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every country on earth at the moment is
reforming public education there are two
reasons for it
the first of them is economic people are
trying to work out how do we
educate our children to take their place
in the economies of the 21st century how
do we do that
given that we can't anticipate what the
economy will look like at the end of
next week
as the recent turmoil is demonstrating
how do we do that
the second though is cultural every
country on earth on earth is trying to
figure out how do we
educate our children so they have a
sense of cultural identity and so that
we can pass on the cultural genes of our
communities
while being part of the process of
globalization how do you square that
circle
the problem is they're trying to meet
the future by doing what they did in the
past
and on the way they're alienating
millions of kids who don't see any
purpose in going to school
when we went to school
we were kept there with a story which is
if you worked hard and did well and got
a college degree you would have a job
our kids don't believe that and they're
right not to by the way you're better
having a degree than not but it's not a
guarantee anymore and particularly not
if the route to it marginalizes most of
things that you think are important
about yourself
some people say we have to raise
standards if this is a breakthrough
you know
like really yes we should
why would you lower them you know i mean
i haven't come across an argument that
persuades me of lowering them
but raising them of course we should
raise them
the problem is that the current system
of education was designed
and conceived
and structured for a different age
it was conceived
in the intellectual culture of the
enlightenment
and in the economic circumstances of the
industrial revolution
before the middle of the 19th century
there were no systems of public
education
not really i mean you could get educated
by jesuits you know if you had the money
but public education paid for from
taxation compulsory to everybody and
three at the point of delivery that was
a revolutionary idea
and many people objected to it they said
it's not possible
for many street kids working-class
children to benefit from public
education they're incapable of learning
to read and write and why we're spending
time on this
so there's also built into it a whole
series of
um assumptions about social structure
and capacity it was driven by an
economic imperative of the time but
running right through it
um was an intellectual
model of the mind which was essentially
the enlightenment view of intelligence
that real intelligence consists in this
capacity for a certain type of deductive
reasoning and the knowledge of the
classics originally
what we come to think of as academic
ability
and this is deep in the gene pool of
public education at the really two types
of people academic and non-academic
smart people and non-smart people and
the consequence of that is that many
brilliant people think they're not
because they've been judged against this
particular view of the mind
so we have twin pillars economic and
intellectual
and my view is
that this model has caused chaos in many
people's lives it's been great for some
there have been people who benefited
wonderfully from it but most people have
not
instead they suffer this
this is the modern epidemic and it's as
misplaced and it's as fictitious
this is the plague of adhd
now this is a map of the instance of
adhd in america or prescriptions
for adhd
don't mistake me i don't mean to say
there is no such thing
as attention deficit disorder i'm not
qualified to say if there is such a
thing i know that a great majority of
psychologists and children pediatrician
think there is such a thing
but it's still a matter of debate
what i do know for a fact is it's not an
epidemic
these kids are being medicated
as routinely as we had our tonsils taken
out and on the same whimsical basis and
for the same reason medical
fashion
our children are living in the most
intensely stimulating period in the
history of the earth
they're being besieged with information
and caused their attention from every
platform computers
from iphones from advertising holdings
from hundreds of television channels
and we're penalizing them now for
getting distracted
from what you know boring stuff
at school for the most part
it seems to me not a coincidence totally
that the incidence of adhd has risen in
parallel with the growth of standardized
testing
now these kids are being given ritalin
and adderall and all manner of things
often quite dangerous drugs
to get them focused and calm them down
but according to this attention deficit
order increases as you travel east
across the country
people start losing interest in oklahoma
they can hardly think straight in
arkansas
and by the time they get to washington
they've lost it completely
and there are separate reasons for that
i believe
it's a fictitious epidemic
if you think of it the arts
and i don't say this exclusively the
arts i think it's also true of science
and of maths but let me i say about the
art particularly because they are the
victims of this mentality currently
particularly
the arts
especially address the idea of
aesthetic
experience
an aesthetic experience is one in which
your senses are operating at their peak
when you're present in the current
moment when you're resonating with the
excitement of this thing that you're
experiencing when you are fully alive
an anesthetic is when you shut your
senses off
and deaden yourself to what's happening
and a lot of these drugs are that
we're getting our children through
education by anesthetizing them
and i think we should be doing the exact
opposite we shouldn't be putting them
asleep we should be waking them up to
what they have inside of themselves
but the model we have is this it's i
believe we have a system of education
that is modeled on
the interests of industrialism
and in the image of it
i'll give you a couple of examples uh
schools are still pretty much organized
on factory lines ringing bells separate
facilities
specialized into separate subjects
we still educate children by batches
you know we put them through the system
by age group
why do we do that you know why is there
this assumption
that the most important thing kids have
in common is how old they are
you know it's like the most important
thing about them is their date of
manufacture
what do you mean
well i know kids who are much better
than other kids at the same age in
different disciplines you know or at
different times of the day
or better in smaller groups than in
large groups or sometimes they want to
be on their own
if you're interested in the model of
learning you don't start from this
production line mentality these are it's
essentially about conformity and
increasingly it's about that as you look
at the growth of standardized testing
and standardized curricula
and it's about standardization
i believe we've got to go in the exact
opposite direction that's what i mean
about changing the paradigm
there was a great study done recently of
divergent thinking
published a couple of years ago
divergent thinking isn't the same thing
as creativity
i define creativity as the the process
of having original ideas that have value
divergent thinking isn't a synonym
but it's a
an essential
capacity for creativity
it's the ability to see lots of possible
answers
to a question lots of possible ways of
interpreting a question uh to think
what edward de boehner would probably
call laterally
to think not just in linear or
convergent ways
to see multiple answers not one
so i mean the test for this i mean one
kind of cod example would be people
might be asked to say
how many uses can you think of for a
paper clip
all those routine questions most people
might come with 10 or 15.
people are good at this might come up
with 200
and they do that by saying well could
the paper clip be 200 foot tall and be
made out of foam rubber
you know like does it have to be a paper
clip as we know it jim you know
um now they tested this and they gave
them to 1500 people in a book called
breakpoint and beyond
and on the protocol of the test if you
scored above a certain level
you'd be considered to be a genius at
divergent thinking
okay
so my question to you is what percentage
of
the people tested of the 1500
scored at genius level for divergent
thinking now you need to know one more
thing about them these were kindergarten
children
so what do you think what percentage at
genius level
eight eighteen
eighty okay
98
now the thing about this was it was a
longitudinal study
so they retested the same children
five years later
age of eight to ten what do you think
15.
they retested this them again
five years later ages
13-15
you can see a trend here can't you
now
this tells an interesting story
because you could have imagined it going
the other way couldn't you
you start off not being very good but
you get better as you get older but this
shows two things one is we all have this
capacity
and two it mostly deteriorates
now a lot of things have happened to
these kids as they've grown up a lot
but one of the most important things
that i'm convinced is that by now
they've become educated
they know they're spent ten years at
school being told there's one answer
it's at the back
and don't look
and don't copy
because that's cheating
i mean outside schools that's called
collaboration you know but inside
schools
now this isn't because teachers want it
this way it's just because it happens
that way
um it's because it's in the gene pool of
education
we have to think differently about human
capacity we have to get over this old
conception of academic non-academic
abstract theoretical vocational
and see it for what it is
a myth
secondly we have to recognize that most
great learning happens in groups the
collaboration is the stuff of growth
if we atomize people and separate them
and judge them separately
we
form a kind of disjunction between them
and their natural learning environment
and thirdly it's crucially about the
culture of our institutions the habits
of the institution and the habitats that
they occupy
you