Why teachers teach but kids don’t learn | Ben Richards | TEDxYouth@Haileybury

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before I kick off this talk can I just ask by way of a show of hands is anybody here who's ever cried at a film oh that's quite a lot of people okay lovely it's a few resistors over there obviously come we've all seen up thank you great can we now have again by way of a show of hands anybody remembers a story they were told as a child all right there's a lot of people there that's nearly everyone great thank you very much and maybe again just hands up if you'd like to calculate the volumes of composite solids anybody know okay well that comes as no surprise to me and I'm a math teacher so social really come as no surprise to you the truth is we've been thinking about stories and telling stories to each other for a lot longer than we'd be thinking about mathematics I've been really lucky in my career I've been able to write films and direct plays and to teach maths it's amazing at dinner parties no one ever asks you what it's like to be a maths teacher projectit here behind me we've got some video from a great study by Heider and Simmel in 1944 you can see as it's going around see these triangles here oh what's happening here or the big one he is not happy he's not happy at all always quite quite aggressive in the circle seems to be sneaking back in and we see the little ones getting getting rather chased away there he's not happy at all and the circle in fact looks quite nervous locked away and once he secured his territory there's the big circle going into the house and the the big triangle the circle is is petrified look in the corner there oh I can absolutely mad absolutely mad of course that's a fiction that's a fiction because triangles don't have emotions but it just seems that we can't help to see these shapes with emotions with personalities with desires it's almost as though human beings are hard-wired to see those things around us in emotional ways that we relate to hardwired for sympathy and it's this innate ability to sympathize with our surroundings that makes humans such great storytellers such great consumers of stories you may have heard it said that every story falls into one of seven archetypes but then you might have heard it said that every story falls into one of 36 archetypes or maybe one of two but when I was learning to write plays I was taught there's only one story ever told it goes something like this the main character that's the protagonist and he could tell it's important it's in Greek he's got desires ambitions something to aim for but obstacles stand in the way of him achieving that now our protagonist goes on a journey either a physical journey or an emotional journey and then one of two things can happen either he can overcome those obstacles and get what he wants and our stalker calls that comedy or he could fail to overcome those obstacles and not get what he wants and Aristotle called that tragedy it's a really simple idea one simple story arc but the more you think about it the more you start to realize every story I've heard seems to fit this pattern every film you've been to every play you've watched every book you've read maybe that computer game that you enjoyed playing Desire obstacles struggle success or defeat just think from over there Star Wars and then there's Game of Thrones and the archers and then there's that one with that guy in from that TV show and is as your life and it's my life desire obstacles struggle success or defeat this isn't this isn't some movie trope that's made up by some Hollywood mogul to sell mega films to millions this is the story of humanity this is the story of what it means to be alive of what it means to be you what it means to be me the reason why we can relate to story so well it's because we sympathize with the characters we feel their pain their struggle and we struggle with them but it's very difficult to emotionally connect with volumes of composite solids feeling sympathy with our surroundings allows us to boot up very primitive parts of our brain that brilliant brilliant scientists have shown are crucial in memory formation memory storage and later retrieval of memory does that sound a lot like teaching and learning if we could get all of those benefits of stories and we'll be brilliant teachers but it's difficult to emotionally invest in maths and that's where we can cheat we can hijack narrative structure and really present any information at all we want within that structure and in doing so we can hijack all of the benefits of emotional engaging with the subject matter and improve memory formation that narrative structure brings with it now for this next part I'm going to need some help from mayor a couple of volunteers so here I've got a dog Julius and please be kind because I'm a maths teacher and not a puppeteer now Julius how are you doing oh I'm doing all right espares say hello to the audience Julius hello audience a say hello to Julius audience yeah very good very good and a Julius is like all great dogs from Liverpool dogs home you know because long live Merseyside and then over on this hand I have a cat Caesar and like all cats he's pretty evil so Caesar say hello to the audience now I hate the audience yeah they could Cesar thank you and now Julius yeah you've said that you felt okay but you didn't sound okay I'm not really I'm very very very very sad Julius why are you so sad the cat has been bullying me have you been bullying him yeah well he's a stupid dog why is he stupid but he doesn't even know if his kettles gonna fit in our house Julius you got a new kennel oh it's so great it's I bought it off eBay and it's got a cube at the bottom and a pillow minute that's up its gonna look dead beautiful but I think of all of the wrong size Oh Julius ah if if we helped you would that make you happy oh you wouldn't believe it the mums coming in an hour well duelist I reckon with a little bit of help we might be able to show this cat that he's wrong and maybe we could work out if your kennels going to fit in your house now by way of a show of hands anybody here that would be willing to if I did the maths help Julius work out if his kennels going to fit in the house all right because that's how you get children to care about calculating the volumes of composite solids thank you you
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Channel: TEDx Talks
Views: 487,757
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United Kingdom, Education, Teaching
Id: zKo69os94cU
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 8min 58sec (538 seconds)
Published: Tue Jul 14 2015
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