The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

each year Microsoft Research hosts hundreds of influential speakers from around the world including leading scientists renowned experts in technology book authors and leading academics and makes videos of these lectures freely available all right well good afternoon welcome I'm Kevin Scofield I'm here to introduce and welcome Sir Ken Robinson who is visiting us as part of the Microsoft research for visiting speaker series he's here today to discuss the element how finding a passion changes everything covering such topics is the power of creativity circles of influence and attitude and aptitude Robinson stresses the importance of nurturing talent along with developing an understanding of how talent expresses itself differently in every individual he defines the element as the point where the activities individuals enjoy and are naturally good at come together in his book Ken demonstrates a rich vision of human ability and creativity showing that age and occupation are no barrier Sir Ken Robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of innovation human resources in 1998 he was invited by the UK government to establish and lead a national commission on creativity education the economy and its report all our futures creativity culture and education was published a huge acclaim he was a central figure in developing a strategy for creative and economic development as part of the peace process in Northern Ireland and the resulting blueprint for change was adopted by all parties across the province he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2003 for his achievements and creativity education in the arts and 2008 he was awarded the Peabody medal for outstanding contributions to cultural relations between the u.s. and the UK please join me in welcoming Ken Robinson the Microsoft to discuss his new book thank you very much thank you for coming do you have nothing better to do I mean it always looks like this the diligent piece of research isn't it but hey it's an hour at the office so welcome you're meant to say how delighted you are to be where you are only the begin of these things I don't know really I live in LA California and I left Britain to get away from the climate that you're now enjoying in Seattle so it's a muted pleasure frankly to be among you I wish I went but there it is what happens when you write a book um actually I moved to Los Angeles when was it nine years ago with my wife and our two kids actually we moved to Los Angeles thinking we're moving to America have you been to Los Angeles really Frank Lloyd Wright once said the de few to turned the world on its side and shake it everything loose would end up in Los Angeles and we did we were loose have you been to Las Vegas what is that really I mean we were there recently my wife and I we got married again it was her idea but can you blame her I mean ready I mean come on what would you do really no we've been together for 33 years and three years ago it was our 25th wedding anniversary I know you're working it out now yeah yeah I bet there are five fairly torrid years frankly where we're trying to make our minds up but my wife is a major fan of Elvis Presley now I say that as if it's a neutral comment you know but it's hard really to overemphasize the extent to which that is an understatement you clear something up for me it when we moved to America we found that how many people here from England Boeing right you just lost are you working here dreadful sense of direction yeah I read exactly it there are some interesting subtle linguistic differences you know one of them is the word quite in Britain and records know it quite means not very-- it means moderately reasonably you know it's quite warm it's not a big deal it's might one in America it means very doesn't it and I didn't know this so I came to America and I was at the getty center so I came over and I invited a group of people for lunch and I think my second week there and I host them and was rather sensational I felt you know and the next day I got an email from the person who had led the delegation thanking me for the quite interesting lunch I thought well you're not coming back that's the situation really that's it I hope you enjoyed it because it was your last hunch Yeti we were told other things by the way before we moved to America we were given a guide by our relocation agent and it was a cultural guide and they it was entitled how to behave in America which some people see as a contradiction in terms Sunday but it's since there are no standards but no there are yeah but it said things like when you go to America don't use irony says Americans don't get irony this isn't true we've lived here now for nearly 10 years for what we now know people in America called a decade I say this because when you go to Los Angeles everybody uses the term decade a lot the do I think cuz it sounds like a really long time doesn't it in Europe a century is not a big deal it's not people don't get excited about centuries I mean our house in England was was built in 1830 and that was one of the newer developments in the area you know whereas in LA anything that's been up for ten years as a heritage property isn't it well when I first arrived in America in LA there was a commercial on the radio I mean there have been many since I'm sure you've heard some of them but there's it wasn't just the one but with this particular one it struck me as a really interesting attempt for LA to get a sense of tradition yeah I think it was for sob of Santa Monica I'm not completely sure but but it said I was on the 405 and I heard this thing come on and it said whatever the company was proudly serving Los Angeles for almost half a decade as of half a decade what four years not actually a decade you know house in Beijing a while ago and at an event and the hotel had two restaurants a Chinese one an Italian one which one you're gonna go to by the way in Beijing really stiffly we're gonna trust you know the past all the noodles yes I anyway that I had this fantastic meal it was a steamed grouper fish and they brought it to me flopping around alive in a basket before they gave it to me I don't like that I'm British you know I do not like to be introduced to my entree you know I don't like give it to me because I knew if I said I liked it they were going to go and execute it you know I'm a pacifist you know I don't like to feel a bit being slaughtered in my interests no so I kept a talking for a while and and I at it but it came back about ten minutes later was really irritated expression on his face and covered in and onions but she said to keep her talking as I didn't want to eat it she said how's the food I said it's fantastic I said man do I love Chinese food and she said well you know thank you but this isn't really a Chinese dish I said is it not said no no no I said this method of cooking fish was introduced into China by the Mongols nine hundred years ago so this could be a fad chittim in in in Chinese terms who knows this is gonna catch on you know really it's it's barely a millennium you know it's like nouvelle cuisine you know in I say this because of these extraordinary cultural differences the sense of time is one of them but so when we got to America we were told these things like you know there was some interesting cultural differences like the word quaint and and don't use irony and I said okay this is not true by the way I mean I've traveled all over America and everyone I ever met in America gets irony as much as anybody else does it's one of those urban myths you know like the British are reserved you know we're not we're lovely and so open you wouldn't believe it anyway we believed it but they they gave us some other advice in this book how to behave in America the other one was don't hug Americans honestly I said this Americans don't like to be hugged so don't hug them okay weird you know but we won't do it so you know we feared one day hugging people ironically you know like what would they make of it so we didn't so we're going to these receptions have been organized by the Getty you know at me and my wife and two kids and we were like this you know people would come towards us and we'd stiffen or furrows in a row by now we were like refugees from Riverdance you know we're gonna and and you could see people thinking oh look that's that bitch's reserve thing you know of course it's not in we found that since people like to be hoped and we hug people all the time at random now in in the street and they don't like it ready is what we're finding out but but there are these subtle cultural differences and there's a reason you'll be interested in other for me telling these things but one of them is when I say I can't overemphasize my wife's interest in Elvis Presley one things I find in America's people don't say overemphasize they say under emphasize have you noticed that I can't under emphasize this enough I hear is it just people speaking to me I said was it are people saying that all the time so Terry had this long relationship with Elvis Presley and they're already three of us in this marriage really I mean fortunately I'm alive you know but it's a marginal advantage to be honest ready it's 30 is the same look of disappointment at breakfast it wears you down frankly but we went to the Elvis Chapel to get married again and I was invited as well you know so it wasn't just Haring Elvis and I've met so I mentioned it for a reason which is this if you've been to Las Vegas there's some seat tip you know this start at 11 o'clock tonight we're just wrapping up so thank you very much thank you okay any questions no if you think of it there is no reason for Las Vegas to be there is that to be where it is if you're planning a city you wouldn't think of the desert you know four miles drive from nowhere you know there's a reason that Seattle is here you know it's in this kind of extraordinary Delta and archipelago there's a reason Los Angeles is where it is there's a reason New York is where it is I'm from Liverpool it's a natural harbour there's a reason there is no reason for LA there for Vegas to be there it's the most hostile conceivable environment for human habitation it's a desert there's no natural water supply for hundreds of miles the only reason that Las Vegas is there is because it exemplifies and has grown rather exponentially it's one of the fastest-growing cities in the country but the only reason it's there is because it exemplifies a capacity that only human beings possess things happen in Las Vegas that only human beings do you know I know I didn't really mean to say it like that but I mean I don't mean pole dancing for example I mean although it is true that other species do not pole dance it's not true that is also uniquely human dogs do not pole dance they don't actually and you can't train them to do it either trust me oh that's great trust me it's a waste of a weekend honestly belly actually we don't have a dog now now what I mean is the power of imagination Las Vegas was a conception and it's become compulsive for many people but it's an ideas place it's a place that has been made possible and overcome every natural disadvantage because people are sucked into this vortex of imagination and fantasy and possibility now I don't ask you to approve the idea of Las Vegas or what goes on there though you may but simply to recognize that it represents this extraordinary human capacity in fact everything that's distinctive about human culture and most things aren't but everything that is I believe we owe to this power of imagination let me say what I mean by what I mean by imagination is the power to bring to mind things that aren't present to our senses the ability to step outside the moment to step outside the sensory environment that we occupy and see in the mind's eye forward and backwards and away and beyond once you have that power you have access not just to the present but to the past and not just to any past but to multiple possible versions of the past I mean history is such a contested discipline because the past is not a settled place it's a contested place the contest in history is not over facts necessarily but over what they mean over interpretation over context over nuance and the imagination brings that to us but it also gives us an infinite number of possible few week and well into the future not any future but multiple possible futures I mean the past isn't settled and the future isn't still it's a gift to us if we want to take it and this seems to me to be critically important because we spend most of our time suppressing this power of imagination or disapproving of it or disparaging it you know referring to it only imaginative or it's all imaginary it's only in your imagination now I have a big interesting creativity and you famously do but creativity is not the same thing in my views imagination it's a step on because you could be imaginative all day long and never do anything you know you could just lie in bed all day in your imagination you would never describe somebody as creative who never did anything to be creative you have to do something it's a practical process of bringing something into being and to that extent once you recognize that creativity is a transitive process it means that you can facilitate it and teach it and make it possible but as soon as you recognize too that it has its roots in imagination it means that everybody is capable of it and this is somehow I just want to get to in just a minute so I think of creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value or you could say it's applied imagination and I think it's of critical importance now not to our well-being only though it is for that but to our survival because this power of imagination has brought this species to a brink and I mean if we had never been on the earth the rest the planet probably would've got on quite nicely with that is but we have brought things to a pass through this Restless power of possibility and we'll only deal with it by not abandoning it or forsaking it or crushing it but by facilitating it and growing it and I say this because in my experience most adults have no confidence in their own creativity most people think they're not creative at all in my experience they think other people are creative and they're not i don't search to review your microsoft you know but you ask a cross-section of people at your next dinner party how creative they believe themselves to be and i think you'll be depressed by what people tell you and yet all children think they are wonderfully creative up until a certain point and the book this the element this extraordinary life which i cannot recommend to heidi frankly honestly you would be a fool not to read this book it's about some of this what has struck me is this that most people that i know not all but very many people this is one indicator this for example don't enjoy the work they do i don't search tribute you probably love it but an awful lot of people don't enjoy the work they do and and they also don't think they have any special ability to do anything much else often but they just get on with it they endure it rather than enjoy it but i also meet people who love what they do and couldn't imagine doing anything else you know if you to satan look don't do that anymore they would be astonished and said well i don't know what you mean i mean this is not what i do this is who i am you know why would i not do this you know that would be ridiculous in a way what they do defines them they feel it their most authentic when they do it i mean the common expression we use for it is they're in their element and i have been struck by this for as long as i can remember remember and what interests me and what the book is about is what makes the difference why do some people have that experience and some don't and what difference does it make when that happens to you when you find this way of living that helps to define who you really are but it rates to me to a bigger conception i think of this as the other climate crisis we've become used to think properly and correctly to there being a crisis in the world's natural environment i think there's an equal crisis in the world's human environment i mean there are lots of kind of indicators of it you know but not least i think one of them is the fact that until arnold schwarzenegger is made his recent State of the Union address California was set next year to spend more money on the state prison system there on the state university system I mean what conception of humanity does that answer to you know I just don't believe it you know I don't believe there's that many bad people out there I mean there are bad people but there are few but there are very many people in bad situations who can't quite see what to do with this or the way out and people who get trapped into bad situations but I don't believe people are fundamentally bad I don't believe they're that many psychopaths you doesn't mean actually don't need that many psychopaths to do I mean one goes a long way don't you find really available you meet two psychopaths in the same day that's a bad day frankly isn't it can I say ready so the element is about that and it relates ready to these ideas that and now this one the reason I was really interested to come here and and this is planned to be a conversation I hope you know that but I just wanted a set my stall not a bit what drives my work really in all the sectors I work and are three ideas I work in education a lot and I think education is the prime culprit at the moment in people not discovering what they're good at I think so many people go through the whole of education have no idea as a result of it what they're good at if this isn't the fault of teachers or individuals or individual schools or school principals or school superintendents I've worked in the round education most of my life and most the people I know work in education are passionate about what they do and are desperately anxious about the current state of affairs and don't want to be doing this stuff either it's the system that's the problem there is a system of Education the fact that the system is very important to understand and it is systematically detaching the great majority of people from their natural talents this is why so many people go through education have no idea what to do now have no idea what they're good at worse than that they go through it and think they're not really good at anything so I work in education I work in the corporate sector a lot I work with organizations on ideas of innovation and creativity and what you can do to stimulate and harness creative capacities and I work in the cultural sector which is why we moved across to the Getty when we came here but the three ideas that course through my mind all the time are these the first is that and you know this I mean the first is that we are living in a revolution and I think of anybody doubts this you know they're not paying attention I mean the there are challenges facing the world now which have no precedent in human history none I don't care where you look and when you look I mean there are moments there are episodes there are places which are being convulsed I mean the 18th century was pretty busy you know in terms of revolutions the Chinese Revolution was a bit of a big deal you know the Russian Revolution affected as all but this is global in its character and affects everybody inevitably everyday and it's getting faster so I want to say a couple just a couple words about that the second is if we're to meet this revolution and by the way your industry is partly responsible for it but if were to meet this revolution we have to think differently about ourselves about our capacity is about what we're capable of and the third point is if we're to do that we have to behave differently we have to conduct ourselves different we have to run our businesses differently and we certainly have to run our communities and our schools differently the big problem in schools is we're still educating people for the 19th century not for the 21st century and we need a revolution in education not something minor I came across a great quote but by the way we moved our kids here when we came I mean that was any reasonable we felt you know as we were leaving the country we thought they should come with us and we put them into a local high school near to where we live we were very struck by the fact that the curriculum is very similar to the one that we'd left behind with a few exceptions there were some subjects that you teach in America by the way we're permanent residents now and thinking about citizenship so you know I feel I can speak as an insider that there are some subjects you teach here that we don't teach in Britain I think you're better sound like American history we teach a version of American history in which we want you know and then lost interest you know we go on you can have it anyway we don't otherwise we suppress it the whole subject we draw a pullout veil across the whole horrible episode room we arrived here by the way on June the 30th four days before Independence Day we had no idea I mean get over it really what a way to behave I mean people marching up and down blowing trumpets and trombones and beating drums waving flags to celebrate the English of left do you know how that makes us feel when we've just arrived we've had to enjoy eight of these though and we're getting tired of it hey we spend Independence Day indoors we have it over the past five years we close the shutters light the fire and look at old photographs of the Queen you know but wait for another year to pass so but with with those exceptions the curriculum we found is remarkably similar to the one that we left behind and it's an old-style education that's being offered and one in which there is an unfettered belief in the power of standardized testing which is destroying the spirits of half the country but people are locked into it but I came across I just want to read this quotation I came across a great quotation from Abraham Lincoln that you may know this I haven't come across this before but I thought it was a wonderful quote actually came across this one from JK Galbraith which I was going to mention which seems to be very resonant in the context the thing is that you know this one of our challenges now is the future is not only unknowable it's totally unpredictable no we simply have no way of knowing how all these various forces are going to play out as witness the last couple of years you know the meltdown I came across this from JK Galbraith who said the only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable I think I think it does but I came across this this is from Abraham Lincoln he said this the second annual message to Congress in December 1862 you remember what was going on in the 1860s in America I of course have no idea at all because we didn't get taught this stuff but doubtless there was a lot happening nobody said this which I thought was wonderful he said I'm just think how resident this is just now he said the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present the occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion I like that rise with it not to it as our case is new so we must think anew and act anew we must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country I just love that word don't you disenthrall you don't see it very often though but you know it means that we all of us live within frameworks of ideas and conceptions which guide our thinking in our behavior and many of the ideas that guide us most are ones we don't know we have their values and assumptions that we simply take for granted they become part of our mental view of things they're not the things we reflect on they're the things with which we reflect and another word for that would be ideology it seems to me this is important difference between theory and ideology if you have a theory you know what it is and it is an explicit framework of ideas and you can explain it to people and say this is what I think's going on here it's an explicit piece of expert explanatory apparatus but ideology to me is different it's the underlying assumptions on which we base the theories you know that great rift between the the medieval worldview and the modern world view that was brought about by Copernicus and Galileo and others was not a change of theory it was an ideological shift of an enormous magnitude you know up until Copernicus it was generally believed that the Sun went round the earth and all astronomical theories were based on that assumption the problem was that it was based on the idea of everything moving in perfect circles and our being stationed at the middle and of course it made sense to people because it's obvious the Sun was moving it came up every day and went down and it was obvious that we weren't you know people weren't being spun off the planet that you know random intervals are having to hang on to ropes to get to work you know it's obvious it was moving and we were not plus it tied in with the dominant religious view of the time that we were the center of God's universe so when Copernicus and Galileo then said well maybe because the astronomical theories weren't working there were too many anomalies they couldn't figure the madness and we'll hang on try this as a hypothesis what if the earth was going round the Sun then what well all the old problems were solved but a huge ideological problem was kicked up in the wake of it which was a hang on what does that mean and it was really that shift that began the whole enterprise of the modern world view revising our place in the universe now what I'm saying is just that this these ideas invade our minds and we don't know they're there another word for it is common sense you know we just think it's obvious and a lot of things that we believe now in the early 21st century that we think are obvious and common sense which are simply not true but they way are enthralled to them I don't mean you personally but as a culture we're in thrall to them so real innovation and creativity comes about from challenging what we take for granted challenging common sense the problem is that we don't know what it is that we take for granted mostly because we take you for granted so let me ask you something you may take for granted you may or may not but let me ask you anyway firstly how many of you here are over the age of 25 okay that's not what you take for granted I'm sure how many of you are under the age of 25 okay so those of you over 25 could you put your hands up again if you don't mind if this isn't work no not yet haven't told you that I know there be a question first obviously I know you can do it just show me can do I don't need we convinced anymore no all right let me phrase this differently in a minute when I have asked this question would you put your hands up in a minute if you're wearing a wristwatch if you're over 25 you're wearing a wristwatch okay now those of you under 25 can you put your hands up if you're wearing a wristwatch okay now you see the difference in proportion here broadly speaking and by the way if you speak to teenagers and ask them how many of you got teenage children do they wear watches but one but I'll tell what's going on loose I'm saying is this those of you who wore a watch day did you think about it this morning was it like a big agony of indecision you know shall I put the watch on again I don't know I mean it did I did I consult it yesterday I cut it did it come in you don't think it just do it I do I just put it on we do it because we take it for granted because we grew up in the world ironically here of course that was pre digital you know if you're over 25 the world you grew up you were born into was not a digitized world it's what Mark pensee calls between digital natives and digital immigrants you know you know he means by that is that if you're under 25 you were born into this world it was full of digital stuff and so you speak digital you know kids are much more I can say about you but much more efficient than most adults in digital culture I mean if I'm online I have one window opened you know and I'm thrilled with myself you know because it's because it's my window you know I sit and commune with it you know but my kids online they're 20 in 25 you know they've got 10 windows open and they're downloading music and there I am in and they're on Facebook and they're mashing up music and the telephones bringing their televisions on in the background you know I mean I don't know if they're doing any homework you know but they're they're running an empire I don't care frankly in a bit but the reason kids don't wear watches you know is because if the time is on every digital device and they grew up with it they take it for granted they don't need to do this because the time is everywhere for them and it's not for us somebody once said this no technology is not technology if it happened before you were born and I feel that's true I mean when I grew up you know I didn't feel cars with some like fancy technology you know we all had that we didn't go there's another car you know that's a thousand today a signal but my grandparents were rather struck by motorcars you know but I was rather struck by the fact if a computer in the house but my kids take it for granted that that that should be the case that's how the thing my daughter never was a watch my son doesn't know that 2025 and they don't see the point you know my daughter's like why would you wear a separate thing to tell the time you know like like it's a one function device you know like how lame is that you know and I said no no it tells the date you know it says it has many functions we see you might say well like that's a kind of trivial example it sort of is but my real point is what do we take for granted in other fields like about ourselves for example what are the things that are in our heads that we just take for granted about ourselves well let me ask you another question that you may or may not how many senses do you have how many senses have you on I'm gonna come to you gone don't agonize when you must have an idea okay fine okay what are they smell taste touch hearing sight I'm you keep quite a minute are there any more than that anymore what is this just your nasal on top everybody's nasal organist oh well let's come back to that line that's about that it's through it it's a sixth one I'll come back to it mmm that's stupid okay how about intuition people know me too now I'm going to come to you three in a minute BC that's that's Terra typically how we see it is now we've got five senses and maybe intuition you see there's a difference between the five for example and intuition for example because it's not it's clear what does sight and hearing and smell you know if your eyes are compromised your sight is compromised we get that it's not quite clear what does intuition you know intuition is a kind of spooky sense the girls have more of it that's that's the basic plan but a physiologist will tell you and by the way I've had a doll sit in a room for 20 minutes trying to come up with some more senses and they don't but a physiologist will tell you you have at least nine real senses the stimulus sense which is like the sense of balance which is moderated by the inner ear if that gets damaged you can't function you can do better without sight then you can do it without your sense of balance I mean if that were taken away from you you couldn't get in the room you couldn't leave it you know if that gets compromised by alcohol or as it may well you know or disease it's a catastrophe I don't about this nasal one I'm very interested here that what you put up for 9:00 did you have some more you read the book good man well you know temperature for example is a totally different sense from touch you can be hot or cold without touching anything pain is different from touch again well you can go on and then you think of all the somatic senses like appetite what happens if you become frightened how emotions play against your physiology and my only point is that to say we have five senses is the most impoverished conception you can imagine of the subtlety and complexity of our human being but most people take it for granted we've got five senses and the reason is we've heard it said so often we've got five senses since we're being kids it's a closed question we don't think about anymore like you say how many sounds got I've got five no you don't but if if we take even our basic physical apparatus in that way what are we what about our intellectual capacities what about our spiritual and emotional crisis how much do we miss conceive or underestimate those so the book is partly about that it's to say that if were to meet this revolution in which we all are engaged we have to think differently about what we have and we have to enrich our sense of ourselves and I believe it's vital for these reasons is vital for personal reasons I cannot see any good reason why we should live our lives I mean I don't know how often you think you're gonna come back you know or how long you think you gonna be here that's a matter of faith in religion you know we're not here to talk about that but but we know we're here now I can't see any good reason why people would willingly submit to a life of drudgery and dreariness that they could avoid or do things they would rather not do if they had some alternate tend to way of thinking about themselves that you would avoid a life with purpose and meaning a fulfillment without testing you know the real proposition I think it's essential for the health of our communities because we have so many people disengaged from any real sense of purpose take one example 30% of kids in America do not graduate from high school 30% that's 50% in some of the low-income communities and as high as 80% in the Native American communities that's a catastrophe you know that's a whole generation who are going to take over in 10 years time over half of whom have no engagement in their own process of Education that's unprecedented in the history of this country you know so what how is that going to play out and it's also vital for economic reasons you know as good as or as better than anybody else that any company these days has to live on the edge of innovation continually if it's have even a sense of keeping pace let alone succeeding and I believe that the real future for companies is harnessing this extraordinary love talent much more than we have in the past so to me the element is about both a personal story and it's a global issue and I just want to kind of give a couple of indicators then we'll open this up to be in your element it seems to me as two things the first is this that if you're in your element in that kind of common way that we use the term you're doing something for which you have a natural aptitude but you get it in some way one of the people I interviewed had an interview one of the peoples in the book is guy called Terence Tao do any of you know of Terence time you heard of him Terence Tao is a mathematician when I say that I mean he's the mathematician really he's known as the Mozart of math at the age of three he taught himself to read by watching Sesame Street which is remarkable and he has a rather curious accent you know as a result but rather too fond of feathers for most people's tastes but you know at the age of seven or eight Pete he took a college entrance math exam and got 90% at the age of 20 he got his PhD in pure math and at the age of thirty he won the field medal for mathematics which is according to the Nobel Prize it's reasonable to say I think that Terrance gets math you know he cometh he's got the hang of it but he got it early on you know some people never do you know I didn't especially I have to say I was never very good at math at school and my daughter till my daughter was ten or thereabouts she thought I knew everything yeah which is impression it's very important to encourage you know among your children and so she used to bring me home and math homework and I would say through this you know like a math God you know and she'd look at me in amazement how I pulled off these extraordinary chelation in simple addition mainly you know she said that what is 8 and 4 you know and without hesitating out say Kate it's 12 you know and she'd look at me in astonishment wondering how I pulled it off but then when she was about 12 she brought me home a page full of quadratic equations and I remember the old familiar panic attack you know so at this point and I introduced learning by discovery methods I said Kate there's no point in me telling you the answer this is not how we learn and I say you have to work this out for yourself I'd be outside having a mojito and and even when you've got the answer there's no point in showing it to me this is what teaches before I do not wish to undermine their authority so and by these means we survived but she she came home about three weeks later actually she came home every night honestly but no was like I sent her off and said don't come back for three weeks but but she came back a while later she'd got had a cartoon strip I don't know where she got it from but we still have it and there are three panels in it and it's a father helping adult with homework and the first panel the father says what have we got to do and the daughter says and I've got to find the lowest common denominator and the father said are they still looking for that trying to find that when I was at school I said I know the feeling great Terrence has found the lowest common denominator immediately he gets math now other people don't but other people get gymnastics you know or they get the guitar you know or they get working with people or they get drawing you know now it seems to me such an obvious thing to say but it is simply true and often forgotten that human aptitude is tremendously diverse we take two things very differently now this is really important because it's a very simple principle that our school system has totally ignored kids go to school and they are constantly being asked to do things they can't do very well or being forced to things they're not inclined to do and often being steered away from things they would love to do because it's not in the curriculum or it doesn't meet the dominant conception of intelligence and ability at conception of ability which is predicated on the Enlightenment conception of a certain type of rationality a certain type of academic work so aptitude is the heart of this we have to recast our sense of n but it's not enough I think to be good at things to be in your element because I know lots of people are good at things I don't really care for to be in your element you also have to love it and if you love something you're good at you kind of never work again at that point you know my brother used to be in rock bands he still has much right I have a lot of family and I've 7 where 7 I have 6 siblings but years ago I went I was brought up in Liverpool I went to see in a gig as we say in the hip edge of the music business and I was gigging and I was but they had this fantastic keyboard player called chairs and he was brilliant and we're having a drink afterwards in the bar and I said to him you were brilliant tonight he said well thank you very much I said I said you know I'd love to do that he said do one and I said you know play the keyboards like that he said no you wouldn't well I was a bit taken aback frankly because you know I was just hanging out you know to me I wasn't there yes like a casual remark I wasn't it to be interrogated you know but but but you do you hold your ground don't you yeah okay I said yes I would and you know my competence weakening and he said no you wouldn't and we went on in this way for some time I said what you mean in order to break the deadlock and he said he said well look I practice five hours a day and have done since I was a kid and I perform six nights a week and I love it he said I am gonna do that because I love it he said if you loved it you'd be doing it he said I think what you mean is you like the idea of it I said don't speak to me you might last minute who do you think you are but of course it is true if you love something you overcome every obstacle and you don't even think it's work to do that and all the people I interviewed for the book combine those two things they found something they loved that they also had the aptitude for one of the people I interviewed for the book is guy called Bart Connor you come across him Bart Connor found when he was six he could walk on his hands as easily as he had to walk on his feet I don't know how he found this out but he could and I've seen him do it you know he just walks up and down as if he was walk on his feet perfectly comfortably and then he found he could walk up and down stairs on his hands as well well it wasn't much use you know but it was socially diverting and he said if there's a party at home and the conversation Lang do you know is his father say but do the hands thing and the party would revive anyways mum his mother this in Morton Grove Illinois took him to the local gymnasium when he was 8 with the advice that the coach of the school and he said he walked in the door and he said it was like Disneyland and Santa's grotto all in one place I said why he said it said it was intoxicating the road you know ropes wall bars trampolines vaulting horse ed it was really intoxicating well I pause to ask you that I mean is that how you feel when you're going to gymnasium do you find it intoxicating I don't you see I need to get intoxicated you know if I go into gymnasium with but he loved it and he went every day ten years later he walked onto the mat at the Montreal Olympics representing the United States in the male gymnastics team he went on to become the most decorated male gymnasts in American history he lives now in Norman Oklahoma he's married to Nadia common edge you remember Nadia the first perfect ten they have a wonderful little boy who's two and a half now called Dylan after Bob Dylan why not Bob we don't know that's what comes from spending a life upside down frankly but and and they have this amazing gymnastics they have this amazing gymnastics school and here now there are on the board of the Special Olympics movement so between them they've helped to liberate the gymnastic capabilities of thousands of athletes with special needs now I say this for these reasons firstly that his mother might have said at the age of six Bart will you stop it with the hands thing that knock it off you know just get on our kids give us all kinds of signals about who they are and what they're disposed - and what engages them and sensible parents encourage it often well-meaning parents discourage it because it doesn't sit with the conception of who these what these kids should be doing now I'm not arguing that we shouldn't do other things at school that we should only follow our bliss that we should never do things that require effort that run against the grain but part of our purpose is to become who we are and we become our best when we discover what it is we can do and we have created archetypical pathways for people many of whom simply rattle against the walls or drop-off altogether and think I'd want nothing to do with this we look at the levels of disaffection disengagement and despair that many people feel because they haven't found anything that resonates with who they are but you're the important thing about the BART story to me is this it illustrate something profound to me which is that life is not linear our education systems are but life is not you know when I went to school the the premise was if you worked hard and went to college and got a degree you'd get a job for life that was kind of true you know in the 70s if you had a degree you will guarantee the job the ID you wouldn't have a job with a college degree was ridiculous I mean the only reason he wouldn't have a job if he had a degree but if you didn't want a job and I left College in 1972 and I didn't want a job I didn't I wanted to find myself you know you could do this in the 70s fairly estate you know so I decided to go to India where I thought I might be you know and I didn't get to India I got to London you know where there are lots of Indian restaurants so I got there but but but we still have people on this path like the whole premise of our education system is you have to go to college if you don't go to college your life is over and this is in the face of all the evidence the country that some people never want to go to college some people go to college and don't know what to do with themselves now some people ratalie got round the walls and go back home again to carry on playing video games some people go to college and love it and that you the whole system is designed for those few people really oh that relatively small group this obsession with college is really important I think to get our head round I was in Danville recently doing a book signing I was signing a book I didn't go to Danville bogger to sign one book I mean that would be pathetic you know it wasn't it wasn't like they rang from the publishers heads quick somebody bought a book in Danville you know we'll keep him talking you know you get here fast a throng with books were being sold but I was on this guy he was in his late 30s I'd say and I said what you do and he said I'm a fireman and I said how long have been a family said always it's what I've always done and I said so when did you decide to be a fireman he said well but always he said I want to be a fireman from as soon as I got onto elementary school he said that was a problem because an elementary school everybody wanted to be a fireman you know he said but I wanted to be a fireman and he said so when I got to the upper second school it's a high school in the junior and senior years it was a big issue because everyone was applying to college and the school was saying which college you applying to everyone just had to go to college he said I didn't want to go to college I wanted to join the fire service and he said I had this one teacher who ridiculed me in front of the whole class in the junior said you know you will never amount to anything if you're throwing your life away if this is all you're gonna do to go and join the fire service he said you could really do something do something you could make something of yourself he said I was angry but also humiliated that that's what he thought he said anyway I was think about it as you were speaking earlier he said because six months ago I saved his life he was in a car wreck and our unit was called out and I pulled him out and I gave him CPR and I saved his wife's life as well he said I think he thinks better of me not be sitting saying that we are born with immense gift of diversity and the imagination creativity but are particularly our educational systems have stereotyped it and stifled a great deal of it and this is a process we can't allow to endure so when people talk about getting back to basics my argument is we should get ready back to base and say well what is it to be a person what is it to be a human being what kind of life do you want what kind of life do you want for your kids and then that's thing about how we make that happen particularly through the education system I mentioned Las Vegas not far from Las Vegas is Death Valley Death Valley to me is intriguing because it illustrates this when I say a human life is not linear it is organic I'll give you the worst example I can think of I of linearity when I got to LA I saw a policy paper for public education 10 years ago which said college begins in kindergarten now I'm sure this is true in Seattle I can't I don't know for a fact but I guess it's true but all the major cities in this country are facing fierce competition from parents to try to get their kids into the right kindergarten kids are being interviewed for kindergarten interviewed I mean what are they looking for what you know signs of infancy what are they looking for I mean presumably they're producing resumes with the help of their parents you know sitting in front of these unimpressed selection boards flicking over there you know what this is it if you've been around for 36 months and this is it you know you've achieved nothing it's been spent the first six six months of breastfeeding but I can say it get out you know it's an outrage it's preposterous isn't it but the whole idea is that it starts really for the point of conception you know people sitting with college entrance papers you know next to the bed how I think let's apply quickly you know because the idea is they've got to get to the right College suddenly a friend of mine who runs the arc Theatre in Dublin once said it beautifully said you know a three year old is not half a six year old a six Road is not half a 12 year old they're three give them a break you know there's six what our lives turn out to be is a function of what we become as we grow and to me therefore a much better metaphor for human organizations is not industrialism it's not manufacturing it's agriculture you're human organizations like this one are often thought of in mechanistic terms people talk about their functions but you know a human organization isn't at all like a mechanism it's much more like an organism you know it's about relationships and feelings and values and motivations and all those things that make a life and you know a farmers know something important they know that you can't make anything grow you know if you're a gardener you cannot make a plant grow the plant will grow itself you know you stick the leaves on and paint the damn thing you know it's it grows itself your job is to create the conditions where that will happen so Death Valley is a great metaphor for me because nothing grows there because it doesn't rain in the winter of 2004 it rained seven inches of rain fell on Death Valley and in the spring of 2005 there was this phenomenon the whole floor of Death Valley was carpeted with flowers you can go online and check these things and people came from all across the country to see this extraordinary site what it showed was that Death Valley isn't dead it's dormant no but right beneath the surface are these seeds of possibility waiting for the right conditions to come and if the conditions come life will follow it's inevitable that's how it works and I think it's the same in companies like this one it's the same in schools it's the same in families it's the same communities if you put people in a bad place in terms conditions they will react to it and hunker down and pull away from it but and you know it's true in your own life but you give people opportunities to flourish differently and the whole place comes alive in a different way and it's not your job to make them creative it's to give them the conditions under which it's going to happen and the big message really of the book is what that means in terms of individual talent that's what getting back to basics means it's kind of recasting our sense of talent I came across I'll just leave you with this isn't like juju the poet WB Yeats my wife I said she's a great Elvis fan and she's right too because he was fantastic by the way Elvis Presley wasn't allowed in the glee club at school in Tupelo Mississippi they said he would ruin their sound Elvis well we all know what great heights the glee club went on to you know once they'd managed to keep Elvis out but my wife Terry is also a major fan scholar rally of WB Yeats the Irish poet and he just wrote this which seems to me to speak this idea of imagination was actually a love poem to a woman called Maude gonne who was his unrequited lifelong love and he was be waiting the fact that he couldn't give her what he felt she really wanted and what he could give her she didn't really value it so he said this had i the heavens embroidered cloths in wrought with gold and silver light the blue and the dim and the dark cloths of night and light and the half-light i would spread the cloths under your feet but i being poor have only my dreams i have spread my dreams under your feet tread softly because you tread on my dreams and i think we should take it for all of us and for our children that our dreams our imaginings are what make us human and we should tread softly yeah well your hands up are you okay for time I mean just leave when you need to do not have jobs to go to at all this is a yes sir the next step would be since that understanding how we are limiting our ability to be to now the various modalities of creativity and the types of creativity to be expressed it occurred to me that another element that's missing in anything is create creativity and service of what meaning where and disenthrall will be thank you for that because I'll be using it because we aren't wrong yeah a certain approach now and and we have to somehow collective video together determine what yeah what we will be putting out the creativity of service to in order for us to tune for essentially has a plan because it obviously the current you did you're definitely not sustainable and to in what context you see those kinds of discussion is happening about what it is well the thing is that that to me a creativity essay is a is um is a very practical process and you can be creative anything it's one of the big problems is that we associate creativity with certain things you know like so we think it's all about the arts or it's all about design or marketing you know there are creative industries I don't really like the term the creative industries and because it's just as something is creative and others are not I make categorically not and the truth of it is anything can be creative and anything cannot be you know I know brilliantly creative mathematicians brilliant creative software developers you know brilliantly creative teachers very uncrated musicians you know also very creative musicians creativity isn't a particular activity it's a way of doing anything and we're all of us drawn to different things you know for some people that work the what they're really drawn to is teaching a public service others are drawn to some of the careers that you've taken so I don't want to listen I mean it's not for me or anybody else to prescribe how people should spend their time but I do know that the problems and challenge that we face are of a character and of a magnitude that we haven't dealt with before literally you know we could be a generation away from a catastrophe in terms of our use of natural resources you know the population has gone from three billion in 1970 to no seven billion now at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution there were only 1 billion people on the entire planet you know at the height of the Renaissance you know there were fewer people no living in Rome and Florence than in Seattle you know it's hard to picture the scale at which things have ramped up and you know in your industry how quickly the technology is shifting I don't suppose anybody here really who could say company where the technology's gonna be ten years from now can you I mean correct me if I'm wrong but I guess that's true let me ask you this by the way I mean it you wanted to help me on this I'm sure you can I was speaking to somebody a while ago from Apple who made a interesting comment which I've repeated since but I thought I wonder if that's true but what he said was this that the most powerful computers on earth at the moment have the processing power of the brain of a cricket now I know that's a metaphor I mean I don't know any credits but you know but his point was that really even the most powerful computers are tremendously rapid and sophisticated calculators they're not thinking in any sense that we would be comfortable using the term but I think he said in five years or so a no records file has a whole series of possible threshold but he said within five years or so the most powerful caboose on earth may have the processing power of a six-month-old child so a six-month-old baby and that what he said about that was that it that they would be capable of learning so tell me I mean where are we headed with this I'm really interested to know I want to take the opportunity while we're here the records file company says it was in 2020 we might be able to get a computer a thousand dollars with the same processing power as a human brain I mean what's anybody here knows really about this in a way that you could comment I'd be really interested thank you no they certainly don't yeah but there's a convergence here isn't it between these technologies of neuroscience and information systems their potential convergence I mean work where geez I mean where do you see this headed in the next 10 20 years I don't want to put you on the spot does anybody have an opinion about it I'm just really interested see it has massive implications for education massive eye yes that's right of course I knew medicine was huge yeah yes I'm Millie's work and also actually right here in Seattle the Allen Center for Brain yes yes underlying mechanisms of not but if it's if we set aside the brain science for the moment terms of computing power and where these systems are headed what do you see as the horizons in front of us I think probably the patterns between people and between computers so things more like the Internet and things like yeah that the interconnection tax so even something as simple as Twitter it can be used it was look like a certain well yeah you can see the internet thinking by watching you have flow with connections through yeah so things like the search engines being Google those are really the places where the Internet's thinking and it's much more than the actual hardware and there's yeah there's people I mean the intelligence isn't in the hardware it's in the connection patterns between the different ideas and repositories of information and how those connections adapt and react to stimulus so you could you could inject stimulus and some part of the internet and then harvest a response similar yeah you know as computing power and communications ramped up in technology than the thinking power and speed of thought in that collective the interesting thing about the Internet is it's more cybernetic it's not just interconnections at those notes they're still there at every spot so it can do deep thinking as well as some connected yeah yes please what do you say when you talk about you know people's potential fulfillment educational institutions parents and communities at large you know steering people are about allowing people to really get or what is implement versus societal values or norms around earning a living making how does this whole consumption you know having to be a broker on Wall Street and earn 200 the values in the society I think sometimes our speed if you look at people save us all the time what a teacher is paid versus what a professional athlete in the NBA air and the NFL is made and how do those kinds of things I would think limit and start to close in the universe and potential options that people they want to be able to do well are going to pursue but at Sekulow quick things about this one is that this thing about being in your element I mean it's a metaphor you know for a bigger argument but it's not just about aptitude and passion it's also about attitude you know I interviewed lots of people for the book it was originally a book of interviews but we realized that wasn't as interesting as saying what it all meant but and I had lots of people and what they have in common is they had some sense that they they were determined to pursue a path of some sort you know they they had the confidence to do it I don't mean they have all led perfect lives on the contrary but they were driven by a kind of inner need to to find what would fulfill them and they were prepared to take whatever took to do whatever it took to make that happen they also were also mentors in almost everybody's life somebody who saw their talent often before they did who helped them and it like Bart's mum you know who encouraged them in some way or somebody they found inspirational that was always a big factor but there are lots of obstacles this you know I mean there are all kind of things that get in the way I have a chap there called what will they think you know I mean they include our own fear you know our own fear of falling on our face of looking ridiculous our own self-image the inhibition that comes from other people's opinions office you know our family our friends spouses if we have them you know these can be forced for good or not and a lot of people I actually tell the story in the book again didn't talk to him but of Paulo Coelho the writer wrote The Alchemist his parents when he was a kid in South America were appalled that he wanted to be a writer it's all he ever wanted to be and they said he should be a lawyer and he wanted to be a writer and he persisted with what they thought was a kind of madness and they had him committed three times to a mental institution for it where he had a series of electroconvulsive therapy and he eventually came out and still and then wrote about the experience you know again so they kind of gave up at that point well you know not many parents go that far you know where they'll plug their kids into the mains you know but but it can be more subtle there can be a raised eyebrow at the wrong moment you know there all kinds of ways now very very keen said the beginning this isn't a set of fairy tales this is you know and I interviewed lots of people are very well known and I into Paul McCartney for the book and mick fleetwood among others and they're very interesting story say we Paul McCartney I'm from Liverpool loose in Liverpool and he went to school at the other side the city I didn't know him at that point I've met him a bit since but I asked him if he enjoyed music at school and he said he hated it he said he went through it because it that it's just the teacher just kept putting classical records on and that that was music education he said he went through the whole of his time at school and nobody thought he had any musical talent at school Paul McCartney you know one of the other people in the same music class was George Harrison same school same class a couple years younger and nobody thought he had any talent either for music so I said to Paul MacLean says oh is this right that there is this one music teacher in Liverpool in the 50s who had half the Beatles in his client cinema and he missed it he said that would be right though he's breaking not to criticize him for it but the analogy I make is they say is that is that human resources talent are like Natural Resources they're often buried beneath the ground you know you have to go looking for them it takes circumstances for them to surface like I often thinking of those four guys you know what would have happened if they hadn't met each other I don't know you know what would have happened to Elvis Presley if Tom Parker hadn't picked him up and you can go on you know if Bill Gates hadn't met Paul Allen you know mean it seriously no I mean it's about opportunity and the confidence to take it or to create it so I'm really keen to emphasize what you're saying you know to underline it that it's not some fairy tale and some people are have these God and give given gifts and some don't in almost every case what I've tried to do is to show the conditions under which in happened for them and of course the Serb reason of some of them in the book were not born as celebrities you know they became celebrities because they pursued the thing that they wanted most to do but there's a lot that gets in the way of it if that's your point yeah yeah I'm sorry thank you very much I try to encourage finding her element finding her aptitude or do I need to find what did you do you find special schools for them that you thought were better or did you just well actually we moved our kids several times to different schools because we didn't feel they were getting what they needed and help provide oh sure I hope we did I think we did you know we my kids are 20 and 25 and you know I think we have a great relationship I mean they will tell you I'm sure we do I mean they're great but that the thing I'm you've got whatever any of you here got more than one child okay well how about two you've got two you need at least two Trance this question don't tell me if I'm right about this my experience is that anybody who's got two children or more will tell you they are completely different sorts of people aren't they even identical twins are different their parents will tell you oh she's like this she's like that you know well don't mention that no they're different and the problem in schools is that they are all put through the same program and the intention is they should in a way turn out the same but they're all different and that's the central problem that human life is about diversity in education is about conformity and what I try and do I work both ends the street I work a lot with education systems I've done major national strategies I work with politicians because I think the agriculture metaphor is really important you know the take another take another analogy it's in the book you might know it if you take the catering industry as a case in point in the catering industry there are two methods of quality assurance one of them is standardizing and that's the process that drives the fast-food industry you know so if you have a favorite fast food outlet whichever one it is no matter which one you go to you know exactly what you're going to get the same burger same fries same bones it's all horrible you know but it's guaranteed whereas you know if you go to a Michelin restaurant or a Zagat restaurant they're all much better and they're all different and the reason is that in those restaurants the people who endorse them don't say this is what you should put on the menu they say these the criteria of a great restaurant you meet them anywhere you like we don't care whether it's French Italian Asian food or what time your time you show up whether you serve why do you don't meet these criteria and you're in the guide and the result is that all these restaurants are great and they're all much better than fast food and they're all different and they're different because they're customized and personalized and I know great schools and they're all great because they're all different it's like all the great orchestras all the great bands you know all the great companies are great they do the same things but they are different they're human and what we've done in education is we've enforced the fast-food model when we should be promoting the Michelin Guide and what I always say to parents is you work with the school and see if you can get the thing to change all schools need great teachers and they need great principals and there are great schools always but like in the agriculture metaphor they come and go if you work in a manufacturing mode you can think well we'll fix education once for all there must be a silver bullet somewhere and we'll just fix it and it will go on forever every polishing comes into office thinking I know how to fix this and they never do because they apply the wrong ideology to it the way you get education to improve is to improve every school in the country and you do that by helping them improve themselves not by trying to do it for them you know your daughter you have you know your interest is apparent in hair you may be vaguely interested in the way the country is performing in education but she's primary gestured string with our kids you know and once people get that you know that your daughter's experience of public education in America is that score that she's going to that's the one you know our kids aren't going to school in the state rooms of the Beltway they're going to school here in Seattle in that school so fixing education means fixing that school for them so you can work without school and we found with our kids where we couldn't really do anything with the school we moved the kids to somewhere else we eventually took my daughter out of school completely when she was 16 because it was killing her we could see the light going at night it did become an Ivy League Factory and we could we could see the light dimming yeah and it may well continue to be great there are wonderful schools around and I'm not saying knocking the whole of education and we're talk about education now because we can't talk about everything here today you know no but no but I hope I'm making you vigilant yeah that's all you need to be you need to keep an eye on it and see that she's getting what she needs and what she needs isn't always what she wants you know you know there are some things that kids need to have against their their their interests but it's probably they're better interests you know I'm not saying your job as a parent isn't just to facilitate everything they want to have you've got us you know that yeah yeah let's just take one you've got well one well that you expressed the problem beautifully the thing is we need a country with firemen you know we need a country with people in the medical professions we need a country with all the things that people love to do and the point is just that the education system is predicated on a certain set of career paths and everything else happens by accident and default and I know brilliant people who go through it thinking they're not very smart because what they were smarter wasn't valued but by the way the reason I think it's relevant here is its twofold one is all these arguments apply equally in companies and organizations but secondly I think there is a massive opportunity really for companies like Microsoft to move the needle here because the future of Education as we're talking about it will rely much much more on the creative use of technologies and information systems than at any time your work actually particularly the work of Microsoft has triggered much of this revolution and it's changed the whole game it changed the way kids think it's changed how they communicate it's changed how they get information it's changed how they relate to each other it changed the whole culture in less than 25 years and it's helped to make our current systems of Education obsolete the roles of teachers when we went to school were to tell you stuff you couldn't find out in part and now most kids are far more adept at finding stuff out than their teachers are but their teachers can be tremendously supportive as kind of curators as guides as mentors but they need help and I think that the only thing that ever improves education is making teaching more effective and more powerful but the opportunities to come up with new ways of teaching new ways of thinking new ways of accessing ideas new creative platforms in education I think that's the next killer app I really do education is like the biggest business on earth and this generation is hungry to learn I have great confidence in this generation but what they come into school with now are all the skills of digital natives and a lot of what happens in school is just boring for them it's their minds are moving at the speeds that you've now created for them and they aren't interested in the ordinary run of things that goes on I don't mean to say all education should be mediated through digital technology but at the moment it kind of limps along the side of Education alongside this broken system and I think if that the opportunity to create new learning platforms new ways of interacting with digital materials is the next big horizon I really do and I hope there are people here working on that because it seems to me a essential for the effect Miseducation be it it's it's already proven as an extrordinary learning resource and a and C there's a massive prize out there to get this right we should stop there should me but thank you for staying

Channel: Microsoft Research

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Keywords: microsoft research

Id: 03v_UScdLQY

Length: 82min 22sec (4942 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 07 2016