Sir Ken Robinson: The Element

my name is Linda Resnick and I have the distinct honor of introducing Ken Robinson now I've been a Ken Robinson groupie since 2006 when I first saw the podcast at Ted now it made that that Ken did it may not have been the most downloaded podcast ever but I'm sure it's up in the top five his ideas about creativity and education are more important today than they have ever been because of this technological age that we live in ken is a brilliant speaker he's funny he's charming and it isn't just me that says this it's obviously the Queen of England who knighted him for his contribution to the Arts so enough about me I introduced Sir Ken Robinson that's how this works in it I was going to start off by saying how delighted I am to be here that you have to do that don't you when you give talks you have to say how delighted you are to be where you are I'm not sure frankly I had to get up at 5:30 to be here today I am not delighted about that frankly but I'm kind of going to use this I was in Oslo recently has anybody had been to Oslo it's an amazing city and I was there I went to speak at a conference I flew overnight from Los Angeles the plane was five hours late and I was driven straight from the airport to the conference and I walked onto the platform pretty much with my hand baggage you know and as I was going on the woman who had invited me said have you been to Oslo before and I said no never and I was confident about that as you might be because you don't go to Oslo accidentally dude Tim you don't wander in in error thing oh I was aiming for San Diego and and here we are now in Oslo so I said no I have not been here before and then over dinner with her I realized that I had been there before for a week I'd spent a week there 15 years ago I was really appalled but not by Oslo but by that snow that that you could do that you know because if you're in a place for a week you do things don't you I didn't go into all the details about what you're doing a week you know but but you do you know you go to bed you get up you think Norwegian things you know you eat Norwegian food and generally bond with Olga I went to the monk exhibition at the National Gallery I remember and saw the screen which is how I felt you know when I realize that I had forgotten the entire trip now I mention it because it may just be me I mean it may be there I'm just cracking up and that's more than likely um but I also think it's a kind of sign of the times you know I was born in 1950 and I live now in Los Angeles but I was born in Liverpool in 1950 and in 1950 nobody went anywhere really if nobody travelled I think the average person in 1950 traveled about five miles a day maxximum if that you know they got the bus to work and they came home again my father never left the north of England his grandfather never left Liverpool we were tracing our family tree recently such as it is it's actually more like a shrub honestly but but turn with some curious canker on it we don't if we can't work out what the disease is it's affected it but but my brother I have many brothers was was plotting our family tree and we realized that all of our great-grandparents how many great-grandparents do you have is it 16 or 8 do you know 8 good thinking me too house how spooky is that ready have you been to Oslo I feel it's a bonding moment and you really we could be relatives no all all eight of my great-grandparents were born within two miles of each other when we went round Liverpool looking at the know the old houses are actually empty lots rather how's it used to be and if you look at the map they all lived within a set within a couple of miles of each other they grew up that's how they met no they ran into each other in the shops and in the pubs and the gin holes and but that's how people did used to meet you know community just be very tightly bonded and people married people they ran into in the neighborhood and and I think they kind of settled easily for people just mean I mean my great-grandparents were great but I can't believe that their loves of their lives all happen to live within a square mile of each other you know by some curious cosmic quirk you know I think people just thought well you'll do I mean they ran into people thought now this will be fine it'll work you know you're not horrible you know it'll be fine you know because they weren't sitting every week you know reading People magazine and Vanity Fair you know and and thinking about you there's all this out there you know one of these might turn up you know they I'll hang on you know who knows know what might come my way well I say this because all of this has happened in 50 years now we've gone to the point where I now live on the far side of the earth my kids have been to I don't know I mean all the continents except Antarctica a thing and and we live in the world it's becoming increasingly frantic and unpredictable it's hard to grasp how profound this shift is that we've gone from I don't mean to say the world used to be a calm and a silver medal until recently but the rate of change was slow by comparison I used to live in strapped on even near where actually I used to teach neither and live nurse Stratford is a village which is where we actually live called snitterfield snitterfield which is a real place by the way in case you're thinking and was groggy from having been up since 5:30 I shall keep mentioned this 5:30 thing by the way ready because because it's your fault I kind of hold you responsible for this for me getting up but no inter snitterfield is where Shakespeare's father was born John Shakespeare he never left him as a field stratford-upon-avon was three it was and is three miles away he never left Stratford until he was 36 when it was recorded in the local history books that John Shakespeare left snitterfield to seek his fortune in stratford-upon-avon you know he thought dammit if not now when you know I mean I'm heading for Stratford nothing's ever stopped me and anything the difference is incomparable in not just the lives we live but the mindsets that we bring into our lives and I believe that it's catapulting is into itself and I believe I think it's a matter of fact into a future that none of us can predict with any type of certainty and I work a lot now in actually that's a whole sentence there isn't really I work a lot now we I was watching Victor Borge a recently remember Victor Borge isn't he fantastic and I shown it to my kids and they always use trend this shows too and we used to say I'd like to thank my parents for making this show possible and my children for making it necessary Christopher that's great anyway and I work a lot now in three bigger or three main areas I work in education I always have I mean that's my profession my background I also work a lot in with businesses with the corporate sector particularly on issues to do with innovation and creativity and I work a lot with the cultural sector and always did I work with a lot of large and small cultural organizations and this isn't because I can't settle you know it's because I believe that there are synergies in the interests of these different groups that it's intensely important that we cultivate and the fact that we don't cultivate them leads to levels of misunderstanding and dissonance between these three areas which are having chaotic consequences but the bit I want to focus on is education as I'd say a worth l'éducation quite a bit and my work in education and actually with organizations is really it comes to is based on three ideas one of them is is that we are living in times of revolution and I believe this is literally true you know the I don't mean it figuratively like it's a bit like a revolution it's what we think of as a revolution and what we've come to call a revolution it is a revolution a revolution is a time when things you think are obvious turn out not to be things that you take for granted turn out to be untrue things that you always do to bitterly turn out to be ineffective and I believe that's where we are now and the pace of this is picking up secondly that if we're to meet this revolution we have to think very differently about ourselves about our talents and our abilities and particularly we have children we have to think differently about them I believe that we tragically underestimate the real depth of human talent I think if this is the other climate crisis and you know we've become used to hope to the idea that there is a an actual climate crisis in the physical environment but I believe there's something comfortable in the human environment and they're all ways of of calibrating this I mean one for example is the dropout rate from public schools in America now I ought to say by the way that I live in America I haven't asked um over here to take charts you know at the education system we moved out here nine years ago my wife and our two kids we are permanent residents so they're you know and and we love it here and actually we moved here we moved to Los Angeles thinking we're moving to America like that have enough you've been to Los Angeles unreservedly have you been to Las Vegas have you what is that and I'll come back to Las Vegas oh we mustn't get detained that with my wife and I been we've been together for 33 years Terry night can you blame her come on would you throw this away I think not anyway but yes 33 years I've been under lock and key and no and we've been married for 28 so you can work it out you know the the first view is a rather torrid you know but we we Terry is a major fan of Elvis Presley I can't overemphasize what an understatement that is by the way there are three of us in this marriage frankly fortunately I'm alive University no could it it's a marginal advantage really but but we 33 is the same look of disappointment at breakfast it wears you down you know but oh it's you yes yes he's dead anyway we we went to to get married again three years ago it's our 25th wedding anniversary and we got married again at the Elvis chapel in Las Vegas she wanted to be near him really sorry no it was a fantastic event to have to say it really was good um we had the blue Hawaii package but but there are others you know but with the blue Hawaii package you get the the Elvis impersonator for songs smoke now that was important to me because we paid for it you know I was I was distracted during my vows because we hadn't had the smoke and then and then it puffed down to an exhaust by it right above the altar that's okay check the box and I think it was trying to the era of mid string sanctity of the whole occasion you know and then oh and a hula girl that was optional I opted for it for reasons we chose reasons I was rather pleased about frankly any rating now I mention it because Las Vegas is very curious as you know it's curious in all kinds of ways but the thing that's really curious like Las Vegas to me is this that there is no reason for it to be there if you go to it almost any other city on earth there's a reason why it is where it is you know like London is in the natural port so is New York some cities are in great arable plain so they're good for agriculture and on a crook of a river so they're good for you know for settlement and for raising crops and families and cattle no Los Angeles has a reason to be or it is you know it's whether dentists out you know how people people go there naturally but but but there is no reason for Vegas to be where it is if you've been there you know it's in the middle of a wilderness there is no natural water supply in fact they're running out of water it's unbearably hot and arid it's the last place you would put a city and yet it's one of the fastest-growing cities in America and the reason is I think that Las Vegas exemplifies something unique to human beings Las Vegas is a massive Las Vegas exemplifies a lot of things that are unique to human beings but but the particular thing I mean is it it exemplifies a unique power that we have and I believe it's the main distinguishing power that we have that distinguishes from everything else on earth I mean in most respects we are not distinguished from everything else on earth in most respects we share the same appetites the same short lifespan the same needs the same dependence on the earth itself as everything else now most of what we think and feel we owe to things other than our imaginations I think other types of impulses but imagination is what sets us apart this ability to bring into mind things that aren't present to hypothesize to step outside of the present moment to move beyond the situation's presented to our senses and to conceive of alternatives you see once you've got imagination you could look backwards you can revisit the past not just any past but multiple versions the past you can rethink the past you can revisit it and you can reclaim it you can put yourself in the minds of other people you can empathize a feeling I believe that you're rooted in this power of imagination but you can also visit the future not the actual future but you can anticipate it and with imagination you can help to bring some of it about in a biological sense were probably not evolving at much more of a rate than everything else on the planet I don't think we've changed much in my lifetime I mean perhaps this generation getting a bit bigger by living a bit longer some of us but culturally we are very different I mean dogs you know have not evolved in any cultural sense have they recently I mean you don't feel you have to keep checking in with dogs do you to see what's new you know like what's happening with the dog thing you know they are doing much as they always did but with human beings there's always something new there's always something and this power of originality and of origination derived from this capacity for imagination creativity is derived from that too but it's a different thing and I want to come to it but my point in saying is is that this power of imagination is what's driving the revolution it's what's driven revolutionary movements since the beginning of humanity it's why we live in cities now in in caves it's why we use computers and not Flint's it's why we write elaborate novels and don't just whistle it's because this power has captivated us and drives us forward but I believe that the processor that we might expect to develop this power is failing us in a tragic way that most people lose touch with their imaginations as they get older they lose confidence in their creativity one of the examples is the extraordinary attrition rate in public schools and I say I live here so I haven't come to tech shots of this but in America now and it's not unlike other parts the world by the way there is a 30% you know this an average 30 percent dropout rate from public education 30% millions of kids who go into the system and never complete it and countless more who stay with the system but don't engage with it who detach from it in some way and who get through it but don't feel they benefit from it and there are other indices one of them by the way in California where I live is that in California this year the state government of California is on track to spend more money on the correctional system than on the whole of public higher education I mean does that answer to any conception of humanity that you could bear to live with know that there are more potential criminals in the state of California than potential college graduates I don't mean to imply these are mutually exclusive groups by the way and pin it it might when there's a good deal of overlap but and but but what I mean is the idea that we're better investing in correctional systems than in developing the powers that may encourage people to avoid being in them in the first place seems to me to be absolutely absurd I just don't believe it you know I just don't believe there that many bad people no there aren't that many psychopaths I think actually don't need that many do you okay really I mean one goes a long way don't you find ready I mean I do meet two psychopaths in one day this is a bad day isn't it frankly but so I believe there's a crisis of human resources and thirdly that if we're to meet this crisis we have to behave differently we have to do different things we have to act differently and I believe this is especially true of Education there are reform movements in education all over the world that's why I was in Oslo I remembered it's not just in America it's every country on Earth currently is trying to reform its education system and my view is that reform doesn't work that we have to go further than reform we have to be looking at transformation rather than reformation and the reason is this that our education systems are derived from another age most of our education systems came into being in their structure in the 19th century they are modeled on the interests and needs of industrialism I know that Richard Flores written about this and maybe talked about it this morning that in the structure of education we see the industrial system replicated and I can give you some examples of it it's a very linear system no the assumption is if you work hard at school and go through the system and do everything that's required of you and and especially if you get a college degree that you will be set for life that's chosen at me that that when I was growing up that was the story you know that if you went to college and got a degree you were absolutely guaranteed a job there's no guarantee for that now I work a lot with companies and organizations if you run one I mean are you impressed if suddenly turns up with a college degree I mean do you immediately show them the corner office and say well here you are you know with the very pleasant would be waiting for a funeral your people will be assembling shortly I think not you see the only reason in the 50s and 60s when I was growing up the only reason you would not have a job if you did if you had a college degree would be if you didn't want a job and I left school in nineteen 1972 and I didn't a job I was trying to find myself in 1970 we could do this they'd remember I thought no no no I have to search my inner being before I get down to you know avoiding living off my parents and note so I decided to go to India where I thought I might be and I didn't I didn't get to India by the way I got to London where to be further a lot of Indian restaurants no but I hung out there but I knew that when I wanted a job I'll just pop out and get one because I had a degree it's not true now a degree you may be better off with a degree but there's no guarantee that it's been said in a degree used to be a passport to employment and now it's a visa you know get you in for a bit this is not because standards are falling I don't know if they are or not I don't think anybody really knows if they are not taken as a whole it's because the world is shifted on its axis a one factor is that more and more people are getting degrees because of the growth of the knowledge economy the things that Richard Florida is written about that the the shift in the fundamental economic basis of the workforce has generated need for more and more people to be educated to high on higher levels and immediately when I went to college about 1 in 20 people went to college because about 1 in 20 people ended up doing office work about 80% of people did manual work or blue-collar work and others did kind of routine admin now it's a much higher proportion about 1 in 3 people go to college well the result of it is that academic qualifications are falling in value I mean they may still be worth doing from a personal point of view and I'm not wouldn't talk anybody out to go into college but I also wouldn't talk anybody into it either I do think it's an obsession that we have that everybody has to go to college or their life ends and I know people have perfectly wonderful lives who never went to college never wanted to go to college and kids who've gone to college you wish they'd never gone and we go through four years but still don't know what to do next but it's become an algorithm that you have to go through the system exactly as its or the world will come to a sudden end so there's a linear model here the second is that it's about conformity it's about batching you know we still educate people by age group for example why do we do that I mean it's because it's a managerial convenience it's not because it answers to any model of human growth or development no but we assume that all the five roles should be educated together all the six euros all the seven euros it's like the most important thing they have in common is their data manufacture you know well I know five-year-olds who are a lot smarter than some 12 year olds according to what they're doing and it's also about standardization we know this and you know that the great blight I believe particular on American education if I could say so just now is this obsession with standardizing everything the cult of standardized tests now there's a lot in all of these things but transformation essentially to me means changing the paradigm and a paradigm is really a set of ideas and assumptions that we take for granted on which we build our theories probably the best example that springs to mind is the Copernican Revolution in the Middle Ages you know up until Copernicus all of the astronomers and mathematicians and scientists and philosophers believed or acted as if they believed that the Sun revolved around the earth and all of their calculations were based on that and also that the movements were perfectly spherical and this wasn't just a scientific premise it was a religious conviction because the assumption was that human beings were the center of God's universe and nature's last word and everything else revolved around isn't all so it answered to common sense you know it's clear that the planets were moving in that we weren't you know I mean people were not spinning off the earth you know every day you know they weren't stumbling on the way to work it's because of the sudden spinning movements of the planet it was clear the earth was still - common sense the problem was there lots of anomalies in the observations of astronomers the planets wouldn't behave you know they kept describing odd elliptical movements in the sky and mathematicians came up with more and more elaborate explanations for why it might be Copernicus said we'll maybe you know just for the sake of argument what if the Sun is not going around the earth what if we're going round the Sun how would it look then and then of the old problems disappeared at a stroke and he was persecuted course for his efforts because this wasn't just a scientific premise it was an offense to theology and to common sense of course we now take it for granted that he was right the Copernican revolution wasn't a new theory it was a new ideology it was a new paradigm what happens is in paradigm shifts typically I think is that the adherents of the old paradigm cling onto it as if their life depends upon it because it's all they know and they believe the problem is just it's not working as well as it used to we just need to fix it and the same thing is happening now as we speak in education people who are invest in the old paradigm are clinging on to it as if their life depends upon it and the fact is it can't be fixed as it is because the basic premises of it are mistaken it's based on a faulty view of the economy and a mistaken conception of human ability and the consequence of this is not only that people aren't getting jobs with degrees there's a mounting skills gap among people who don't have degrees the long-term unemployed are finding that more and more the things they've been educated to do don't apply you may have seen some of this the pieces in the New York Times this last week about the growing skills gap in the attempts to revive the economy literally tens of thousands of people are unable to find work though the numbers of jobs are growing because there's no match between what they're capable of doing and the jobs that are needed so it's an economic problem at both ends of the system but it's also an existential problem for the people who are in the system I published a book last year actually 18 months ago do you care when it was does it matter to you okay January of last year the 23rd is it denser okay this book it's called the element how finding your passion changes everything and I have to tell you that this book is terrific really honestly you would you'd be mad not to about this book honestly really but it's based on this it's based on an observation I've made I'm sure you've made for a long time is that an awful lot of people I don't that statistically accurate enough for everything lots of people you know we're talking huge numbers here and an egregiously large number of people do not enjoy what they do for a living you know it you may be one of them I know all kinds of people who don't like what they do for a living they may be good at it that have particularly relish doing it they've just wandered into doing it and they they get on with it and largely wait for the weekend they so to speak endure what they do rather than enjoy it but I also meet people and always have done a smaller group of people I have to say who love what they do and who couldn't imagine doing anything else if you said to them why don't you change track and do something else they'd look at you as if you'd gone mad because they'd say but this is Who I am this isn't just what I do this defines me know I am this you know I am a chemist you know I am a chef you know I know I am a fireman you know I am a teacher that's who I am this is what I live for and if I if I were not to do this I don't know what I would do you know what I'm talking out here don't you they aren't meant the common languages is that they are in their element you know that and what we mean in common language is if you're in your element your your feeling at your most authentic and your most comfortable your most genuine version of yourself there's an old Native American story I was told while ago in Oklahoma of two fish two young fish there was swimming along the river in the river and an old fish swam in the opposite direction and the old fish nodded to the two young fish and said good morning boys they nodded and said how's the water and then swam on and when they got a bit further down one of the young fish turned the other one and said what's water because they've no idea that that's what they're in the element on which they depended and people I know who are doing their life's work so to speak so much take for granted this is what they should be doing that they couldn't even distinguish themselves from the work in some ways it defines them now most people in my experience are not in that place I believe we all have the potential to be in that place ironically one of the reasons were not in that place is education because our education systems are based not on a broad encompassing conception of intelligence and ability but on a narrow view of ability and intelligence and the consequence of that is that we've created all kinds of ways of promoting some sense of normality and stigmatizing people who deviate from it can I ask you something how many of you here are baby boomers Oh welcome if you don't if you can bear to put your hands up again I don't know it's the end of a day but no not yet no I you've shown you can do that you know ready where we on the proof stage now I think ready no I'll ask you this question and then you can in a minute would you bring hands up if you've had your tonsils removed right now that's a lot of isn't it you see baby boomers and our parents but particularly boomers but you've not been asked that reason they have you that doesn't come up so she does it you know people don't come and say you must be Andrew do you have your tonsils it doesn't have a zit the I mentioned for this to you see when I was growing up kids of my generation routinely had their tonsils taken out isn't this true routinely the minute you showed signs of a sore throat somebody would pounce on you and take your tonsils I didn't think they did when I was a teenager you couldn't afford to clear your throat in public oh well so somebody would grab you and take your tonsils out and and very possibly adenoids too in fact any protrusions they couldn't account for would be removed no millions of tonsils were removed in the 50s and 60s whether or not what happened to all the tonsils I mean it's it's a scandal I believe anyway but is it now the thing is most these operations were unnecessary most of them unnecessary and children today young people day do not suffer from this plague this was a plague that was visited on a whole generation it was a fad it was a fashion the doctors you know were paid to remove tonsils it was kind of conventional wisdom they had to come out that you didn't need the tonsils anyway let's just remove them get rid of them you're better off without them and and the result was that lots of has been going around oh I have my tonsils by the way in case you're interested I kept my mouth shut as a kid I spoke through my teeth for about 15 years kids today don't suffer from this because medicine has moved on and doctors have taken a different view and they've come to the opinion that there are dangers in removing tonsils and anyway it's not necessary and so it doesn't happen people are treated with antibiotics or they're left alone to recover in the wrong way this generation of kids has avoided the false plague of tonsillectomies but I believe they're subject to another plague that we didn't have to go through a plague that's equally fallacious that is extravagantly overestimated and is causing misery I think to lots of kids what I mean is the plague of ADHD now I don't mean to say that there is no such thing as ADHD I'm not qualified to say that it's not my field but I've spoken to lots of people whose field it is there's a general view that there is such a thing it's not a single thing that there is a kind of complex of conditions that are broadly called ADHD it shows itself in different ways I think what we also know is though that children young people like adults are tremendously diverse and they think in all kinds of ways the idea of intelligence being multifaceted has become I think now properly part of mainstream thing in lots of fields of Education primarily say through the work of Howard Gardner who's also here who has I think promulgated this idea in the most extraordinary way and it answers to common sense that human intelligence is extraordinarily diverse and we don't just live in a kind of calm state of academic detachment we are embodied people we live in bodies and our bodies and our minds are infused constantly with feelings and emotions and moods and states of mind it is the nature of human being to be active and to be creative and to be intellectually Restless but a lot of kids are being subjected to this conformist form of Education that's obsessed with standardization finally get hard to keep with it can't keep with the program because the program is so dull and one of the answers we've now come up with is to sedate them to keep them with the program to promote a sense of normality for those who seem to deviate from it now as I say I don't mean to say there's no such thing as it but I believe if we've developed education systems in which we can only command people's attention by a method izing them then it's time we report some of the basic premises you see one of the most powerful feelings we all have is a sense of aesthetic pleasure an aesthetic pleasure is one in which we are alive with the power of the present moment where we are exhilarated by the sensory pleasure of sounds or sights or food or of nature but an intense sense of being alive of being conscious the opposite of aesthetic is an aesthetic an anaesthetic is something you take to dull your senses so you can cope with the discomfort and I believe this is the effect we're having and by the way a lot of these drugs now which are being prescribed like candy are circulating through our systems higher education has high performance drugs so that people can get the degree they think is going to get them a job later on we've created a monstrous situation here I think in our misuse of human resources and when we talk about getting back to basics I think that's exactly what we have to do we have to rethink some of the things that we do we have come to take for granted about the nature intelligence and ability and the rotation of feelings to intelligence and the body to the mind and so on now the element is intent to do them when I say that being in your element it means doing something for which you have a natural feel um there's more to it than that I mean you have to sometimes say I had a whole book to write about this I mean I can't dismiss it in a single sentence like this you know this there's much more about it than this there are really four things to think about I believe in raishin to the element about why some people find it and some don't and I just want to mention them in outline say what I think it might mean for education and then we're going to open the cell for some conversation to be in your element I believe is is at least this firstly if you're in your element you're doing something for which you have a natural aptitude a natural feel like you get it one of the people I included in the book I didn't meet him but I hope to is a guy called Terrence town if you heard of Terrence town and if you check him out he's Terence Tao is a professor of mathematics at UCLA he's recognized generally in the field to be the most gifted mathematician on earth currently he's referred to by other mathematicians as the Mozart of math he should come to the Aspen ideas festival he's a remarkable guy at the age of three he was doing double digit equations at the age of two apparently taught himself to read from watching Sesame Street so he has a rather curious accent you know as conservative hey you know rather too fond of feathers for most people's tastes very earthy at the age of eight he took a college entrance math exam and got 98% at the age of twenty he got his PhD in pure math at the age of thirty he was awarded the field medal for mathematics which is the quadrant of Nobel Prize it's reasonable to say is it that Terrance gets math you know I think Terence has got it down you know the math thing you see a lot of people don't get it down a lot of people don't get math I never / - you got math at school I know a lot of kids who don't get it and I think it's ok if you don't get it I think you should try hard like everything else and try and get things I don't use your back away from things are difficult and the problem though is in schools that we very often judge everybody by their abilities in math and conclude if they're not good at that then they're just not good you know it leads to a curious inversion here our schools operate on a very narrow conception of ability it's larger preoccupation with a certain type of academic ability a certain type of propositional knowledge it's why kids spend so much time writing essays you know undoing analytical pieces and thing how much time you spent at school doing that stuff not saying it's not important but it's established a view of intelligence which is rather narrow and the consequence is that our view of disability is correspondingly large our view of ability has created an extraordinary expansive disability I know I used to work in special needs education and I know that very often kids who have sensory impairments have profound abilities in other ways which they can't access or can't articulate because they have a problem perhaps in speaking or in writing but the problem very often is kids with a physical disability are branded as being disabled in general it becomes their brand rather than a feature of part of what they are like so um a lot of kids you know are stigmatized because they're not particular good at math and they're often led to believe they're not good at something else but I don't speak in criticism math Terence Tao and others are brilliantly good I know lots of people who are who just get what they do it may be dance it may be music it may be chemistry it may be working with people but being good at something is not enough to be in your element because I know lots people are good at things they don't care for you know they just do it to be in your element you have to love it and if you love something you're good at you know you never work again at that point you know your life comes to a place that you never want to leave my brother I ever say lots of brothers one of my other brothers I have five used to be in bands he still is he's in rock bands and I remember in the 70s 80s he was in a particular band and I went to see them and they were fantastic they had a keyboard player called Chaz he was about 25 fantastic keyboard player and I was hanging out at the gig as we call it in the music business you know grooving and I did not look then as I looked now by the way the suave sophisticated you see before you I was I was channeling Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin you know generally had the blonde hair the leather jacket and the blue jeans you know I was almost dangerously attractive at this point tonight and that's if I say so myself which is the only positive explanation for why so many women avoided marriage together but yeah but I was hanging out at this bar that watching the band and chance came offstage and the whole band did we having a drink and and I said to him you were fantastic tonight he said well thank you very much and I said to him SAS I'd love to do that he said do one I said to play like that he said no you wouldn't when I was taken aback frankly is that I was just socializing you mean it wasn't it wasn't that we interrogated or challenged doesn't so so I persisted like you do you know I thought no no I'll keep on with this I know what I think so I said well I would and he said no you wouldn't and and we went on in this way for some time until the barman intervened and said with one of you moved this on a bit so so I said what you mean he said well look I play keyboards for a living I've been playing keyboard since I was a kid I started when I was six I've practiced six hours a day and I play five nights a week and he said I do they said if I'm any good is because I do that because I put all that work in they said I put all that work in because I love it I love it and I said if you loved it you'd be doing it he said I think what you mean is you liked the idea of it I said don't you speak to me like this America I could be a VIP at some point head pro you know but of course he's right you know if I'd love it I'd be doing it loving it is crucial but the thing about this is you see that what it comes to to me is a fundamental principle which is this that the reason our education systems are failing is because the premise on which they are based not the organizational premise but the the premise about what it is to be a person is faulted you see when politicians come to talk about education and that's true whether you're looking at No Child Left Behind or race for the time they're all cut from the same cloth really when they come to talk about education and improving it which they should the premise is that improving education is a bit like bailing out the auto industry you know that we just have to get more efficient we need to get rid of the nonsense you know we have to face up to overseas competition make sure standards are set and we all keep to them and that people have real incentives to make sure there's a proper return on investment all the language is language you would apply to manufacturing things the difficulty is this that human beings are not things motor cars have no interest in how they're made and human beings do human beings are full of feelings and intuitions and values and relationships and ideas and aspirations and imagination and you cannot educate people if you don't engage with them as people if we overlook the personal character of Education nothing else works it can't work it's implausible that it would work you know there isn't a kid in the country I think who can get you gets out of bed first thing in the morning thinking what can I do to raise the state's reading standards you know call me you know I'm at your disposal right my only wish is to serve kids are motivated by their own interests and their own passions now I don't mean by this some limp conception of making it relevant to them or of just following their interest the point I'm making is that all children are unique and different how many of you here have got two children now I'd bet you I don't have to place the bet that they are completely different aren't they even identical twins end up being different because they all unique moments in as you are and they're driven by unique interests and unique passions and they are the people at the heart of the system who we are trying to educate and we can't do it if we don't engage them personally each and every one of them there is no other way what happens if we don't is we have a 30% attrition rate of people who decide it's just not for them and interesting all the remedial programs are designed to get them back in the system are based on personalizing education to them and if we would personalize it in the first place they probably wouldn't have dropped out now what it also points to is this that the principle of linearity is itself wholly faulted when it comes to human life human life is not linear anymore than its impersonal its organic and I'll just give you an example to lead us into this conversation have you heard of a guy called Bart Conner Bart Conner some of you made him Bart Conner is in the book the element and Bart Conner when he was six he lived in Morton Grove Illinois and he found that he could walk on his hands as easily as he could walk in his feet now he can't remember how he found this out this is lost to history but he did eat and I've seen him do it he does it in restaurants it's all rather awkward you know but he but he will walk up and down confidently and indefinitely on his hands well he said it wasn't much use you know it's a six year old you know but you know it got him attention and so we kept doing it and then he found he could walk up and down stairs on his hands and again he said it wasn't much use you know but whenever there's a party at home and the the conversation lulled in his father's a bar just do the hands thing that were in and the conversation picked up again anyway nobody thought much of this except his mother and his mother took him to the local gymnasium in Morton Grove Illinois and he said I will never forget the moment when I walked into the gymnasium he said it was intoxicating I said what in what way he said it was like Santa's grotto and Disneyland all in one place he said there were wall bars there were ropes there were trampolines there were vaulting horses he said it was intoxicating now I paused to ask you this question mean is that how you feel when you walk into gymnasium now now you might I'm not saying none of you does you might but I don't I do not find it intoxicating honestly I need to get intoxicated if I if I get within 50 yards of a gymnasium any but Bart loved it loved it and he went every day because he loved it and ten years later he walked onto the mat at the Montreal Olympics represent the United States and the male gymnastics team he went on to be the most decorated male gymnasts in American history he lives now in Norman Oklahoma he's married to Nadia common edge remember first perfect ten they have a wonderful little boy called Dylan after Bob Dylan why not Bob we don't know so it's what comes to spending a life upside down though but no but they he and Nadia are members of the board of the Special Olympics movement a movement which is so far involved 30 million people with special needs in high-level athletic activities and between them they've helped to liberate the physical capabilities of literally millions of people now none of that would have happened if Bart's mother had not taken him to the gymnasium she she could have said to him when Bart was six Bart will you stop it with the hands thing like knock it off and do what you meant to be doing it's kind of embarrassing you know but she didn't she encouraged him because she looked into his eyes and saw that this somehow characterized him that this was answering to a need he had that was distinctive to him and we all have those our children are giving us signals all the time about who they are the things they're drawn to the things that attract their attention the things that attract their interest you have been giving those signals out yourself your entire life things that you are naturally drawn to but you may have denied yourself access to it by nothing but it's too late or a won't or it won't work anymore or you attend to at the time from something maybe but the other thing is that even though she encouraged him she could not have anticipated the outcome could she all she do is start him on the journey she could not have foreseen the life he was going to lead I'm sure she didn't think you know about 6:00 here we are in Morton Grove Illinois I gather there's this girl in Romania you know you know if we if we move things around you never know because life is not linear it's organic what happens when you invest in your own interests and talents is your life changes other people come into your life you have different experiences you engage with yourself differently and your relationships with other people change their lives too and they change the course of what you do it's a synergistic process of being and what we've between Don our children is an inert system of linear planning which has its roots in the imperatives of manufacturing not in the principles and ethics of the organic process of being alive in the world now the old system is based on a meeting point of an economic imperative and a model of intelligence we have a different set of economic circumstances now a different set of cultural imperatives and the only way we'll meet them is by investing properly in the things that make us distinctively human the powers of imagination and creativity and finding those talents and abilities in ourselves that make us who we are and this isn't some loose liberal idea the only way we'll cope with the future is my recognize that we are a part of shaping it and to make it work we have to have all our wits about us and to celebrate the real principle of ecology which is diversity and the dynamism of different ways of thinking coming together and creating something fresh anew now this is not a romantic idea this can be done in fact it's the only way it ever works I know great scores all across this country and every one of them is based on customizing the curriculum to those kids it's based on encouraging the creative capabilities of the teachers in the system it's based on the engagement with the community and it's based on a recognition the curriculum itself has to be broad enough to encompass the broad range of abilities that the children bringing with them naturally to school it's not a way of avoiding this use the only way to engage with the issue and I believe by the way we could make this transformation begin tomorrow it often I think people believe we have to wait for the government to do something this government any government and that we look for a single model that we can apply across the whole system that's not how nature worked is not how ecology works all the great schools I know are great because they meet standards but every one of them is different and they're different because they are rooted in local circumstances and I believe we can make the change the beginning tomorrow providing the principles aright and by the way the principles are out there they are running through all the conversations Aspen they're running through the way the culture is forming itself anyway I think what a great organization like the can do a great meeting point at people like this is can do is promulgate a different type of conversation and if we can do that I believe that we'll find there will be a new harvest of human achievement that we would find it hard to anticipate but on which we will depend thank you so much for the introduction so I think we've got a couple of minutes if you're on for it if you've got time for some questions where are the microphones can i mattr there's a lady here I think would like to ask you a question I'm Jenny Gleason I'm Jenny Gleason al and I'm wondering why do some people not find their passion and then when those do find their passion what keeps them from manifesting it okay there are all kinds of reasons I think that I have a chapter in the book now it's called what will they think I think broader they come into these categories some of it is personal people censor themselves they worry that they will fail if they try and they doubt their own abilities though they don't feel they're entitled to it they feel that they would be wasting their time or that the moments passed so self-doubt is a big issue and almost everyone I interviewed in the book I 90 lots of people found some we're dealing with self-doubt either they were impelled because they saw no alternative or they thought well why wouldn't I you know if not now when I mentioned other four things the element one is attitude the one is aptitude one is passion the third is attitude and the fourth is opportunity there can be really serious social constraints you know our friends and families have an opinion about is that we respond to you know and you know you know you might say to somebody closer I'm thinking of doing this and they go really what you you know and it could be as little as a raised eyebrow that will put you off there may be actual cultural constraints you know for in for a long time and in some cultures still there are very clear views about what's appropriate for people of certain ages or of genders you know that no you have to fight a wall of cultural resistance to do certain things so there many of them the thing is to decide in your own life what it is that's stopping you yes dimension to this because I think about like my my father he was an orphan and so his you know so when he was getting out the workaday world he didn't have a lot of choices least you didn't see the world as a world abundant with choices so how does yeah economy factored into the thoughts you shared a hugely it does yeah I mean that that was true of my my parents you know my father and want to be a professional soccer player but you know he wasn't allowed to he left school at 14 you know and his parents required of him their money and contribute to the household and at the time soccer players weren't paid any money you know so there's no doubt of it and there are real economic constraints for many people even now I mean we get used as we live in America in some of the affluent segments that many people here probably enjoy to think this is the way it is everywhere of course it's not I mean most people are living in desperate poverty or close to the borderline of it so there are real economic constraints and but I don't think they're enough honestly because this isn't necessarily about doing this for a living you know I won't keep saying I have a chapter in the book about this but I have a chapter in the book about this which is called for love or money I know lots of people who are full of fulfilling themselves doing things they love to do but don't want to do it for a living they would rather not it would put too much pressure on them too much strain it's not what they get from it in the first place or they may not be able to but I do know that when people have confidence and invest in their own interests and talents that they our lives are transformed nonetheless you know there's a also a great movement just now in amateurism in the best sense of the term you know an ammeter has a bad press because people contrast ammeter with professional and think ammeter means non-professional but in its original meaning it means somebody love does it for the love of it and ammeter it's from and more so I think that there is an economic imperative and again you have to ask what it is I mean I I have them in my life you know I have kids we have families know where my wife and I have to make our own living we have to know we have bills to pay to so this isn't to say this is something you can you know apply only if you're comfortable or you reached retirement age on the country but I do think it's important it's about tapping into the full range of people's talents and the thing is well you know about it from an economic point of view the current system is disastrous the cost of mopping up disaffection and dissolution of remedial programs the you know the costs of keeping people kind of sedated is huge you know the cost of keeping somebody in a jail for example compared to the cost of education them is ridiculously expensive I remember I was in Hong Kong I do remember being there awhile ago speaking to a Qi I was speaking at the same conference with Sarah Palin I gave a keynote the first day and she spoke on the second day and I shall pass over this now but but it was a roomful of investors and I was having a go at the fast food industry and and this woman stood up and said you know you may not the fast food industry you know but it's very cheap and it's very profitable it's a good investment and I said the other thing is it's neither it's neither cheap nor really er than long-term is it profitable because you know you may be able to buy a burger for a dollar but the cost environmentally and ecologically of the fast food industry is overtaking the planet you know we're about to pay a huge price for the way that we've devastated environment in the interest of this stuff and also it's contributing to the worst and most expensive outbreak of diabetes and obesity in the history of humanity so where's cheap in this you know where is cheap and that's what I feel happens in education you know we go for cheap options and they turn out to be much more expensive than getting it right in the first place but you know so that the economic arguments are very powerful when it's an important one yes I'm sorry where would you find a curriculum you mentioned there's a lot of schools yeah that are along the lines of what you're you're discussing yeah in the United States I'm just curious what a curriculum looks like that allows kids okay well there are many there's a very good scheme in Oklahoma called a plus schools I just that's time is shorter this pick one out that Oklahoma and Arkansas I've been helping with a program in Oklahoma for the past three is called the Oklahoma creativity project Oklahoma is the youngest state in the Union and it's made you know its name through minerals and agriculture but they know that in the long term those resources will run out so they're looking to reinvent themselves in their second century and I was asked to get involved and help them think about this which have been doing and we have something called the Oklahoma creativity project they want to become the creative that they want to be seen as the state of creativity now I'll tell you when I say this outside of America that Oklahoma wants to be the creative State people got really in America people go really I say yes that's really it's very interesting there is a whole network of creative districts around the world about 16 of them and Oklahoma is the only American state representing the network and there is an event happening in November which I encourage you to take an interest in called the world creativity forum where all these different districts are coming together to meet in Oklahoma City for a week and it looks it's shaping up to be a great event you know so - I own about eight plus schools and other ones there there are lots there are common principles that underpin them - what I'd like to do by the way you give Miss tyrannous I have a short video it's like five minutes but I think you might like it it's draw the Blue Man Group I've been doing some work with the Blue Man Group laterally they're wonderful people and they ask that same question essentially the three founders that you probably haven't seen them without the makeup on have you but the three founders of the group Matt and Chris and Phil they got together that's a great example of non-linearity you know they got together probably 20 years ago now and Phil and Chris met because they were both working as dishwashers in the same restaurant that's how they met the supervisors is when Phil Telep said go and work with him he'll show you what to do that's how 2/3 the Blue Man Group met and they were doing Street Theater and they had this idea to paint themselves blue they can't remember why blue or who had the idea they said it's very interesting that you would never have seen that as much of a business proposition yeah that will go bold and blue you know and take the world by storm but they've actually now built a global brand there are blue men shows and I think 12 cities and a whole range of creative industries that have come off the back of the Blue Man Group but they're all married now to three great girls and they have got children they all work together now all six of them and they've got children and they said well what are we going to do in our kids because none of them when it came to it had really felt happy about their own education and they looked at the schools available in their era of New York and thought well we don't like these much either actually so they thought well we'd better start a school so they've founded the blue school which is a school for little ones at the moment it's sort of pre-k and kindergarten but they eventually all develop into a K through 12 school so they've made this short video it's about five minutes just describing this how they got to create the school you can see something of the school but also because they talk about the element and how it's affected their lives would you like to see it and then so could we could we run the video and then we're all gonna have a drink I expect I'll just say a few words before it's finished but yet please when Blue Man Group first started we weren't a business or on a company we weren't a show we were just community of friends looking for something interesting to do all we had was a character and a few principles that we shared we talked about we had no idea what we're going to do we just knew that we were going to explore these ideas using this character so one of the ideas was that we all could be creative we needed that idea because we had gone through our educational experience thinking maybe we weren't created and then we got together and said well maybe that's not true what if that isn't true it was a really important principle to start with and it's influenced with everything throughout our career really being creative wasn't necessarily confined to if you could mold clay or paint on a canvas or write music you know that anything that you did that they did in the business setting you could be creative anything you bring your own creativity to in any discipline is an act of creative and I think one thing that that really led to is that there's no separation there's a consciousness about the way you approach everything our story is proof that Sir Ken Robinson is right if ordinary people find their element extraordinary things can happen and there's actually a piece that I showed it's a little bit of a metaphor for our journey to find in your element there's one of the bloomin plays around with making a painting and he takes it very quickly the other blue man tries to follow the same path and it didn't quite work out for him as well struggles for a little while just like we struggled to find our own Ellen some people are lucky and they want to be rocket scientists or jealous and these are existing media and for us we want it to be post modern multimedia vaudevillians who create instruments and explore pop culture in a sort of shamanic primal atmosphere where's that job exists there because if we can found it we would have signed up for that we're always jealous of people would find their calling easily things to spin into place for them kind of like the blue men on the web we're more like a bloomin on the right we were confused by what life was throwing at us how would we combine all of our different interests together into one art form at a certain point you just need to take a leap no matter how ugly it is or how unlikely it may seem you got to try to follow your creative instincts and not worry about what it looks like or how much money it's worth one thing that drew us together initially even before there was blue man is that that we were in our own ways disappointed with our educational experience and that's one reason why we wanted to start a school we wanted to create the kind of school that we would have loved to have gone to we wanted to make a school that either we wished we had gone to or that we fantasized would be the school for our children and that's a school that had a certain Robinson talked so much about emphasizes creativity as much as any other subject teaches kids a special way to treat one another social-emotional learning is a place where you don't lose your childlike exuberance where you where you have such a zest for learning a love of life all the way through not having it educated out of there on a kind of metaphorical level the traditional model of Education is children are freight cars and the school is a great silo and it's just going to fill each kid up and then move them down the track and we're interested in creating a launch pad where kids are the Rockets and we're just there trying to find the fuse we knew we wanted to create a school that a big part of it was actually teaching kids how they think teaching them a level of self-awareness that we thought was missing from our educational experience I think involves having the entire brain just really alive and exhilarate and tingling with life force and that means to be part of our educational model I mean that seems like a crazy revolutionary idea but it really actually seems to us that it makes sense makes actual academic you know it seems like when we're all kids at one time like everybody paints but somehow we throw away that kind of inspiration in the moment and we get rid of a bunch of other things too we tend to think that the part of ourselves it feels different should be hidden I mean you cover it up and I think what the blue man message is is that you know do not hide that because that part of you is the key to you know one's individuality but also like letting it out let's all this creativity out you know having the courage to expose that part of yourself when we drum on the pain the vibrant colors a way of expressing the vibrance that happens when you when you let your outsider come out it's great little move isn't it I've sorted I wrote it I cut it down I thought it's great Chris Heather's about what they wanted to be and he said we wanted to be postmodern Multimedia vaudevillians who create instruments and explore pop culture and a shamanic primal atmosphere I said where's that job the thing is of course a lot of the jobs our kids will be doing haven't been invented yet nobody's thought of them yet you know but they will if we allow them to do it and I came across a great quote it's just from thinking what you're just saying there - ready I thought I'd leave you one was from Henry David Thoreau who said that we should all aim to dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows and a lot of this is finding other people who are taking the same journey connecting with people who feel as you do but this thing about fear was addressed by Teilhard de Chardin who said instead of standing on the shore and convincing ourselves of the ocean cannot carriers let us venture onto its waters just to see and there's a lot to see thank you very much

Channel: The Aspen Institute

Views: 140,611

Rating: 4.828136 out of 5

Keywords: Sir Ken Robinsion, The Element, Ken Robinson (Author), education, arts, passion, leadership, ideas, aspen, colorado, aspen ideas festival, AIF2010, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, Aspen Institute (Nonprofit Organization)

Id: 8A087Y4DmL0

Length: 74min 40sec (4480 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 02 2015