Translator: barbara cosenza Reviewer: Mirjana Čutura
I would like to tell you about this idea I have about education,
which is that fundamentally
it ought to be a lot more interesting for children to be at school
than it seems to be in general.
So I present to you today for the first time on the planet:
Five dangerous things every school should do.
I'm going to start by telling you a little bit about myself.
I grew up in a practically mythological land
called Northern California.
This is the view from the trail that starts where my house was,
into the little bay where my brother and I used to play.
We were so poor that the houses that we lived in
fell apart and were demolished or consumed by nature.
Nobody thought they were worth preserving.
And my neighborhood has almost disappeared.
And so this place where I grew up is now, in my own mind, a magical place.
My parents were beatniks.
They were poets.
They were children who grew up in the '50s and the '40s
and now saw the world through a different set of eyes.
For many years, my brother and I had this beach to ourself.
It's now a quite famous tourist destination,
but when we were children, we could walk on this beach
and a day later
our previous day's footprints were the only footprints we would see.
We spent every day here, after school, and on weekends, every moment we could,
catching fish,
building forts, making fires.
This was our kingdom, our little private beach
for these two poor children who had very little else,
but we had this amazing thing.
And as you can imagine, it left a lasting impression on us,
a way of viewing the world as endless possibility
where you can make something out of just sand and sticks.
Many years later, when I was in my 40s, I began to notice this disturbing trend -
parents were not letting their children do very much of anything
as near as I could tell.
You never saw a child without a parent within five or ten feet.
And they started attaching leases to them to keep them close.
In my country -
and I don't watch Lithuanian news very often,
so you'll have to let me know if this is true -
we see news stories
about parents who get arrested
for letting their children play in the front yard of their house,
unsupervised.
Unsupervised play in the front yard is now something you can be arrested for.
It doesn't make any sense.
And in fact, there's no law that says this is actually dangerous
or anyone should be arrested for.
It's just nervous neighbors and other parents calling the police.
And it's a little bit embarrassing to be an American
and have these kind of stories going out.
So, I did what any slightly crazy person
who is idealistic and believes there ought to be change in the world [would do].
I created a summer camp
where parents could drop off their children on a Sunday
and pick them up on a Saturday, and they would never know what we did.
(Laughter)
The very first year, we built this roller-coaster.
It took us all week.
And we worked sometimes from before breakfast till after dinner.
And at the end of the week, we had this amazing thing,
a little roller-coaster, 40 meters of track.
And the children convinced their parents
to ride on this roller-coaster that they had built.
And we saw something amazing happen.
It changed how the parent perceived the child.
This week away from the parents allowed the child to do something,
and the parent comes back
and sees the incredible thing that the child has built,
and all of a sudden they are like,
"Who are you? I didn't know you could do this."
The kids didn't know how to ask to be able to do that.
So, using everyday materials, cardboard, and plastic, and tape, you know,
we built boats, and, of course, we put the kids in the boat,
and we put them in the ocean to see if it worked.
(Laughter)
And we took broken lawnmowers,
and we turned them into the world's most dangerous motorcycles.
We took an abandoned railroad track, and we built sail-powered trains.
And, you know, an old plastic tarp might be the surface for an airplane.
And yes, it flies.
So, I started to wonder, after working with these kids summer after summer -
this was about ten years ago -
why isn't school more like this?
The kids would ask too.
We'd be sitting around at dinner,
kind of thinking about the work and talking about everything.
They would often say, "I wish school was more like this.
I wish that school was this fun.
I've never worked this hard in my life or had this much fun at the same time."
Working hard and having fun don't have to be separate.
They should be brought together.
So, like any idealistic, slightly crazy person,
I started a school.
This is a school where children of all ages work together,
kindergarten all the way through twelfth grade,
when they graduate and go to college.
This is the school they go to.
We have children who've never been to a different school -
the only school they know.
The thing that I discovered after starting this
is the thing that we all discover when we make something.
The hard part is not figuring out what to do with the children,
the hard part is figuring out how to explain it to the world
and their nervous parents, who are wondering:
well, what are their test scores going to be?
Because we don't give them tests;
instead, what we do is give them an opportunity to do something incredible,
and the children do that on a regular basis.
And suddenly, we see the parents starting to relax.
And we see the children getting more creative
because their parents are not so nervous.
So after ten years of doing my summer camp and four years of running my school,
I've brought for you something:
five dangerous things that every school should do,
starting now,
because the future is happening.
And we shouldn't wait for it to surprise us,
we should create the future we want.
And I think it starts with this.
Number one: let children be co-authors of their education.
I mean, really.
It's such a simple question, and it's such a simple idea.
Children should participate in what they're learning,
not just be consumers.
Let's try a little exercise.
Raise your hands if you were ever in school
and you had like
just a burning question to ask a teacher, just a really important question.
Come on, Lithuania.
This is a very low participation country.
(Laughter)
Get your hands up. Yeah! Right?
You had a brilliant question, and you were dying to know the answer.
Right?
Now put your hand down if the teacher said,
"Well, that's a good question, but we don't have time for that.
We got to move on to the next chapter in the book.
We got to figure out this algebra. We have to..."
Whatever it was, it was clear that what you were doing in that class
had nothing to do with what was going on in your mind.
Sad.
It's a terribly sad thing to happen.
Imagine instead what it would've been like
if that question had led to a conversation,
and that conversation led to more questions.
And suddenly, what have been planned for the whole class next day was put aside
because this question you had was so good
the thing that we planned with the school administration
pales in comparison.
We should do something different.
And now, you and the rest of your class are outside,
and you're doing a quick experiment with this giant piece of flexible mirror.
And it doesn't work perfectly,
but it suggests that this idea might have credibility;
it might be worth exploring.
Your first prototype that afternoon kind of works, kind of doesn't work.
And the wind is moving the plastic around.
So, you head back in, and you start working on this,
and you learn about this new thing.
It's a special kind of curve that focuses light.
It's the curve that a piece of material makes when you hang it.
It's called a parabola.
You're eight years old, and you've never heard this word,
or if you did, you don't remember.
And it has to do with algebra, which you've never done,
but you don't care
because it's what stands between you and burning a marshmallow with sunlight,
and that's worth doing, so I'll do this math.
So you plot out your parabola, and you start drilling.
And this is going to be the most powerful solar concentrator on the planet.
And you start building it, and it's coming together.
And look at that beautiful parabolic arc made out of little sticks.
You hang your sheet in it,
and then, right there in the class, in the school,
you can see that it's kind of starting to work.
So you recruit a friend, and she helps you carry it out to the park,
where you set it up,
and it makes really warm marshmallows.
(Laughter)
Yeah.
They get really warm,
kind of hot to the touch.
But they're not cooking.
Not nearly as well as your friend who tried a different approach
of gluing tiny little squares of mirror
to a satellite dish that he rescued from the trash.
Later, you present your results to the class
using your fancy infographics.
(Laughter)
And while you're looking at it, right there on stage,
you have the sudden realization - you know why yours wasn't working.
You take a deep breath, and you turn around,
"Does anybody have any questions?"
And yes, of course they do.
Because they've been following your story for the last two weeks,
and they want to know how it ends.
The goals we have, as a society, for education
can all be met in ways that do not train children
to be obedient
or good at taking tests -
passive to authority.
We can achieve all of those goals,
everything we want to learn - math, history, science, art, everything -
we can learn by following the excitement of the child.
Number two: we should trust children more.
We really ought to. They're very trustworthy.
And they just love being trusted.
They do so much better when we trust them.
I think we've all seen a lot of pictures of classrooms, today.
(Laughs)
But the psychology, the architecture of this room is designed to reinforce
that authority of the teacher standing at front of the room
and giving you precious knowledge that you don't know what it's for.
And she promises that later when you're an adult,
you're going to use it, you know.
And 50 years ago, it looked the same as it did 100 years ago,
and ten years ago, and two years ago.
I think we already saw this very slide.
If we decided that trust was important,
if we decided to extend,
let's start with the fact that we trust you,
we might build a very different school,
and our classrooms might look a little different,
maybe a little more chaotic - our school certainly does.
Maybe we wouldn't need walls to hold them in the classroom
because with that trust, the children felt a sense of responsibility.
And if we trusted them,
they wouldn't have to ask permission to go to the bathroom.
Like an adult,
they could just wait for a good break in the conversation
and go to the bathroom.
"I trust you. You appear to be on an important journey.
Come back as soon as you can."
If we trusted them, they could learn to use tools.
They would be braver and more courageous.
They would be all those things that we hope for in adults.
And they could start practicing it when they're six
instead of when they're 24 and they graduate from college.
And they would bring their hearts and their minds to everything they did.
Because they knew that we trusted them.
Number three: the default answer is "yes!"
Just imagine what that would be like.
"Can I go on that rope swing?"
"Yes!"
"Can I help build classrooms this summer?"
"Yes, you can."
"Can I build a room where we can try this thing that I read about,
called high-speed photography?"
"Yes, you can.
Why not? That's going to be awesome."
"Can I study chess?"
"I don't know what that has to do with what else is going on in school,
but yes.
If you seem pretty serious about that, let's do some chess."
"Can I go to to the cafe to work on my blog?"
"Yes. Yes, you can.
Try to be back before the end of school
because your mom is going to be here to pick you up."
(Laughter)
"Yes" - it's just about the most interesting answer to any question ever.
"Can I make fireworks?"
"Yes. But first figure out how to do it safely and legally
because we're a little worried about the insurance,
so do some research.
It is, without question, infinitely more interesting than "no."
"No" is the most boring answer you can get when you're a child.
So let's start giving them "yeses"
and not beating over the heads with "no."
Alright.
Focus on habit and character instead of the test scores
because you know what?
You only need those test scores in school, and we don't use them.
I hired hundreds of programmers in my life,
and I never looked at their test scores.
What is it that keeps a young student working away on his idea for a chair,
this prototype?
I would suggest that there are only two ways
to get a small child to build many chairs before he builds one he likes.
You can make him do it,
or the children can believe in the process,
that effort that it takes to go from an idea to a finished product,
and launch themselves into it because they trust their school.
"My chair is terrible right now. It's going to get a lot better, I bet."
"Yes, it is. That's an amazing chair."
This teacher's persistence, tenacity,
that rare quality that you take on a challenge
and you don't stop until it works.
Curiosity - the exact same thing.
You know, if every curious question you have leads to nothing,
you'll stop being curious.
It happens to everybody.
It happens to children all the time. They just get less curious.
Sir Ken Robinson, a great TED speaker,
estimates that by the time we graduate from high school,
we have lost over 90% of our creative capacity.
Ninety percent.
That is a global resource being wasted at an enormous scale.
The answer to every problem we ever had is probably been thrown out along the way
with all those millions of children being less creative.
Number five: let's agree, all of us here today,
that everything is interesting,
no matter what the topic.
An activity seen from a distance might seem silly.
She is reproducing a research paper that shows
that the stride length that people exhibit in a city
tells you something about the wealth and welfare in that city.
So she painted her feet, and walked on a piece of paper,
and measured the distance.
It's not perfect science,
but she never forgot about that piece of research.
Spend a day without sight.
"Yes, of course, Clementine. You can do that."
What school would help them do that?
We tell children that camera works like an eye.
We took apart a camera. Then we took apart an eye.
Now they know what an inside of an eye is like.
Everything the kids want to learn
or that we want kids to learn can be taught in this way -
every educational goal.
Life at school shapes how children see the world.
We want them to see the world
as a wonderful, delightful, creative place that's worth protecting.
That starts when they're six, and we don't stop working on it
until they go out into the world and make change.
So I say: Let's be brave.
Let's create the kind of schools that we want to see our children in.
And if the government won't let us do it,
let's cheat.
(Laughter)
Thank you very much.
(Applause)