How to escape education's death valley | Sir Ken Robinson - By Lumos Learning
00:10 | Yeah , thank you very much . I moved to | |
00:17 | America 12 years ago with my wife , Terry , | |
00:20 | and our two kids . Actually , Truthfully , we | |
00:22 | moved to Los Angeles . Yeah , thinking we're moving | |
00:28 | to America . But it's it's a short plane ride | |
00:33 | from Los Angeles to America . Um , I got | |
00:39 | here 12 years ago , and when I got here | |
00:42 | , I was told various things like , Americans don't | |
00:46 | get irony . Have you come across this idea ? | |
00:52 | It's not true . I've traveled a whole length and | |
00:54 | breadth of this country . I have found no evidence | |
00:56 | that Americans don't get irony . It's one of those | |
00:59 | cultural myths like the British are reserved . Yeah . | |
01:05 | I don't know why people think this . We've invaded | |
01:08 | every country we've encountered . Mhm , Mhm . But | |
01:15 | it's not , too . Americans don't get irony , | |
01:16 | but I just want you to know that that's what | |
01:19 | people are saying about you behind your back . You | |
01:20 | know , as you when you leave living rooms in | |
01:23 | Europe , you will say , thankfully , nobody was | |
01:26 | ironic in your presence . But I knew that Americans | |
01:30 | get irony when I came across that legislation . No | |
01:33 | child left behind because you ever thought of that title | |
01:39 | ? Get irony . I don't know because because it's | |
01:50 | leaving millions of Children behind . Now I can see | |
01:53 | that's not a very attractive name for legislation millions of | |
01:56 | Children left behind . I can see that . But | |
01:59 | what's the plan while we propose to leave millions of | |
02:01 | Children behind and and here's how it's gonna work and | |
02:05 | it's working beautifully . In some parts , the country's | |
02:09 | 60% of kids drop out of high school in the | |
02:13 | Native American community is it's 80% of kids . If | |
02:17 | we have that number , one estimate is , it | |
02:21 | would create a net gain to the U . S | |
02:24 | economy over 10 years of nearly a trillion dollars . | |
02:30 | From an economic point of view , this is good | |
02:32 | math , isn't it , that we should do this | |
02:35 | ? It actually costs an enormous amount to mop up | |
02:38 | the damage from the dropout crisis . But the dropout | |
02:42 | crisis is just the tip of an iceberg . What | |
02:45 | it doesn't count or all the kids are in school | |
02:48 | but being disengaged from it , who don't enjoy it | |
02:51 | , who don't get any real benefit from it . | |
02:55 | And the reason is not that we're not spending enough | |
02:57 | money . America spends more money on education than most | |
03:00 | other countries . Class sizes are smaller than in many | |
03:04 | countries , and there are hundreds of initiatives every year | |
03:07 | to try and improve education . The trouble is , | |
03:11 | it's all going in the wrong direction . There are | |
03:14 | three principles on which human life flourishes , and they | |
03:19 | are contradicted by the culture of education under which most | |
03:23 | teachers have to labor and most students have to endure | |
03:28 | . The first is this that human beings are naturally | |
03:33 | different and diverse . Can I ask you how many | |
03:36 | of you have got Children of your own ? Okay | |
03:41 | ? Or grandchildren ? How about two Children or more | |
03:45 | ? Right . And the rest of you have seen | |
03:48 | such Children small people wondering about . Okay , I | |
03:55 | will make you a bet . And I'm confident I | |
03:58 | will win the bet . If you've got two Children | |
04:00 | or more . I bet you they are completely different | |
04:04 | from each other , aren't they ? Count they you | |
04:09 | would never confuse them . Would you like which one | |
04:12 | of you remind me of my mind ? Your mother | |
04:17 | and I are gonna introduce some color coding system so | |
04:19 | we don't get thinkings . Education under no Child left | |
04:23 | behind is based on not diversity , but conformity . | |
04:29 | What schools are encouraged to is to find out what | |
04:32 | kids can do across a very narrow spectrum of achievement | |
04:36 | . One of the effects of No Child Left Behind | |
04:39 | has been to narrow the focus onto the so called | |
04:41 | stem disciplines . They're very important . I'm not here | |
04:44 | to argue in science and math . On the contrary | |
04:48 | , they're necessary , but they're not sufficient . A | |
04:50 | real education has to give equal weight to the art | |
04:53 | , the humanities , to physical education . An awful | |
04:57 | lot of kids , thank you . One estimate in | |
05:05 | America currently is that something like 10% of kids getting | |
05:08 | on that way , um , are being diagnosed with | |
05:12 | various conditions under the broad title of attention deficit disorder | |
05:18 | . A D h d . I'm not saying there's | |
05:20 | no such thing . I just don't believe it's an | |
05:23 | epidemic like this . If you sit kids down hour | |
05:26 | after hour doing low grade clerical work , don't be | |
05:31 | surprised if they start to fidget . You know , | |
05:38 | Children are not , for the most part , suffering | |
05:44 | from psychological condition . They're suffering from childhood , you | |
05:48 | know , and trust me , and I know this | |
05:52 | because I spent my early life as a child . | |
05:54 | I went through the whole thing . Mhm kids prosper | |
05:59 | best with a broad curriculum that celebrates their various talents | |
06:03 | , not just a small range of them . And | |
06:05 | by the way , the arts aren't just important because | |
06:07 | they improved math scores . They're important because they speak | |
06:09 | to parts of Children's being which are otherwise untouched . | |
06:13 | The second , thank you . The second principle that | |
06:22 | drives human life and flourishing is curiosity . If you | |
06:26 | can light the spark of curiosity in a child , | |
06:29 | they will learn without any further assistance . Very often | |
06:33 | , Children are natural learners . It's a real achievement | |
06:36 | to put that particular ability out or to stifle it | |
06:41 | . Curiosity is the kind of engine of achievement now | |
06:46 | . The reason I say this is because one of | |
06:49 | the effects of the current culture here , if I | |
06:51 | can say so , has been to de professionalize teachers | |
06:56 | . There is no system in the world or any | |
07:00 | school in the country that's better than its teachers . | |
07:04 | Teachers are the lifeblood of the success of schools , | |
07:09 | but teaching is a creative professional . Teaching , properly | |
07:13 | conceived is not a delivery system . You know you're | |
07:16 | not there just to pass on received information . Great | |
07:18 | teachers do that . But what great teachers also do | |
07:22 | is mentor , stimulate , provoke , engage . You | |
07:27 | see , In the end , education is about learning | |
07:30 | . If there's no learning going on , there's no | |
07:32 | education going on , and people can spend an awful | |
07:34 | lot of time discussing education without ever discussing learning . | |
07:38 | The whole point of education is to get people to | |
07:40 | learn a friend of mine . Old friend , actually | |
07:43 | , very old is dead . That's a that's as | |
07:48 | old as he gets . I'm afraid so . Mhm | |
07:53 | but a wonderful guy . He was a wonderful philosopher | |
07:58 | . He used to talk about the difference between the | |
08:00 | task and achievement senses of verbs . You know you | |
08:05 | can be engaged in the activity of something , but | |
08:07 | not really be achieving it like dieting . It's a | |
08:11 | very good example , you know , There he is | |
08:13 | . He's dieting . Is he losing anyway ? Not | |
08:15 | ready . Mhm . Teaching is a word like that | |
08:19 | . You can say there's Deborah . She's in Room | |
08:21 | 34 . She's teaching . But if nobody's learning anything | |
08:25 | , she may be engaged in the task of teaching | |
08:27 | but not actually fulfilling it . The role of a | |
08:30 | teacher is to facilitate learning . That's it . And | |
08:34 | part of the problem is , I think that the | |
08:36 | culture of the dominant culture of education has come to | |
08:39 | focus on not teaching and learning , but testing now | |
08:43 | testing is important . Standardized tests have a place , | |
08:47 | but they should not be the dominant culture of education | |
08:50 | . They should be diagnostic . They should help . | |
08:56 | You know , I if I go for a medical | |
09:00 | examination , I want some standardized tests . I do | |
09:05 | . You know , I want to know what my | |
09:06 | cholesterol level is compared to everybody else's on a standard | |
09:09 | scale . I don't to be told on some scale | |
09:11 | my doctor invented in the car . You know , | |
09:15 | your cholesterol is what I call level orange . Really | |
09:20 | mhm . Is that good ? We don't know . | |
09:24 | But all that should support learning . It shouldn't obstruct | |
09:28 | it . Which , of course , it often does | |
09:30 | . So in place of curiosity , what we have | |
09:32 | is a culture of compliance . Our Children and teachers | |
09:37 | are encouraged to follow kind of routine algorithms rather than | |
09:41 | to excite that power of imagination and curiosity . And | |
09:45 | the third principle says that human life is inherently creative | |
09:49 | . It's why we all have different resumes . We | |
09:52 | create our lives and we can recreate them as we | |
09:55 | go through them . It's the common currency of being | |
09:57 | a human being . That's why human culture is so | |
10:00 | interesting and diverse and dynamic . I mean , other | |
10:04 | animals may well have imaginations and creativity , but it's | |
10:07 | not so much in evidence , is it ? As | |
10:09 | ours , You may have a dog , you know | |
10:12 | , and your dog may get depressed , you know | |
10:15 | . But it doesn't listen to Radiohead . It's famous | |
10:21 | . Sit staring out the window with a bottle of | |
10:23 | Jack Daniels . Yeah , okay . And you say | |
10:29 | , Would you like to come for a walk ? | |
10:30 | He said , No , I'm fine . You go | |
10:34 | , I'll wait . I'll go . But take pictures | |
10:39 | . We all create our own lives through this restless | |
10:41 | process of imagining alternative possibilities and what one of the | |
10:45 | roles of education is to awaken and develop these powers | |
10:49 | of creativity instead , what we have as a culture | |
10:52 | of standardization . Now it doesn't have to be that | |
10:55 | way . It really doesn't . Finland , um , | |
10:59 | regularly comes out top in math , science and reading | |
11:02 | . Now we only know that's what they do well | |
11:05 | at , because that's all it's been tested currently . | |
11:07 | That's one of the problems of the tests . They | |
11:09 | don't look for other things that matter just as much | |
11:12 | . The thing about work in Finland is this . | |
11:15 | They don't obsess about those disciplines . They have a | |
11:18 | very broad approach to education , which includes humanity's physical | |
11:21 | education . The arts Second , um , there is | |
11:27 | no standardized testing in Finland . I mean , there's | |
11:30 | a bit , but it's not what gets people up | |
11:32 | in the morning . It's not what keeps them at | |
11:34 | their desks . And the third thing that I was | |
11:36 | at a meeting recently with some people from Finland , | |
11:38 | actual finished people , and , uh and somebody from | |
11:43 | the American system is saying to the people in Finland | |
11:45 | , What do you do about the dropout rate in | |
11:47 | Finland ? And they all look a bit bemused and | |
11:50 | said , Well , we don't have one . Why | |
11:54 | would you drop out ? If people are in trouble | |
11:57 | , we get some quite quickly and help them , | |
11:58 | and we support them . Now People always say , | |
12:01 | Well , you can't compare Finland to America . No | |
12:05 | , I think there's a population of around five million | |
12:07 | in Finland , but you can compare it to a | |
12:09 | state in America . Many states in America have fewer | |
12:14 | people in them than that . I mean , I've | |
12:16 | been to some states in America . I was the | |
12:18 | only person there . Really , Yeah , really . | |
12:23 | I was asked to lock up when I left , | |
12:30 | but what all the high performing systems in the world | |
12:33 | do is currently , what is not evident sadly across | |
12:38 | the systems in America I mean as a whole one | |
12:42 | is this . They individualize teaching and learning . They | |
12:47 | recognize that it's students who were learning , and the | |
12:51 | system has to engage them . Their curiosity , their | |
12:54 | individuality and their creativity . That's how you get them | |
12:57 | to learn . The second is that they attribute a | |
13:02 | very high status to the teaching profession . They recognize | |
13:07 | that you can't improve education if you don't pick great | |
13:09 | people to teach . And if you don't keep giving | |
13:11 | them constant support and professional development , investing in professional | |
13:15 | development is not a cost . It's an investment . | |
13:18 | And every other country that's succeeding well knows that whether | |
13:21 | it's Australia , Canada , South Korea , Singapore , | |
13:26 | Hong Kong or Shanghai , they know that to be | |
13:28 | the case . And the third is they devolve responsibility | |
13:33 | to the school level for getting the job done . | |
13:36 | You see , there's a big difference here between going | |
13:39 | into a mode of command and control in education . | |
13:43 | That's what happens in some systems . Central governments decide | |
13:45 | or state governments decide they know best , and they're | |
13:48 | going to tell you what to do . The trouble | |
13:50 | is that education doesn't go on in the committee rooms | |
13:55 | of our legislative buildings . It happens in classrooms and | |
13:59 | schools , and the people who do it are the | |
14:01 | teachers and the students . And if you remove their | |
14:03 | discretion , it stops working . You have to put | |
14:07 | it back to the people . There is wonderful work | |
14:15 | happening in this country . But I have to say | |
14:18 | it's happening in spite of the dominant culture of education | |
14:21 | , not because of it . It's like people are | |
14:24 | sailing into a headwind all the time . And the | |
14:27 | reason , I think , is this that many of | |
14:30 | the current policies are based on mechanistic conceptions of education | |
14:35 | . It's like education is an industrial process that can | |
14:39 | be improved just by having better data . And somewhere | |
14:43 | , I think the back of the mind of some | |
14:44 | policymakers is this idea that if we fine tune it | |
14:47 | well enough , if we just get it right , | |
14:49 | it'll all hum along perfectly into the future . It | |
14:52 | won't and it never did . The point is that | |
14:56 | education is not a mechanical system , it's a human | |
15:00 | system . It's about people , people who either do | |
15:04 | want to learn or don't want to learn . Every | |
15:07 | student who drops out of school has a reason for | |
15:10 | it , which is rooted in their own biography . | |
15:13 | They may find it boring . They may find it | |
15:15 | irrelevant . Uh , they may find that it's at | |
15:18 | odds with the life they're living outside of school . | |
15:21 | There are trends , but the stories are always unique | |
15:25 | . I was at a meeting recently in Los Angeles | |
15:27 | of they're called alternative education programs . These are programs | |
15:31 | designed to get kids back into education . They have | |
15:34 | certain common features . They're very personalized . They have | |
15:38 | strong support for the teachers , close links with the | |
15:42 | community and a broad and diverse curriculum and often programs | |
15:46 | which involve students outside school as well as inside school | |
15:50 | . And they work . What's interesting to me is | |
15:53 | these are called alternative education , you know , and | |
15:59 | all the evidence from around the world is if we | |
16:01 | if we all did that , there'd be no need | |
16:03 | for the alternative . I think we have to embrace | |
16:14 | a different metaphor . We have to recognize that it's | |
16:18 | a human system , and there are conditions under which | |
16:20 | people thrive and conditions under which they don't . We | |
16:25 | are , after all , organic creatures , and the | |
16:29 | culture of the school is absolutely essential . Culture is | |
16:33 | an organic term , isn't it ? Not far from | |
16:36 | where I live , there's a place called Death Valley | |
16:39 | . Death Valley is the hottest , driest place in | |
16:44 | America , and nothing grows there . Nothing grows there | |
16:48 | because it doesn't rain . Hence Death Valley . In | |
16:52 | the winter of 2000 and four , it rained . | |
16:58 | In Death Valley . Seven inches of rain fell over | |
17:01 | a very short period , and in the spring of | |
17:05 | 2000 and five , there was a phenomenon . The | |
17:08 | whole floor of Death Valley was carpeted in flowers for | |
17:13 | a while . What it proves is this that Death | |
17:17 | Valley isn't dead . It's dormant right beneath the surface | |
17:24 | . Are these seeds of possibility waiting for the right | |
17:27 | conditions to come about and with organic systems . If | |
17:32 | the conditions are right , life is inevitable . It | |
17:36 | happens all the time . You take an area , | |
17:38 | a school district , you change the conditions , give | |
17:41 | people a different sense of possibility , a different set | |
17:43 | of expectations , a broader range of opportunities you cherish | |
17:47 | and value the relationships between teachers and learners . You | |
17:50 | offer people discretion to be creative and innovating what they | |
17:53 | do , and schools that were once bereft spring to | |
17:56 | life . Great leaders know that the real role of | |
18:00 | leadership in education and I think it's the national level | |
18:03 | . The state level at the school level is not | |
18:06 | and should not be command and control . The real | |
18:10 | role of leadership is climate control , creating a climate | |
18:15 | of possibility . And if you do that , people | |
18:17 | will rise to it and achieve things that you completely | |
18:20 | did not anticipate and couldn't have expected . There's a | |
18:24 | wonderful quote from Benjamin Franklin . There are three sorts | |
18:27 | of people in the world , those who are immovable | |
18:31 | , people who don't get it , they don't want | |
18:32 | to get it . They don't know anything about it | |
18:34 | . There are people who are movable people who see | |
18:37 | the need for change and a prepared to listen to | |
18:39 | it . And there are people who move people who | |
18:42 | make things happen . And if we can encourage more | |
18:45 | people , that will be a movement . And if | |
18:49 | the movement is strong enough , that's in the best | |
18:52 | sense of the word A revolution and that's what we | |
18:55 | need . Thank you very much . |
DESCRIPTION:
Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish -- and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational "death valley" we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility
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