EDUC-TED Talks-Ken Robinson: How to escape education´s death valley

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Transcript:




Thank you very much.

I moved to America 12 years agowith my wife Terry and our two kids.Actually, truthfully, we moved to Los Angeles -- (Laughter) --thinking we were moving to America,but anyway, it's a short plane ride from Los Angelesto America.

I got here 12 years ago,and when I got here, I was told various things,like, "Americans don't get irony."Have you come across this idea?It's not true. I've traveled the whole length and breadth of this country.I have found no evidence that Americans don't get irony.It's one of those cultural myths,like, "The British are reserved."I don't know why people think this.We've invaded every country we've encountered.(Laughter)But it's not true Americans don't get irony,but I just want you to know that that's what peopleare saying about you behind your back.You know, so when you leave living rooms in Europe,people say, thankfully, nobody was ironic in your presence.

But I knew that Americans get ironywhen I came across that legislation No Child Left Behind.Because whoever thought of that title gets irony,don't they, because --(Laughter) (Applause) —because it's leaving millions of children behind.Now I can see that's not a very attractive name for legislation:Millions of Children Left Behind. I can see that.What's the plan? Well, we proposeto leave millions of children behind,and here's how it's going to work.

And it's working beautifully.In some parts of the country,60 percent of kids drop out of high school.In the Native American communities,it's 80 percent of kids.If we halved that number, one estimate isit would create a net gain to the U.S. economyover 10 years of nearly a trillion dollars.From an economic point of view,this is good math, isn't it, that we should do this?It actually costs an enormous amountto mop up the damage from the dropout crisis.

But the dropout crisis is just the tip of an iceberg.What it doesn't count are all the kids who are in schoolbut being disengaged from it, who don't enjoy it,who don't get any real benefit from it.

And the reason isnot that we're not spending enough money.America spends more money on educationthan most other countries.Class sizes are smaller than in many countries.And there are hundreds of initiatives every yearto try and improve education.The trouble is, it's all going in the wrong direction.There are three principleson which human life flourishes,and they are contradicted by the culture of educationunder which most teachers have to laborand most students have to endure.

The first is this, that human beingsare naturally different and diverse.

Can I ask you, how many of youhave got children of your own?Okay. Or grandchildren.How about two children or more? Right.And the rest of you have seen such children.(Laughter)Small people wandering about.I will make you a bet,and I am confident that I will win the bet.If you've got two children or more,I bet you they are completely different from each other.Aren't they? Aren't they? (Applause)You would never confuse them, would you?Like, "Which one are you? Remind me.Your mother and I are going to introducesome color-coding system, so we don't get confused."

Education under No Child Left Behindis based on not diversity but conformity.What schools are encouraged to do is to find outwhat kids can do across a very narrow spectrum of achievement.One of the effects of No Child Left Behindhas been to narrow the focusonto the so-called STEM disciplines. They're very important.I'm not here to argue against science and math.On the contrary, they're necessary but they're not sufficient.A real education has to give equal weightto the arts, the humanities, to physical education.An awful lot of kids, sorry, thank you — (Applause) —One estimate in America currently is thatsomething like 10 percent of kids, getting on that way,are being diagnosed with various conditionsunder the broad title of attention deficit disorder.ADHD. I'm not saying there's no such thing.I just don't believe it's an epidemic like this.If you sit kids down, hour after hour,doing low-grade clerical work,don't be surprised if they start to fidget, you know?(Laughter) (Applause)Children are not, for the most part,suffering from a psychological condition.They're suffering from childhood. (Laughter)And I know this because I spent my early lifeas a child. I went through the whole thing.Kids prosper best with a broad curriculumthat celebrates their various talents,not just a small range of them.And by the way, the arts aren't just importantbecause they improve math scores.They're important because they speak to partsof children's being which are otherwise untouched.

The second, thank you — (Applause)

The second principle that drives human life flourishingis curiosity.If you can light the spark of curiosity in a child,they will learn without any further assistance, very often.Children are natural learners.It's a real achievement to put that particular ability out,or to stifle it.Curiosity is the engine of achievement.Now the reason I say this is becauseone of the effects of the current culture here, if I can say so,has been to de-professionalize teachers.There is no system in the worldor any school in the countrythat is better than its teachers.Teachers are the lifeblood of the success of schools.But teaching is a creative profession.Teaching, properly conceived, is not a delivery system.You know, you're not there just to pass on received information.Great teachers do that,but what great teachers also do is mentor,stimulate, provoke, engage.You see, in the end, education is about learning.If there's no learning going on,there's no education going on.And people can spend an awful lot of timediscussing education without ever discussing learning.The whole point of education is to get people to learn.

A friend of mine, an old friend -- actually very old,he's dead. (Laughter)That's as old as it gets, I'm afraid.But a wonderful guy he was, wonderful philosopher.He used to talk about the difference between the taskand achievement senses of verbs.You know, you can be engaged in the activity of something,but not really be achieving it,like dieting. It's a very good example, you know.There he is. He's dieting. Is he losing any weight? Not really.Teaching is a word like that.You can say, "There's Deborah, she's in room 34, she's teaching."But if nobody's learning anything,she may be engaged in the task of teachingbut not actually fulfilling it.

The role of a teacher is to facilitate learning. That's it.And part of the problem is, I think,that the dominant culture of education has come to focuson not teaching and learning, but testing.Now, testing is important. Standardized tests have a place.But they should not be the dominant culture of education.They should be diagnostic. They should help.(Applause)If I go for a medical examination,I want some standardized tests. I do.You know, I want to know what my cholesterol level iscompared to everybody else's on a standard scale.I don't want to be told on some scalemy doctor invented in the car.

"Your cholesterol is what I call Level Orange."

"Really? Is that good?" "We don't know."

But all that should support learning. It shouldn't obstruct it,which of course it often does.So in place of curiosity, what we haveis a culture of compliance.Our children and teachers are encouragedto follow routine algorithmsrather than to excite that power of imagination and curiosity.And the third principle is this:that human life is inherently creative.It's why we all have different résumés.We create our lives,and we can recreate them as we go through them.It's the common currency of being a human being.It's why human culture is so interesting and diverseand dynamic.I mean, other animals may well have imaginationsand creativity, but it's not so much in evidence,is it, as ours?I mean, you may have a dog.And your dog may get depressed.You know, but it doesn't listen to Radiohead, does it?(Laughter)And sit staring out the window with a bottle of Jack Daniels.(Laughter)

And you say, "Would you like to come for a walk?"

He says, "No, I'm fine.You go. I'll wait. But take pictures."

We all create our own lives through this restless processof imagining alternatives and possibilities,and what one of the roles of educationis to awaken and develop these powers of creativity.Instead, what we have is a culture of standardization.

Now, it doesn't have to be that way. It really doesn't.Finland regularly comes out on topin math, science and reading.Now, we only know that's what they do well atbecause that's all that's being tested currently.That's one of the problems of the test.They don't look for other things that matter just as much.The thing about work in Finland is this:they don't obsess about those disciplines.They have a very broad approach to educationwhich includes humanities, physical education, the arts.

Second, there is no standardized testing in Finland.I mean, there's a bit,but it's not what gets people up in the morning.It's not what keeps them at their desks.

And the third thing, and I was at a meeting recentlywith some people from Finland, actual Finnish people,and somebody from the American systemwas saying to the people in Finland,"What do you do about the dropout rate in Finland?"

And they all looked a bit bemused, and said,"Well, we don't have one.Why would you drop out?If people are in trouble, we get to them quite quicklyand help them and we support them."

Now people always say, "Well, you know,you can't compare Finland to America."

No. I think there's a populationof around five million in Finland.But you can compare it to a state in America.Many states in America have fewer people in them than that.I mean, I've been to some states in Americaand I was the only person there. (Laughter)Really. Really. I was asked to lock up when I left.(Laughter)

But what all the high-performing systems in the world dois currently what is not evident, sadly,across the systems in America -- I mean, as a whole.One is this: They individualize teaching and learning.They recognize that it's students who are learningand the system has to engage them, their curiosity,their individuality, and their creativity.That's how you get them to learn.

The second is that they attribute a very high statusto the teaching profession.They recognize that you can't improve educationif you don't pick great people to teachand if you don't keep giving them constant supportand professional development.Investing in professional development is not a cost.It's an investment,and every other country that's succeeding well knows that,whether it's Australia, Canada, South Korea, Singapore,Hong Kong or Shanghai. They know that to be the case.

And the third is, they devolve responsibilityto the school level for getting the job done.You see, there's a big difference here betweengoing into a mode of command and control in education --That's what happens in some systems.You know, central governments decideor state governments decidethey know best and they're going to tell you what to do.The trouble is that education doesn't go onin the committee rooms of our legislative buildings.It happens in classrooms and schools,and the people who do it are the teachers and the students,and if you remove their discretion, it stops working.You have to put it back to the people.(Applause)

There is wonderful work happening in this country.But I have to say it's happeningin spite of the dominant culture of education,not because of it.It's like people are sailing into a headwind all the time.And the reason I think is this:that many of the current policies are based onmechanistic conceptions of education.It's like education is an industrial processthat can be improved just by having better data,and somewhere in, I think, the back of the mindof some policy makers is this idea thatif we fine-tune it well enough, if we just get it right,it will all hum along perfectly into the future.It won't, and it never did.

The point is that education is not a mechanical system.It's a human system. It's about people,people who either do want to learn or don't want to learn.Every student who drops out of school has a reason for itwhich is rooted in their own biography.They may find it boring. They may find it irrelevant.They may find that it's at oddswith the life they're living outside of school.There are trends, but the stories are always unique.I was at a meeting recently in Los Angeles of --they're called alternative education programs.These are programs designed to get kids back into education.They have certain common features.They're very personalized.They have strong support for the teachers,close links with the communityand a broad and diverse curriculum,and often programs which involve studentsoutside school as well as inside school.And they work.What's interesting to me is,these are called "alternative education."You know?And all the evidence from around the world is,if we all did that, there'd be no need for the alternative.(Applause)

So I think we have to embrace a different metaphor.We have to recognize that it's a human system,and there are conditions under which people thrive,and conditions under which they don't.We are after all organic creatures,and the culture of the school is absolutely essential.Culture is an organic term, isn't it?

Not far from where I live is a place called Death Valley.Death Valley is the hottest, driest place in America,and nothing grows there.Nothing grows there because it doesn't rain.Hence, Death Valley.In the winter of 2004, it rained in Death Valley.Seven inches of rain fell over a very short period.And in the spring of 2005, there was a phenomenon.The whole floor of Death Valley was carpeted in flowersfor a while.What it proved is this: that Death Valley isn't dead.It's dormant.Right beneath the surface are these seeds of possibilitywaiting for the right conditions to come about,and with organic systems, if the conditions are right,life is inevitable. It happens all the time.You take an area, a school, a district,you change the conditions, give people a different sense of possibility,a different set of expectations,a broader range of opportunities,you cherish and value the relationships between teachers and learners,you offer people the discretion to be creativeand to innovate in what they do,and schools that were once bereft spring to life.

Great leaders know that.The real role of leadership in education --and I think it's true at the national level, the state level,at the school level --is not and should not be command and control.The real role of leadership is climate control,creating a climate of possibility.And if you do that, people will rise to itand achieve things that you completely did not anticipateand couldn't have expected.

There's a wonderful quote from Benjamin Franklin."There are three sorts of people in the world:Those who are immovable,people who don't get, they don't want to get it,they're going to do anything about it.There are people who are movable,people who see the need for changeand are prepared to listen to it.And there are people who move,people who make things happen."And if we can encourage more people,that will be a movement.And if the movement is strong enough,that's, in the best sense of the word, a revolution.And that's what we need.

Thank you very much.(Applause)Thank you very much. (Applause)