>> Kevin Schofield: All right. Good afternoon. Welcome. I'm Kevin Schofield. I'm
here to introduce and welcome Mr. Ken Robinson who is visiting us as part of the
Microsoft Research visiting speaker series. He's here today to discuss The Element:
How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.
Covering such topics as 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 and human resources. In 1998 he was invited by the U.K. government to
establish and lead a national commission on creativity, education and the economy, and
his report, All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education, was published to 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 providence.
He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2003 for his achievements in creativity,
education and the arts, and in 2008 he was awarded the Peabody Medal for outstanding
contributions to cultural relations between the U.S. and the U.K.
Please join me in welcoming Ken Robinson to Microsoft to discuss his new book.
[applause]
>> Ken Robinson: Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. Do you have nothing
better to do?
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: All right. It always looks like this is a diligent piece of research,
doesn't it, but, hey, it's an hour out of the office. So welcome.
You're meant to say how delighted you are to be where you are at the beginning of these
things. I don't know. I live in LA, California. And I left Britain to get away from the
climate that you and I are enjoying in Seattle. So it's a muted pleasure, frankly, to be
among you. I wish I weren't. But there it is. That's what happens when you [inaudible].
Actually, I moved to Los Angeles, what was it, nine years ago with my wife and our two
kids. Actually we moved to Los Angeles thinking we were moving to America.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: Have you been to Los Angeles? Really. Frank Lloyd Wright once
said that if you were to turn 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. We were there recently, my wife
and I. We got married again. It was her idea. But can you blame her? I mean, really. 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,
aren't you. They were five fairly torrid years, frankly. We were 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.
But it's hard really to overemphasize the extent to which that is an understatement.
Clear something up for me here. When we moved to America we found that -- are there
any people here from England, by the way? All right. You just lost or are you working
here? Dreadful sense of direction.
>> Came back home to the rain.
>> Ken Robinson: Exactly. There were some interesting subtle linguistic differences.
One of them is the word quite. In Britain -- I'm right about this, aren't I -- quite means
not very. It means moderately. Reasonably. You know, it's quite warm. It's not a big
deal. It's quite warm.
In America it means very, doesn't it? And I didn't know this. I came to America and I
was at the Getty Center. That's why I came over. And I invited a group of people for
lunch on I think my second week there. And I host them and it was rather sensational I
felt. And the next day I got an e-mail from the person who 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 lunch at the
Getty.
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 it was entitled How to
Behave in America. Which some people see as a contradiction in terms, don't they, but
it's -- since there are no standards. No, no. No, there are. There are.
But it said things like when you go to America, don't use irony. It says Americans don't
get irony. This isn't true. We've lived here now for nearly ten years, for what we now
know people in America call a decade. I say this because when you go to Los Angeles,
everybody uses the term decade a lot. They do. I think because 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 built in 1830. And that was one of the new
developments in the area. Whereas in LA, anything that's been up for ten years is a
heritage property, isn't it?
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, it wasn't just the one,
but this particular one, it struck me as a really interesting attempt for LA to get a sense of
tradition. I think it was for Saab or Santa Monica. I'm not completely sure. 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.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: I thought half a decade? What, four years? Not actually a decade.
I was in Beijing a while ago at an event for -- well, the hotel had two restaurants, a
Chinese one and an Italian one. Which one are you going to go to, by the way, in
Beijing? Really. Truthfully. What are you going to trust, the pasta or the noodles?
So 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 am British.
I do not like to be introduced to my entree, you know, I don't, but 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.
I don't like the feel of it being slaughtered in my interest.
So I kept her talking for a while and I ate it. But it came back about ten minutes later
with this really irritated expression on its face, you know, covered in onions. But she
said -- to keep her talking, because I didn't want to eat it, she said, how's the food? I said,
it's fantastic. I said, mind you, 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? She said, no, no. She said this
method of cooking fish was introduced into China by the Mongols 900 years ago.
So this could be a fad.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: In Chinese terms, who knows if this is going to catch on. You know,
really. It's barely a millennium. It's like nouveau cuisine. And 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 quite and don't use irony. And we 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. We're not. We're lovely and so open you
wouldn't believe it.
Anyway, we believed it. But they gave us some other advice in this book, How to
Behave in America. The other one was don't hug Americans. Honestly it said this.
Americans don't like to be hugged, so don't hug them. So okay. Weird, but we don't do
it. So we feared one day hugging people ironically, you know, like --
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: -- what could they make of it. So we didn't.
So we're going to these receptions that had been organized by the Getty, me and my wife
and two kids. And we were like this. You know, people could come towards us and we'd
stiffen, all four of us in a row. We were like refugees from Riverdance. You know,
we're going to -- you know. And you could see people thinking, oh, look, that's that
British reserved thing.
Of course it's not. And we found out since people like to be hugged. And we hug people
all the time at random now and in the streets. And they don't like it, really, is what we're
finding out.
But there were these subtle culture differences. And there's a reason, you'll be interested
to know, 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 of the things I find in America is people don't say
overemphasize, they say underemphasize. Have you noticed that? I can't
underemphasize this enough. Is it just people speaking to me who say that, or is it -- are
people saying that all the time?
So Teri has had this long relationship with Elvis Presley. And there are really three of us
in this marriage, really. I mean, fortunately I'm alive, you know, but it's a marginal
advantage, to be honest. 30 years, 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, so it
wasn't just her and Elvis. So I mentioned it for a reason, which is this: If you've been to
Las Vegas -There's some seats here. You know this started at eleven o'clock, didn't you? We're just
wrapping up. So I thank you very much. Thank you.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: Thank you. Any questions?
Now, if you think of it, there is no reason for Las Vegas to be there, is there? To be
where it is. If you were planning a city, you wouldn't think of the desert, you know, four
miles' drive from nowhere. There's a reason that Seattle is here. You know, it's in this
kind of extraordinary delta, an 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 harbor.
There's a reason.
There is no reason 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,
by the way, 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. I know. I didn't really mean to
say it like that, but, you know, I mean, I don't mean pole dancing, for example.
Although, it is true that other species don't pole dance. Isn't that 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. Trust me. It's a waste of a weekend, honestly. Actually, we
don't have a dog 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 of 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 that. What I mean by imagination is the power to bring to
mind things that aren't present to our senses. The act to step outside the moment, to step
outside the centurion environment that we occupy and see in the mind's eye forwards 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 imagination brings that to us. But it also gives us an infinite number of possible
futures. We can dwell 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's all imaginative or it's all imaginary, it's only in your imagination.
Now, I have a big interest in creativity. And you famously do. But creativity is not the
same thing, in my view, as 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
something 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 of the planet probably would have got on quite nicely without us.
But we have brought things to a pass through this restless power of possibility and will
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 say that's true of you. You are
Microsoft. But 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, The Element -- this extraordinary work, which I cannot recommend to you
highly, frankly, honestly, you would be a fool not to read this book -- is 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 indication of this, for example -- don't enjoy the work they do. I
don't say that's true of you. You probably love it. But an awful lot of people don't enjoy
the work they do. And they also don't think they have any special ability to do anything
much else. 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 were to say to them, you know, don't do that anymore, they would be
astonished and say, well, I don't know what you mean. I mean, this is not what I do, this
is who I am. Why would I not do this. You know, that would be ridiculous.
In a way, what they do defines them. They feel at their most authentic when they do it. I
mean, the common expression that we use for it is they're in their element.
And I have been struck by this for -- as long as I can 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 define who you really are.
But it relates to me to a bigger conception. I think of this as the other climate crisis.
We've become used, I 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 indicators of it, but not least I think one of them is the fact that
until Arnold Schwarzenegger made his recent State of the Union address, California was
set next year to spend more money on the state prison system than on the state university
system.
I mean, what conception of humanity does that answer to? You know, I just don't believe
it. I don't believe there are that many bad people out there. I mean, there are bad people,
but a 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 there are that many psychopaths.
You know what I mean?
Actually, you don't meet that many psychopaths, do you, if you think about it, really. I
mean, one goes a long way, don't you find, really? I mean, if you meet two psychopaths
in the same day, that's a bad day, frankly, isn't it? Honestly, really.
So The Element is about that. And it relates really to these ideas. And that's one of the
reasons I was really interested to come here. And this is planned to be a conversation, I
hope you know that, but I just wanted to set my stone out of it.
What drives my work really in all the sectors I work in 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 through the whole of their
education have no idea as a result of it what they're good at.
This isn't the fault of teachers or individuals or individual schools or school principals or
school superintendents. I've worked in and around education most of my life and most of
the people I know who 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 it's a 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 who go through education
have no idea what to do now, have no idea what -- 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 -- and
you know this. I mean, the first is that we are living in a revolution. And I think if
anybody doubts this, they're not paying attention.
I mean, 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. The 18th
century was pretty busy in terms of revolutions. The Chinese Revolution was a bit of a
big deal, you know, the Russian Revolution affected us all. But this is global in its
character and affects everybody inevitably every day. And it's getting faster.
So I want to say 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 we're to
meet this revolution, we have to think differently about ourselves, about our capacities,
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 differently, we have to run our businesses differently, and we certainly
have to run our communities and 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.
Now, I came across a great quote -- by the way, we moved our kids here when we
came -- I mean, that was only reasonable we felt, you know. As we were leaving the
country, we thought they should come with us -- and that 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 left
behind. With a few exceptions. There were some subjects that you teach in America -by the way, we're permanent residents now. Thinking about citizenship, so, you know, I
feel like I can speak as an insider.
But there are some subjects you teach here that we don't teach in Britain, I think you'll
bear this out, like American history. We teach a version of American history in which we
won.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: And then lost interest. You know, we -- go on, you can have it
anyway, we don't care. Otherwise we suppress it, the whole subject. We draw a polite
veil across the whole horrible episode, really.
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 and waving
flags to celebrate the English have left.
Do you know how that makes us feel when we've just arrived? We've had to endure eight
of these, though, and we're getting tired of it. We spend Independence Day indoors. We
have now for the past five years. We close the shutters, light the fire, and look at old
photographs of the queen.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: And wait for another year to pass.
But 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 looked into it.
But I came across -- I just want to read this quotation. I came across a great quotation
from Abraham Lincoln. You may know this. I hadn't come across this before. But I
thought it was a wonderful quote. Actually, I came across this one and J.K. Galbraith,
which I was going to mention. It seemed 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. You know, we simply have no way of knowing
how all these various forces are going to play out, as witness the last couple of years, the
meltdown.
I came across this from J.K. Galbraith who said the only function of economic
forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. Which 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. 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 that
was -- there was a lot happening. But he said this, which I thought was wonderful. And
just think how resonant 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,
arise 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 now. But you know what it means,
that we -- all of us live within frameworks of ideas and conceptions which guide our
thinking and our behavior.
And many of the ideas that guide us most are ones we don't know we have. They're
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. Seems to me there's an 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 be and say this is what I think's
going on here. It's an explicit piece of 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 medieval world view 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 around the
earth. And all astronomical theories were based on that assumption. The problem was
that it was based on everything moving in perfect circles and our being stationed at the
middle.
And of course it made sense to people because it was 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, you know, at random intervals or having to hang
on to ropes to get to work. 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 them
out. They said, well, hang on, try this as a hypothesis. What if the earth was going
around 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 hang on, what does that mean. And it was really that shift that
began the whole enterprise of the modern world view of revising our place in the
universe.
Now, what I'm saying is just that these ideas invade our minds and we don't know they're
there. Another word for just common sense, you know, we just think it's obvious. And
there are lots of things that we believe now in the early 21st century which we think are
obvious and common sense, which is simply not true. But we are enthralled to them. I
don't mean you personally, but as a culture we're enthralled 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 it for granted.
So let me ask you something that 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. 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 -- no, not
yet -- no. That would be a question first, obviously. I know you can do it. You just
showed me you can do it. I don't need to be convinced anymore. All right.
Let me phrase this differently. In a minute, when I've asked this question, would you put
your hands up, in a minute, if you're wearing a wristwatch, if you're over 25 and 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've got teenage children?
Do they wear watches? One.
But I'll tell you what's going on. The reason I'm saying it is this. Those of you who wore
a watch today, 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, did I consult it
yesterday? Did it come in? You don't, do you? You just do it. I do. I just put it on.
We do it because we take it for granted. Because we grew up in a world ironically here
of course that was predigital. You know, if you're over 25, the world you were born into
was not a digitized world. It's what Mark Pesce calls the difference between digital
natives and digital immigrants.
You know what he means by that: That if you're under 25, you were born into this world
that was full of digital stuff, and so you speak digital. You know, kids are much more -- I
can't say about you, but much more efficient than most adults in digital culture. If I'm
online, I have one window open. And I'm thrilled with myself because it's my window.
And I sit and commune with it. But when my kids are online, they're 20 and 25, they've
got ten windows open and they're downloading music and they're IMing and they're on
Facebook and they're mashing up music and the telephone's ringing, the television's on in
the background. I mean, I don't know if they're doing any homework, but they're running
an empire. I don't care, frankly.
But the reason kids don't wear watches you know is because 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 technology is not technology if it happened before you were born.
And I feel that's true. I mean, when I grew up, I didn't feel cars were some like fancy
technology. We all had them. We didn't go, oh, there's another car, you know. That's a
thousand today. But my grandparents were rather struck by motorcars. But I was rather
struck by the fact you could have a computer in the house. But my kids take it for
granted that that should be the case. That's how the thing works.
My daughter never wears a watch. My son doesn't. They're 20, 25. And they don't see
the point. My daughter's like why would you wear a separate thing to tell the time. You
know, like it's a one-function device. Like how lame is that. And I said no, no, it tells
the date.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: It has many functions.
But, see, you can say, well, 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 got? I'm going to come to you. Go on. Don't
agonize. You must have an idea.
>> Five.
>> Ken Robinson: Five. Okay. What are they? Smell, taste, touch, hearing, sight. You
keep quiet a minute. Are there any more than that? Any more? What?
>> [inaudible] the thing in here that senses some other chemical that you can't [inaudible]
smell.
>> Ken Robinson: Is this just your nasal organ we're talking about? Everybody's nasal
organ. Well, let's come back to that. Is there a sixth one? I'll come back to that.
>> Vestibular.
>> Ken Robinson: Hmm?
>> Vestibular.
>> Ken Robinson: Vestibular, okay. How about intuition? [inaudible] now, I'm going to
come to you three in a minute. But, you see, that's stereotypically how we say it, isn't it?
We've got five senses and maybe intuition. But, you know, 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 that
girls have more of, isn't it. That's the basic plan. But a physiologist will tell you -- and,
by the way, I've had adults 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 vestibular 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 than you
can do without your sense of balance. 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, or disease, it's a catastrophe.
I don't know about this nasal one. I'm very interested to hear that. You put up for nine.
Did you have some more?
>> [inaudible]
>> Ken Robinson: You read the book. Good man. Well, 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.
My only point is that to say we have five senses is the most impoverished conception you
can imagine of the subtlety in 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've been kids. It's a closed question. We
don't think about it anymore.
Like you said, how many senses you've got, oh, I've got five. No, you don't. But if we
take even our basic physical apparatus in that way, what about our intellectual capacities,
what about our spiritual and emotional capacities. How much do we misconceive or
underestimate those.
So the book is partly about that. It's to say that if we're to meet the revolution in which
we are all 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. It's 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 going to come back or how long you think you're going to be here. That's a matter
of faith and religion. We're not here to talk about that.
But we know we're here now. I can't see any good reason why people would willingly
submit to a life of drudgery or dreariness that they could avoid or do things they would
rather not do if they had some alternate tentative way of thinking about themselves; that
you would avoid a life with purpose and meaningful fulfillment without testing 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 percent of kids in
America do not graduate from high school. 30 percent. That's 50 percent in some of the
low-income communities, and as high as 80 percent in the Native American
communities.
That's a catastrophe. That's a whole generation who are going to take over in ten 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 how is that going to play out? And it's also vital for economic reasons.
You know as good or as -- better than anybody else that any company these days has to
live on the edge of innovation continually if it's to have even a sense of keeping pace, let
alone succeeding.
And I believe that the real future for companies is harnessing this extraordinary pool of
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, is 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; that you get it in some way.
One of the people I interviewed -- actually, I didn't interview. One of the people who's in
the book, this guy called Terence Tao -- do any of you know of Terence Tao? Have 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.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: Rather too fond of feathers for most people's tastes, but, you know...
At the age of seven -- sorry, eight, he took a college entrance math exam and got 90
percent. At the age of 20 he got his Ph.D. in pure math, and at the age of 30 he won the
Fields Medal for mathematics, which is equivalent to the Nobel Prize. It's reasonable to
say, I think, that Terence gets math. You know, he kind of -- he's got the hang of it.
But he got it early on. Some people never do. 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 there
about she thought I knew everything, which is an impression that's very important to
encourage among your children.
So she used to bring me home her math homework, and I would scythe through this, you
know, like a math god, you know, and she'd look at me in amazement how I pulled off
these extraordinary calculations in simple addition mainly. You know, she would say,
Dad, what is 8 and 4? You know, and without hesitating, I'd say, Katie, it's 12. 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 pageful of quadratic equations.
And I remember the old familiar panic attack.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: So at this point I introduced learning by discovery methods. I said,
Kate, there's no point in me telling you the answer.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: This is not how we learn. You have to work this out for yourself. I'll
be outside having a mojito. And even when you've got the answer, there's no point in
showing it to me.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: This is what teachers are for; I do not wish to undermine their
authority. And by these means we survived.
But she came home about three weeks later -- actually, she came home every night,
honestly. But, no...
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: Wasn't like I sent her off and said don't come back for three weeks.
But she came back a while later. She had a cartoon strip. I don't know where she got it
from, but we still have it.
And there were three panels in it. And it's a father helping a daughter with homework.
In the first panel the father says, what have you got to do? And the daughter says, I've
got to find the lowest common denominator. And the father said, are they still looking
for that?
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: Trying to find that when I was at school. I said I know the feeling.
Great.
Terence has found the lowest common denominator immediately. He gets math.
Now, other people don't. But other people get gymnastics or they get the guitar or they
get working with people or they get drawing.
You know, 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 to 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're constantly being asked to do things
they can't do very well or being forced to do 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 that.
But it's not enough, I think, to be good at things to be in your element. Because I know
lots of people that are good at things they 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 [inaudible] I have a lot of
family. And there were seven. I have six siblings. But years ago I went -- I was brought
up in Liverpool. I went to see Ian at 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 Chaz and he was brilliant. And we're
having a drink afterwards in the bar and I said to him, you were brilliant tonight. And he
said, well, thank you very much. I said, you know, I'd love to do that. He said, do what?
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 I was just hanging out. You know, I
wasn't -[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: You know, it's like a casual remark. I wasn't there to be interrogated.
But you do, you hold your ground, and you -- I said, yes, I would. And, you know, my
confidence weakening. He said, no, you wouldn't. And we went on in this way for some
time. I said, what do you mean, in order to break the deadlock. And 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 can only do that because I love it. He said, and 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 like that, I mean, who do you think you are?
But of course it is true. If you love something, you overcome every obstacle. 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 that they loved that they also had the aptitude
for.
One of the people I interviewed for the book, this guy called Bart Conner. Have you
come across him? Bart Conner found when he was six that he could walk on his hands as
easily as he could 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 walking 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, but it was socially diverting. He said if there was a party at
home and the conversation lagged, his father would say, Bart, do the hands thing.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: And the party would revive.
Anyways, his mum, his mother -- this is in Morton Grove, Illinois -- took him to the local
gymnasium when he was eight with the encouragement 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 was intoxicating. You know, ropes, wall bars, trampolines,
vaulting horse. He said it was really intoxicating.
Well, I pause to ask you that. I mean, is that how you feel when you go into a
gymnasium? Do you find it intoxicating? I don't, you see. I need to get intoxicated, you
know -[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: -- if I go into a gymnasium. But he loved it and he went every day.
Ten years later he walked onto the mat of the Montreal Olympics representing the United
States in the male gymnastics team. He went on to become the most decorated male
gymnast in American history.
He lives now in Norman, Oklahoma. He's married to Nadia Comaneci. You remember
Nadia? The first perfect 10. They have a wonderful little boy who I think is two and a
half now called Dylan, after Bob Dylan. Why not Bob? We don't know. It's what comes
from spending a life upside down, frankly, but -- and they have this amazing
gymnastics -- they have this amazing gymnastics school and he and Nadia 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. 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 to 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 odds or drop off altogether and think I'd want
nothing to do with this.
I mean, 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 the other important thing about the Bart story to me is this: It illustrates 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 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 were guaranteed a job. The idea you wouldn't have a
job with a college degree was ridiculous. I mean, the only reason you wouldn't have a
job if you had a degree would be 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 easily. So I decided to go to India where I
thought I might be. And I didn't get to India. I got to London where there are a lot of
Indian restaurants. So I got there.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: 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 to the contrary; 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 rattle around the walls and go back home again to carry on playing video
games.
Some people go to college and love it. And actually the whole system is designed for
those few people, really, or that relatively small group. This obsession with college is
really important I think to get our heads around.
I was in Danville recently doing a book signing. I was signing a book. I didn't go to
Danville, by the way, to sign one book. I mean, that would be pathetic. It wasn't like
they rang from the publisher and said, quick, somebody bought a book in Danville. You
know, we'll keep him talking. You know, you get here fast. A throng of books were
being sold.
But I was talking to this guy. He was in his late 30s, I would say, and I said, what do you
do? And he said, I'm a fireman. And I said, how long have you been a fireman? He
said, always. It's what I've always done. And I said, so when did you decide to be a
fireman? He said, well, always. He said, I wanted to be a fireman as soon as I got into
elementary school. He said, actually it was a problem because in 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 secondary
school, into high school, in the junior and senior years, it was a bigger issue because
everyone was applying to college. And the school was saying which college are you
applying to. Everyone had to go to college. He said, and 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 year. He said, you know, you will never amount to anything. You're throwing
your life away if this is all you're going to do, to go and join the fire service. He said,
you could really do something. You could, you know, make something of yourself.
He said, I was angry but also humiliated that that's what he thought. He said, anyway, I
was thinking 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 now.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: But you see what I'm saying. We are born with immense gift of
diversity and imagination creativity, but our -- 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 really
back to basics 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
let's think about how we make that happen, particularly through the educational 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 human life is not linear, it is organic. I'll
give you the worst example I can think of by linearity.
When I got to LA, I saw a policy paper for public education ten 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, that 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? Signs of infancy? What are they looking for? I mean, presume they're
producing resumes with the help of their parents, sitting in front of these unimpressed
selection boards flicking over, you know, what, this is it? You've been around for 36
months and this is it? You've achieved nothing. You spent the first six months
breastfeeding that I can see it.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: Get out. You know, it's an outrage.
See, it's preposterous, isn't it? But the whole idea is that it starts really from the point of
conception. You know, people sitting with college entrance papers, you know, next to
the bed. How are you? I think let's apply quickly. Because the idea is they've got to get
to the right college.
But a friend of mine who runs The Ark theater in Dublin once said it beautifully. He
said, you know, a three-year-old is not half a six-year-old. A six-year-old is not half a
12-year-old. They're three. Give them a break. They're 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 know, human organizations like this one are often thought of in mechanistic terms.
People talk about their functions. But, you know, 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, 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 don't stick the leaves on it and paint the damn
thing. 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 sight.
What it showed was that Death Valley isn't dead. It's dormant. 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 in communities. If you put people in a bad place in terms
of conditions, they will react to it and hunker down and pull away from it. 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 a 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. It's [inaudible] poet, W.B. Yeats. My wife, I
said she's a great Elvis fan. And she's right to be, 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 managed to keep Elvis out.
But my wife, Teri, is also a major fan, scholar really, of W.B. Yeats, the Irish poet. And
he just wrote this, which seems to me to speak this idea of imagination. It was actually a
love poem to a woman called Maud Gonne who was his unrequited lifelong love. And he
was berating 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.
So he said this: Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, enwrought 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.
Thank you.
[applause]
>> Ken Robinson: Yeah.
>> I presume this is the time for questions.
>> Ken Robinson: Well, your hand's up.
[laughter]
>> Ken Robinson: Are you okay for time?
>> Yes, we're good.
>> Ken Robinson: I mean, just leave when you need to.
>> [inaudible]
>> Ken Robinson: Or do you not have jobs to go to at all?
Yes, go on. Sorry.
>> So in reading this book I -- you opened up just a completely new way of looking at a
lot of different things. So I'll say that in the beginning.
At the same time I was struck by -- asking myself what the next step would be in the
sense that understanding how we are limiting our ability to be -- to [inaudible] the various
sort of modalities of creativity, different types of creativity to be expressed.
It occurred to me that another element that's missing [inaudible] is creativity and service
of what, meaning where -- and disenthralled would be -- I thank you for that, too, because
I'll be using it, because we are enthralled with a certain approach now, and we have to
somehow collectively or together determine what we will be putting our creativity and
service to in order for us to move forward [inaudible] because obviously [inaudible]
trajectory is not sustained.
And in what context do you see those kinds of discussions happening about what it is that
we [inaudible]?
>> Ken Robinson: Well, the thing is that, to me, a creativity [inaudible] is very practical
process. And you can be creative at anything. It's one of the big problems is we
associate creativity with certain things. You know, 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, because it suggests that something's creative and others are not, I mean
categorically not.
And the truth of it is anything can be creative and anything cannot be. You know, I know
brilliantly creative mathematicians, brilliantly creative software developers. You know,
brilliantly creative teachers. Very uncreative musicians. 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, what they're really drawn to is
teaching in public services. Others are drawn to some of the careers that you've taken.
So I don't want to -- I mean, it's not for me or anybody else to prescribe how people
should spend their time. But I don't 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 3 billion in 1970 to nearly 7
billion now. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, there were only 1 billion
people on the entire planet. At the height of the Renaissance, you know, there were
fewer people 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 confidently where the technology is going to 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, you might be able to help me on this. I'm sure
you can. I was speaking to somebody a while ago from Apple who made an 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 crickets. 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 -- I know Ray Kurzweil has a whole series of
possible thresholds. But he said within five years or so the most powerful computers on
earth may have the processing power of a six-month-old child, six-month-old baby. And
what he said about that was 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. Ray Kurzweil [inaudible] it was in 2020 we
might be able to get a computer for $1,000 with the same processing power as a human
brain. I mean, what's your -- is there anybody here who knows really about this in a way
that you could comment? I'd be really interested ->> We don't really know how complicated neurons and synapses are yet.
>> Ken Robinson: No.
>> There's a lot of neuroscientists who think they know, but ->> Ken Robinson: They certainly don't. Yeah. But there's a convergence, here, isn't
there, between these technologies of neuroscience and information systems, a potential
convergence. 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, right?
>> [inaudible] understand the mechanisms of the neuroplasticity, which is still a really
novel concept ->> Ken Robinson: Yes, that's right.
>> -- in brain science. And there are several different centers that are really on the
cutting edge of that, of course UMass and Wisconsin, Richard Davidson's laboratory.
You know, he's doing huge research on the left frontal gyrus.
>> Ken Robinson: Yes. Yes, I know his work, yeah.
>> Yeah, yeah. He's phenomenal. And also actually right here in Seattle, the Allen
Center, for brain mapping ->> Ken Robinson: Yes.
>> -- which is [inaudible].
>> Ken Robinson: Yes.
>> But underlying mechanisms have not really been fully understood.
>> Ken Robinson: But if we set aside the brain science for the moment in 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 -- the thing that's emerging that's more like a brain structure and
the interconnection patterns between people and between computers, so things more like
the Internet are much more like a brain than things like [inaudible]. But the
interconnection path.
So even something as simple as Twitter. It can be used [inaudible] like a certain
information flow. You can see the Internet thinking by watching the flow of connections
through patterns like Twitter. So things like the search engines, Bing, Google, those are
really the places where the Internet's thinking.
>> Ken Robinson: And it's much more there than the actual hardware.
>> Yeah. 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 the repositories
of information and how those connections adapt and react to stimulus. So you could
inject stimulus in some part of the Internet and then harvest the response somewhere else.
And, you know, as computing power and communications ramp up in technology, then
the thinking power and the speed of thought in that collective [inaudible]. And the
interesting thing about the Internet is it's more cybernetic. It's not just the
interconnections. At those nodes there's still [inaudible]. So it can do deep thinking as
well as sort of connected [inaudible].
>> Ken Robinson: Okay. Yeah.
>> [inaudible]
>> Ken Robinson: Yes, please.
>> I'm sure you address this in the book, and I haven't read it all yet, but what do you say
when you talk about people's potential and fulfillment and educational institutions,
parents and communities at large steering people or allowing people to pursue what it is
that they really get or what is in their element versus societal values or norms around
earning a living, making money?
How does this whole conception of having to be a broker on Wall Street and earn
$200,000 a year [inaudible]? The values in society I think sometimes are skewed. If you
look at -- and people say this all the time -- what a teacher is paid versus what a
professional athlete in the NBA or in the NFL is paid, how do those kinds of things sort
of, I would think, limit and start to close in the universe of potential options that people
[inaudible] want to be able to do well are going to pursue?
>> Ken Robinson: Well, I'll say a couple quick things about this. One is that this thing
about being in your element, it's a metaphor, you know, for the 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 going to be a book
of interviews, but we realized that wasn't as interesting as saying what it all meant. But I
interviewed lots of people. And what they have in common is they had some sense that
they were determined to pursue a path of some sort. They had a confidence to do it.
I don't mean they've all led perfect lives. On the contrary. But they were driven by a
kind of inert need to find what would fulfill them. And they were prepared to take
whatever it took -- to do whatever it took to make that happen.
There were also mentors in almost everybody's life, somebody who saw that talent often
before they did, who helped them -- like Bart's mom, you know -- who encouraged them
in some way or somebody that they found inspirational. That was always a big factor.
But there are lots of obstacles to this. I mean, there are all kinds of things that get in the
way. I have a chapter called "What Will They Think." I mean, they include our own
fear, our own fear of falling on our face, of looking ridiculous, our own self-image. The
inhibition that comes from other people's opinions of us, you know, our family, our
friends, spouses if we have them.
You know, these can be forces for good or not. And a lot of people -- I actually tell the
story in the book -- again, I didn't talk to him, but Paulo Coelho, the whiter who wrote
The Alchemist, his parents when he was a kid in South America were appalled that he
wanted to be a writer. That'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 therapies. And he eventually came out and still and wrote about the
experience. So they kind of gave up at that point.
You know, not many parents go that far where they're plug their kids into the mains. But
it can be more subtle. It can be a raised eyebrow at the wrong moment. You know, there
are all kinds of ways.
Now, [inaudible] said at the beginning of the book, this isn't a set of fairy tales, this is -you know, and I interviewed lots of people who are very well known. I interviewed Paul
McCartney for the book. And Mick Fleetwood, among others. And they were very
interesting stories.
Paul McCartney -- I'm from Liverpool, he was from Liverpool. And he went to school at
the other side of 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 the school, and he said he hated it. He said he went
through it because it -- just the teacher kept putting classical records on. And that was
music education.
He said he went through the whole of his time at the school and nobody thought he had
any musical talent at school. Paul McCartney, you know. One of the same people in the
same music class was George Harrison. Same school, same class. Couple of years
younger. And nobody thought he had any talent either for music.
So I said to Paul McCartney, I said, is this right that there was this one music teacher in
Liverpool in the '50s who had half the Beatles in his class and he missed it? And he said,
that would be right, yeah. Though he's [inaudible] to criticize him for it.
But the analogy that I make is this: Is that human resources, talent, are like natural
resources. They're often buried beneath the ground. You have to go looking for them. It
takes circumstances for them to surface.
Like I often think, you know, those four guys, what would have happened if they hadn't
met each other. I don't 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. Seriously. 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, to underline it, that it's not some
fairy tale and some people all have these God-given gifts and some don't. In almost
every case what I've tried to do is to show the conditions in which it happened for them.
And of course the celebrities, and there's 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.
>> [inaudible] education?
>> Ken Robinson: I'm sorry?
>> [inaudible] I read your book and I liked it very much ->> Ken Robinson: Thank you very much.
>> -- personally. And I have a six-year-old daughter. And with your children, I mean,
do you find -- can the public school system here work for her if I give her the right -- if I
try to encourage her finding her element, finding her aptitude? Or do I need to find -what did you do with your children? Did you find special schools for them that you
thought were better? Or did you just -- you and your wife personally just ->> Ken Robinson: Well, actually, we moved our kids several times to different schools
because we didn't feel they were getting what they needed. And ->> And you don't feel like you could help provide that ->> Ken Robinson: Oh, sure, I hope we did. I think we did. My kids are 20 and 25, and I
think we have a great relationship. They will tell you, I'm sure. We do. I mean, they're
great.
But the thing -- you've got -- have any of you here got more than one child? Okay. Well,
how about two? You need at least two to answer this question. And 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, whoa,
don't mention that. 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 essential problem; that human life is about
diversity and education is about conformity.
And what I try and do -- and I work both ends of the street. I work a lot with education
systems, I've done national strategies, I work with politicians, because I think the
agriculture metaphor is really important.
You know, the -- to 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. 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 bun. It's all horrible, but it's guaranteed.
Whereas 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 are the
criteria of a great restaurant. You meet them any way you like. We don't care whether
it's French, Italian, Asian food; don't care what time you open, what time you shut,
whether every you serve wine; 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, all the great companies, all 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 were 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 and for all. There
must be a silver bullet somewhere and we'll just fix it and it will go on forever. Every
politician 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, you're -- is it a daughter you have? You know, you're interested as a parent in
her. You may be vaguely interested in the way the country's performing in education, but
she's your primary interest. It's true with our kids, you know. And once people get that,
you know, that your daughter's experience of public education in America is that school
that she's going to, that's the one.
You know, our kids aren't going to school in the staterooms 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 with that school.
And we found with our kids, well, 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 out
in her eyes. It had become an Ivy League factory, and we could see the light dimming.
>> My [inaudible] she's in the first grade. And I'm happy with the school. I volunteer
there twice a week, I go in, I help with the math tests, I see how it goes. I think it's going
well so far.
>> Ken Robinson: And it may well continue to be great. There are wonderful schools
around. And I'm not, say, knocking the whole of education. And we're talking about
education now because we can't talk about everything here today.
>> [inaudible]
>> Ken Robinson: No, but -- no. But I hope I'm making you vigilant.
>> Okay.
>> Ken Robinson: 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, there are some things that kids need to have, against their interests. But it's
probably in their better interest.
I'm not saying your job as a parent is just to facilitate everything that they want to
happen. You've got to -- you know that. Yeah. Let's just take one -- you've -- go on.
>> So on your example of the fireman, I agree that the schools are driving towards
uniformity and there's a lot standardizations, but isn't that based on kind of the social
norms of trying to prepare people for survival, income, things like that?
So the schools really aren't tasked with the ability of -- or the responsibility of producing
good firemen or the diversity that society really needs, it's just training people to get out
there and get a well-paying career and get ready for college [inaudible].
>> Ken Robinson: Well, that -- you expressed the problem beautifully. The thing is we
need a country with firemen, right, we need a country with people in the medical
profession, 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 smart at wasn't
valid.
But, by the way, the reason I think it's relevant here is it's twofold. One is all these
arguments apply equally in companies and organizations. But, secondly, I think there's 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's 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's changed the whole culture in less than 25 years. And it's
helped to make our current system 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 the only thing that ever improves education is
making teachers more effective and more powerful.
But the opportunities to come up with new ways of teaching, new ways of thinking and
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. Their minds are moving at the speeds that
you have 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's, seems to me, A, essential for the
effectiveness of education, B, it's already proven as an extraordinary learning resource,
and, C, there's a massive prize out there to get this right.
We should stop there, shouldn't we. But thank you for staying.
[applause]