleasure to millions,

17:40and she's a multimillionaire.

17:41Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

17:45(Applause)

17:53What I think it comes to is this:

17:55Al Gore spoke the other night

17:57about ecology and the revolution that was triggered by Rachel Carson.

18:02I believe our only hope for the future

18:04is to adopt a new conception of human ecology,

18:08one in which we start to reconstitute our conception

18:10of the richness of human capacity.

18:13Our education system has mined our minds

18:16in the way that we strip-mine the earth for a particular commodity.

18:20And for the future, it won't serve us.

18:22We have to rethink the fundamental principles

18:25on which we're educating our children.

18:27There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said,

18:29"If all the insects were to disappear from the Earth,

18:34within 50 years, all life on Earth would end.

18:38If all human beings disappeared from the Earth,

18:41within 50 years, all forms of life would flourish."

18:45And he's right.

18:47What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination.

18:51We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely,

18:55and that we avert some of the scenarios that we've talked about.

18:59And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities

19:02for the richness they are

19:04and seeing our children for the hope that they are.

19:07And our task is to educate their whole being,

19:10so they can face this future.

19:11By the way -- we may not see this future,

19:14but they will.

19:15And our job is to help them make something of it.

19:18Thank you very much.

19:19(Applause)