Translator: Liana Ray Reviewer: Raissa Mendes
I want to begin by reflecting with you about this question:
When did we decide to learn how to read and write?
Was there a moment when our parents were called to the school
and asked if it was all right with them
if our teachers radically transformed their children's brains
so they could develop graphomotricity?
Another good question directed to a small three-year-old child,
"Hi cutie. So we're going to change your brain a little bit, OK?
We're going to add a new area that we're going to nickname 'mailbox'
where you can save all the letters you'll be learning, OK?
But there's just one more little detail:
It will be done my way, on my schedule.
Sound good?
Don't worry, we're quite good at this."
No folks, those questions don't happen.
And, when I talk like this, these questions sound absurd.
Imagine!
Nobody questions the necessity of learning to read and write anymore,
even though these processes don't come naturally to us at all.
In fact, they're not even remotely simple skills.
We have it all worked out into a system.
We begin by familiarizing ourselves with how to hold a pencil -
I decided to hold my pencil with my left hand;
others decided to use their right -
then we start tracing letters over dotted lines,
recognizing the letters,
learning to form them into words,
and making sentences.
It gets more complicated -
it becomes text,
which becomes larger texts,
which become books, right?
But this isn't easy, folks.
And we have to go through this whole process
because our brains weren't born prepared for this,
which is different from spoken language, right?
We have to go through a whole neuronal recycling -
what a beautiful name -
in which vast areas of our brains begin to perform functions
that they were not created to perform.
We believe that these functions are so very important
that we've developed
research areas, handbooks, methods, books,
and specialized teachers for teaching children the alphabet.
In fact, we've created a very good system.
Now think with me.
Although our [illiteracy] rate has fallen greatly
since the age of the scribes,
we're reviving that era.
But now, that era is digital.
A few people have mastered the art of communicating with machines,
and they can successfully use this to their advantage.
Meanwhile, many others are mere users:
users who are being programmed,
only using what is required at work or by society.
We need to dedicate ourselves to digital literacy,
just as we've dedicated ourselves to traditional literacy.
And this discussion isn't at all new.
In fact, it's one of the oldest ones:
"What do we need to teach in school?"
In Ancient Rome,
we decided that we needed seven liberal arts,
which, at the time, were sciences,
but, for us, it was all the same thing.
We decided that we needed to have grammar,
rhetoric, dialectic,
music, and astronomy.
It was important.
After all, for humanity to continue developing itself,
we needed these things.
Then, came the Renaissance -
the 15th and 16th centuries -
and we added a few other subjects.
We started teaching children how to spell.
We really evolved during that era in how we taught things.
We invented pedagogy and didactics.
That was right in this era.
Then came the 18th century,
and we began to teach several other things,
including history and geography.
Foreign languages also began to make sense.
The world had grown.
But our real surprise came in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Then, things took off. Everything accelerated.
We advanced very, very much in arts, sciences, and technology.
We were understanding everything.
Then we had to industrialize,
including the school.
We made a mass school, put 40, 50 students in each class,
gave each subject its own little box,
and made each teacher super-specialized in their area.
They were masters, right?
They had to be masters.
I needed to know everything.
I needed to know biology, history, and geography.
How was I going to endure all the developments we had?
These included a part that I love -
we invented the evaluation.
We now had mathematical evaluation.
There was a point system.
Except that it was totally based on the subjectivity of just one person:
the teacher.
Right, folks?
But I have some news, and it's not easy to hear.
None of this makes sense in the 21st century.
What does that mean?
I'll give a very simple example from my trauma with biology:
I had to memorize
which phylum and class animals and plants are in.
Make sense?
It would if I were in the middle of the forest and needed to decide
if I should eat the little pink fruit or run from a little furry animal.
Great, I had to identify some characteristics,
put them into a box and say,
"This one eats meat. I'm going to run."
But now,
any ten-year-old child with a smartphone
takes a photo, searches in Google ...
"Voilà!"
They even know how the animal reproduces.
That quickly.
Right?
What's important now in the 21st century,
the century of the internet, of the smartphone, of software,
is that we know how to create relationships,
that we're creative,
and that we have a critical sense of how all of this functions.
That's what is important.
But the schools are still teaching us ...
to memorize.
Knowing how things are made changes the way we use them.
I guarantee to you guys
that if you knew
how we save your passwords
and all of the work we do to keep them safe,
you would think much harder
before making accounts all over the internet.
That's just what I think. Reflecting on this, right?
We need to begin to teach kids how to take advantage of this.
We need to teach the language of the 21st century.
We need to teach our children how to program.
And I can see you thinking,
"Oh, how cute! She comes here, criticizes our entire system,
and thinks she can do that without offering a new plan?"
Don't worry, I have a plan.
For us to change any situation, we need three things:
First, a criticism of how things are;
second, a vision of how we think things should be;
and lastly, the most difficult is a theory of change,
the most complicated part.
First, I'll begin with my criticism which, in truth, isn't just one,
which you've already realized,
but I'll give you a summary.
We can't continue to believe that our children,
simply because we call them digital natives,
know everything about technology.
Knowing about technology isn't sitting down to eat lunch or dinner
and quickly grabbing the tablet to watch cartoons.
That's not understanding technology.
None of those children can explain to me why or how that application was made.
They don't have a critical sense.
I'll give you an example.
When I ask a child what it means to "share" something,
which is the "share" feature on Facebook, for those not tuned into these things,
which is to press that button.
And I'm not saying this rashly, without thinking.
In these past years, I've met at least 15,000 children
of all genders, ages, and backgrounds.
And when we ask them,
these digital natives who were born after year 2000,
"What does it mean to 'share'?"
they look at you and say,
"Wow, Miss! Don't you know? It means to press a button."
We,
the digital immigrants who are here -
even though I'm 24 years old, and it's my profession,
I include myself in this group -
we know that to "share" means much more than this:
it means I'm giving support or it means I'm endorsing an opinion.
To not have this critical interpretation is very dangerous.
OK,
now that I've finished the summary of my 9 million criticisms,
let's turn to my vision, which is quite simple.
We need to put programming,
computational thinking, and digital life
into the common curriculum of all children in the Brazilian education system.
We can't avoid this discussion any longer.
Finally, we have the most difficult part, which is the theory of change.
And this is already complicated
because let's suppose that we've decided
that we're going to teach all children how to program.
Who's going to do this?
Who's going to decide on the content?
We don't have enough manpower to support the market,
let alone the Brazilian education system.
We need a true revolution.
We need to take the teachers we already have
and who are passionate about their work,
and take away the pressure for them to be experts.
We need to transform them into facilitators.
We need to help them with cool materials and great training
to accompany these young people on their journeys.
They'll learn how to stay safe on the internet,
and they'll learn how to make applications,
from these same teachers who right now feel insecure
and think that programming is the green letters on a black screen
that some Silicon Valley guy used at age 5 to become a millionaire by age 18.
Only with that.
We need to break down these barriers.
I want to take this moment and the few minutes I have left
to encourage you all to join me in this revolution.
Those of us who are involved in the education system
have three options.
The first,
if we're part of the system,
we can generate some change within the system.
For example,
if you showed up in your classrooms and discussed with your students,
"How is an app created? How do you make an app?"
Today there are many things on the internet.
You all can already make this change and join this movement.
Second,
you can put pressure on the system.
And so, I'll give you a great tip:
Go to your neighborhood school and ask if the IT classroom is "all good."
It probably won't be.
But just so you all know, it's the law.
All schools must have information technology classrooms
that are open to the public.
You can put pressure on the system.
Lastly, you can simply avoid entering into the system
and take action outside of it,
which is what I have done, I confess.
And so, you can simply sit down with your kids,
have a conversation about technology, ask which websites they're using,
and ask if they have any idea of how Facebook works.
Search together, learn together.
OK, this is what I needed to tell you.
I hope that each of you
will continue to help me and to help the world in this revolution.
What I can guarantee to you is that I will continue trying,
if only to convince one person at a time,
to make this revolution happen.
Thank you.
(Applause)