Transcriber: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Reiko Bovee
Well, one of the privileges
of not being with you in person today
is I get to talk to you twice.
One at the beginning, and here we are at the end.
The reason
why today's conversations are so important
is that we are living in revolutionary times.
That's why we need a revolution in education.
And there are two big drivers of change.
One of them is population growth.
We live in a world now that's more populated
than at any time in history.
There are about 7 billion people on the earth,
which is more human beings than at any other time,
and we're heading for 9 billion.
That's reason enough in itself.
But the second is technology
and the way that technologies are transforming everything we do,
economically, culturally, how we think and how we relate.
I published a book ten years ago,
called "Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative",
and I've just issued a new version of it
and the reason is that so much has happened in the last ten years.
I mean, ten years ago, there was no Google,
there was no Facebook, no Twitter,
no social media of any sort.
There were no smartphones, no iPhones, no iPads,
none of the things that we take for granted.
And that rate of change is going to accelerate.
It's not going to decrease.
And we're not heading toward some calm pasture,
where all the changes will be behind us.
They'll simply become more tumultuous.
By the way, I wrote the new version of the book on Microsoft Word.
I don't know if any of you use Microsoft Word.
But, well, I don't know if you notice it,
but, if you do it,
it has opinions on what you write.
It comments on your literary style.
You get little green squiggles
if it doesn't approve of what you just said.
And one of the things it disapproves of is the passive voice.
So, you can't say, "The roundhouse was built."
You have to say who built it,
according to Bill Gates anyway.
Why he's got this thing against the passive voice I do not know,
but I was writing about the history of public education,
and I wrote about the growth of intelligence testing.
And I wrote this sentence and I said,
"The foundations of the modern intelligence test
were laid in the late 19th century,
by Sir Francis Galton,
a cousin of Charles Darwin." --
which is true, by the way.
I'll just tell you again,
"The foundations of the modern intelligence test
were laid in the late 19th century,
by Sir Francis Galton,
a cousin of Charles Darwin."
Well, Microsoft Word didn't like that.
It had little green squiggles,
because it had the passive voice "were laid".
And it suggested the alternative in the active voice.
And what it suggested was,
"In the late 19th century,
Sir Francis Galton laid a cousin of Charles Darwin
(Laughter)
the foundation of the modern intelligence test."
Well, not really, I feel.
But it is interesting that the span of public education
runs pretty much
from the late 19th century to present day,
and it's become increasingly dominated
by that type of culture.
And what was subverted in the end as well
is the rapid changes that are overtaking us,
some of them being driven by technology.
So, it is important that we sense the scale of the challenges
that education is involved with
and also the need for us to see education as the key to the future.
There was a great quote by H. G. Wells,
another great 19th century writer,
one of the few people to look into the future and see something
that has been born out by events.
But he'd once said that,
"Civilization is a race
between education and catastrophe."
Well, there's some reason to believe he might be right
and that catastrophe is edging out in front a little.
But it's not too late to catch up with it,
if we think boldly and fundamentally
about the basic purposes of education and how we meet them.
But what I also wanted to leave you with is this thought
that, as we consider the changes that need to be made,
we don't have to reinvent everything.
You're standing today -- or sitting, if you are --
in a very long tradition of debate about alternatives
to the mainstream forms of education.
Many things that I argue for
have been argued by other people, eloquently in the past,
and practiced by them.
There was a long tradition
in what was sometimes called "progressive education".
I've never liked the apparent dichotomy
between progressive and traditional,
but an argument has been made
really from the origins of education
for more holistic approaches,
more balanced approaches,
ones that represent a real balance
between the arts and the sciences, for example,
between the humanities and physical education,
and the other things that I mentioned.
There have been notable pioneers and practitioners,
from Montessori, Pestalozzi, Froeble,
to the work of Piaget, Bruner.
The list goes on... Dewey.
There have been great pioneers in education,
many of them in the U.K.
There have been wonderful schools.
You're meeting not far from one of the most
extraordinary schools in the world, which is Summerhill.
But also great schools in the public sector,
great environmental schools,
great innovative schools.
I think it's important that we recognize
that conversation is not happening in a vacuum,
it's not a historical vacuum,
it's not a cultural vacuum.
The issue, though, is to make these principles
not part of the alternative,
but part of the mainstream.
I live in Los Angeles, as I mentioned earlier,
and I was in a meeting recently,
of a great project, called "The Heart Project",
that happens downtown, here in L.A.
And it brought together, this particular meeting,
representers from across the city,
the supervisor of the L.A. Unified School District, for example,
which has 800,000 students in it.
It's the largest school district in America, outside of New York.
And we were there to talk about
the future of alternative education.
What really interested me was this:
the principles of alternative education are designed to re-engage
young people with education who've dropped out of it,
or been failed by it.
And the principles are interesting.
They're all based... all the alternative education approaches,
all around the world, are based on a personalised curriculum.
They're based on an intensive ratio between students and teachers.
They're based on group activities
and closings with the community.
And they're based on trying to identify
the individual talents and interests of each student
and shaping the environment,
so it helps to encourage them.
Well, I was saying at this meeting in L.A.
that these principles of alternative education
are all actually the principles of education,
just good education.
It seems to me bizarre
that they've now become confined
to the alternative to mainstream education.
And I think our job is to make the... what's been hither to...
in a way, the fringe of education, or the periphery...
It's to move those principles to the centre.
I think if all of education was modelled on similar principles,
then our students wouldn't be dropping out in the first place,
they'd be getting much more from education
and we'd be getting much more from them.
The new technologies are among the factors that we need to change,
and they're among the factors that will make change possible.
They make available now
tremendous opportunities to personalised education.
They're not the whole answer.
I believe, it's true of all technology, that technology alone
doesn't do much.
It's what you do with it, you know.
A camera doesn't produce great photographs,
but a great photographer might.
A piano itself doesn't produce great music,
but a great musician could.
And technologies we have available in schools
don't make for great education,
but great educators could make something great of them.
So, as we look into the future, from where we sit now,
it's as hard for us to predict the future as it was
for the architects of the 19th century
to predict the world that we now live in.
But if we are resilient,
and if we invest in and believe properly in our true creative powers,
if we apply them in all our educational settings,
then we will begin to shape a different type of future for everybody.
And it's important, therefore, that as we go away from today's conference,
that we take seriously the pledge form
that TEDx has put before us,
asking us if we'd be prepared to pledge ideas,
or resources, or money, or time
to making something happen.
Well, I want to say that I have done that,
I do do that, I spend all my time
in promoting changes in education and supporting those who do
and I'm delighted to offer my pledge to support
whatever comes from TEDx, to take this conversation forward
and help to shape a future that we all want to live in.
Thank you very much.