0:00:07.711,0:00:09.912
So how many of you are educators, past, present, or future?

0:00:09.912,0:00:11.321
Raise your hands.

0:00:11.321,0:00:12.791
Good. I'm in the right place.

0:00:12.791,0:00:15.503
I'm a recovering high school English teacher.

0:00:15.503,0:00:16.526
True story.

0:00:16.526,0:00:18.374
How many of you mentor young kids? [br]

0:00:18.374,0:00:19.470
Raise your hands.

0:00:19.470,0:00:22.488
I'm definitely in the right place.

0:00:22.488,0:00:27.033
For 25 years, we've heard about failing schools

0:00:27.033,0:00:29.308
and the need to reform our schools.

0:00:29.308,0:00:31.275
Anybody who wanted to reform school? [br]

0:00:31.275,0:00:33.337
Raise your hands.

0:00:33.337,0:00:35.446
Einstein once said that formulation of the problem

0:00:35.446,0:00:38.564
is often more important than the solution.

0:00:38.564,0:00:40.943
I would like to respectfully suggest our schools

0:00:40.943,0:00:43.453
are not failing; they certainly don't need reforming.

0:00:43.453,0:00:47.610
The system is obsolete and needs reinventing.

0:00:47.610,0:00:49.373
Not reforming.

0:00:49.373,0:00:50.766
What's changed?

0:00:50.766,0:00:52.176
It's simply this.

0:00:52.176,0:00:54.966
Knowledge today is a commodity.

0:00:54.966,0:00:57.584
It's free. It's like air. It's like water.

0:00:57.584,0:00:59.823
How many of you have been on the Khan Academy website?

0:00:59.823,0:01:00.830
Raise your hands.

0:01:00.830,0:01:02.868
Yeah, most of you. Right, you know.

0:01:02.868,0:01:05.523
You know the quality of education people can receive

0:01:05.523,0:01:08.078
on that if they're willing to take the initiative.

0:01:08.078,0:01:11.702
How many of you had to memorize the periodic table

0:01:11.702,0:01:13.494
in high school? Raise your hands.

0:01:13.494,0:01:15.210
Ah, everybody! Good.

0:01:15.210,0:01:17.014
So, how many were there again?

0:01:17.014,0:01:18.556
No wait, I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

0:01:18.556,0:01:20.262
Whatever number you came up with is wrong,

0:01:20.262,0:01:22.704
because two more were added last week.

0:01:22.704,0:01:25.270
And planets, are we up one or down one?

0:01:25.270,0:01:27.323
I don't know, I haven't checked my news feed today.

0:01:27.323,0:01:29.014
And let's see, let's have a contest.

0:01:29.014,0:01:31.932
Why don't you recite the 50 state capitals from memory

0:01:31.932,0:01:35.880
while I google them? Let's see who's quicker.

0:01:35.880,0:01:37.367
Knowledge is a commodity.

0:01:37.367,0:01:39.539
The world no longer cares whether or not

0:01:39.539,0:01:40.882
you're smarter than a fifth grader

0:01:40.882,0:01:43.024
or how well you do to triple your pursuit.

0:01:43.024,0:01:46.298
What the world cares about is not what you know,

0:01:46.298,0:01:49.561
but what you can do with what you know.

0:01:49.561,0:01:54.021
And that is a completely different education problem.

0:01:54.021,0:01:56.154
Then the question becomes,

0:01:56.154,0:01:59.731
Do you have the skill and do you have the will

0:01:59.731,0:02:03.381
to use the knowledge you have acquired?

0:02:03.381,0:02:06.586
Okay, I gotta tell you a kind of an intellectual journey I've been on.

0:02:06.586,0:02:08.524
2005, I read "The World is Flat" by Friedman.

0:02:08.524,0:02:10.107
How many have read that book?

0:02:10.107,0:02:11.386
Scared the heck out of me.

0:02:11.386,0:02:13.418
Because as you know, he describes a world

0:02:13.418,0:02:15.496
where increasingly any job that can be routined

0:02:15.496,0:02:17.959
is rapidly being offshored or automated.

0:02:17.959,0:02:20.852
White collar, blue collar, doesn't matter.

0:02:20.852,0:02:23.038
Talked to him recently, interviewed him for the new book.

0:02:23.038,0:02:24.498
He said, "I got one thing wrong in that book."

0:02:24.498,0:02:25.691
I said, "What was that?"

0:02:25.691,0:02:28.890
He said, "The pace of change is happening so much faster."

0:02:28.890,0:02:32.221
So I worried about what kinds of skills will our young people need

0:02:32.221,0:02:35.955
to get and keep a good job in this new global knowledge economy.

0:02:35.955,0:02:37.814
And in fact are they the same skills they'll need

0:02:37.814,0:02:40.823
for citizenship and for continuous learning?

0:02:40.823,0:02:43.155
So I've interviewed a wide range of innovators, literally,

0:02:43.155,0:02:47.905
from Apple to Unilever, executives, U.S. Army,

0:02:47.905,0:02:49.992
community leaders, college teachers, asking all of them,

0:02:49.992,0:02:53.586
"What are the skills that matter most today? What's important?"

0:02:53.586,0:02:56.762
Came to understand, there's a set of core competences

0:02:56.762,0:03:01.541
every young person must be well on the way to mastery

0:03:01.541,0:03:03.873
before he or she finishes high school.

0:03:03.873,0:03:07.924
Not just to get a good job, but to be a continuous learner

0:03:07.924,0:03:11.847
and an active and informed citizen in the 21st century.

0:03:11.847,0:03:13.585
Very briefly, they are:

0:03:13.585,0:03:15.693
No. 1: Critical thinking and problem solving.

0:03:15.693,0:03:17.059
What do I mean by critical thinking? [br]

0:03:17.059,0:03:18.783
The ability to ask the right questions,

0:03:18.783,0:03:20.614
ask really good questions.

0:03:20.614,0:03:25.815
No. 2: Collaboration across networks and leading by influence.

0:03:25.815,0:03:29.769
No. 3: Agility and adaptability.

0:03:29.769,0:03:34.214
No. 4: Initiative and entrepreneurialism.

0:03:34.214,0:03:39.870
No. 5: Effective oral and written communication.

0:03:39.870,0:03:43.700
No. 6: Accessing and analyzing information.

0:03:43.700,0:03:48.800
and lastly, No. 7: Curiosity and imagination.

0:03:48.800,0:03:51.784
So, a couple things happened when that book came out 3 and a half years ago.

0:03:51.784,0:03:54.430
There's a global achievement gap that Hellman just referred to.

0:03:54.430,0:03:57.348
First of all, I got a kind of affirmation

0:03:57.348,0:03:58.650
from literally, around the world

0:03:58.650,0:04:00.090
that simply stunned me.

0:04:00.090,0:04:04.100
Taiwan to Singapore, to Helsinki, to Madrid, [br]

0:04:04.100,0:04:07.114
and kind of all places in between.

0:04:07.114,0:04:10.851
Thailand, Bahrain, Birmingham, England.

0:04:10.851,0:04:13.797
From Wall Street to West Point,

0:04:13.797,0:04:17.819
people said to me, [br]"Yup, these are exactly the right skills."

0:04:17.819,0:04:20.568
I felt pretty good. Not bad.

0:04:20.568,0:04:22.916
Then the other thing happened.

0:04:22.916,0:04:24.780
Economy collapsed.

0:04:24.780,0:04:27.157
And I saw kids coming home from college,

0:04:27.157,0:04:30.658
seemingly having acquired some, many, most of these skills,

0:04:30.658,0:04:33.712
coming home from college to no job.

0:04:33.712,0:04:35.012
They had the skills.

0:04:35.012,0:04:36.546
Something was missing.

0:04:36.546,0:04:40.898
Right now today, half of all recent college graduates

0:04:40.898,0:04:43.785
are either unemployed or underemployed.

0:04:43.785,0:04:46.063
A third are living at home.

0:04:46.063,0:04:48.475
Maybe some of you in this audience.

0:04:48.475,0:04:50.733
What did I miss? What was wrong?

0:04:50.733,0:04:52.700
Well, as I tried to understand[br]

0:04:52.700,0:04:54.314
the essence of this economic crash,

0:04:54.314,0:04:55.897
I came to understand it's a lot more

0:04:55.897,0:04:58.798
than the credit default swaps we read about,

0:04:58.798,0:05:01.469
a lot more than just a hyper-inflated [br]

0:05:01.469,0:05:03.324
real estate market and so on.

0:05:03.324,0:05:04.487
Here's what I learned.

0:05:04.487,0:05:06.892
Maybe you all know this. I didn't.

0:05:06.892,0:05:11.388
More than 70% of our economy[br]is based on consumer spending.

0:05:11.388,0:05:13.376
What's everybody's biggest fear?

0:05:13.376,0:05:16.483
That consumers will stop spending.

0:05:16.483,0:05:18.354
That's why we lose jobs.

0:05:18.354,0:05:20.513
No. 2, that that consumer spending has been

0:05:20.513,0:05:24.871
increasingly fueled by people going into debt.

0:05:24.871,0:05:27.244
Pulling money out of the house as fast as they could,

0:05:27.244,0:05:29.430
putting money on credit cards as fast as they could.

0:05:29.430,0:05:33.862
2007, the savings rate was minus 2%.

0:05:33.862,0:05:35.913
Leading me to conclude

0:05:35.913,0:05:38.068
that maybe what we have done

0:05:38.068,0:05:40.392
is create an economy based on people

0:05:40.392,0:05:42.870
spending money they do not have,

0:05:42.870,0:05:45.410
to buy things they may not need,

0:05:45.410,0:05:48.833
threatening the planet in the process.

0:05:48.833,0:05:51.258
I think it's increasingly clear

0:05:51.258,0:05:54.015
that kind of an economy is not sustainable.

0:05:54.015,0:05:58.080
As Jeremy Cloud said, it's not sustainable environmentally.

0:05:58.080,0:06:00.460
It's not even sustainable economically.

0:06:00.460,0:06:03.375
Right now today, the savings rate is about 4%.

0:06:03.375,0:06:06.330
Consumers are saving

0:06:06.330,0:06:08.764
more than they are spending.

0:06:08.764,0:06:11.784
I don't think it's sustainable spiritually either.

0:06:11.784,0:06:13.182
We need something different.

0:06:13.182,0:06:15.132
So as I tried to understand what's the alternative,

0:06:15.132,0:06:16.956
what's gonna be our niche in the global economy,

0:06:16.956,0:06:19.041
one word appeared over and over again.

0:06:19.041,0:06:20.928
Innovation.

0:06:20.928,0:06:24.095
The idea, not just the major innovations in STEM,

0:06:24.095,0:06:28.395
but becoming a country that produces more better ideas

0:06:28.395,0:06:31.504
to solve more different kinds of problems,

0:06:31.504,0:06:33.264
ideas that generate jobs,

0:06:33.264,0:06:37.153
ideas that other people want and need as solutions

0:06:37.153,0:06:40.795
to real problems, every kind of problem.

0:06:40.795,0:06:42.879
So, you know, America has always been known

0:06:42.879,0:06:44.721
as a highly innovative country.

0:06:44.721,0:06:47.728
But is that because of, or in spite of,

0:06:47.728,0:06:49.859
our education system?

0:06:49.859,0:06:51.143
Important question.

0:06:51.143,0:06:52.695
You know we have infrastructure,

0:06:52.695,0:06:54.590
we spend on our R&D,

0:06:54.590,0:06:56.332
copyright protection laws,

0:06:56.332,0:06:58.473
good immigration policy, until recently.

0:06:58.473,0:06:59.769
What about education?

0:06:59.769,0:07:02.876
Alright, trivia question of the day so fast you won't be able to google the answer.

0:07:02.876,0:07:04.598
What do Bill Gates, Edwin Land,

0:07:04.598,0:07:06.441
the inventor of Polaroid instant camera,

0:07:06.441,0:07:08.360
Mark Zuckerburg a Facebook fame,

0:07:08.360,0:07:10.046
and Bonnie Raitt, the folk singer, all four have in common?

0:07:10.046,0:07:11.654
(Audience) College dropouts.

0:07:11.654,0:07:12.824
Sorry, they were not dropouts, [br]

0:07:12.824,0:07:15.269
they were Harvard College dropouts!

0:07:15.269,0:07:17.269
That's different! Thank you very much.

0:07:17.269,0:07:20.638
You know Steve Jobs is a dropout, Michael Dell is a dropout.

0:07:20.638,0:07:24.541
These guys were Harvard dropouts.

0:07:24.541,0:07:27.347
So I decided to take a different tactic.

0:07:27.347,0:07:30.776
Trying to understand what must we do differently

0:07:30.776,0:07:32.654
to develop the capacities of many more

0:07:32.654,0:07:35.609
of our young people to be innovators.

0:07:35.609,0:07:38.860
What must we do as parents, as teachers,

0:07:38.860,0:07:41.618
as mentors, and as employers.

0:07:41.618,0:07:44.437
Started interviewing a wide range of innovators in their 20s.

0:07:44.437,0:07:46.160
Extraordinary young people.

0:07:46.160,0:07:49.297
Range some from privileged, some from poverty.

0:07:49.297,0:07:51.229
Wide range. All over the country.

0:07:51.229,0:07:54.172
Some in STEM fields, some in arts,

0:07:54.172,0:07:57.247
some were social innovators and entrepreneurs.

0:07:57.247,0:07:59.260
Then I interviewed each one of their parents.

0:07:59.260,0:08:00.932
Trying to understand if there were

0:08:00.932,0:08:03.681
patterns of parenting that I might observe.

0:08:03.681,0:08:05.783
Then I asked each one of them,

0:08:05.783,0:08:07.465
"Is there a teacher or a mentor

0:08:07.465,0:08:10.881
who's made a significant difference in your life?"

0:08:10.881,0:08:13.128
One third of them, one third, [br]

0:08:13.128,0:08:16.441
could not name a single teacher.

0:08:16.441,0:08:18.293
Of the two thirds who could, [br]

0:08:18.293,0:08:19.689
they could name at least one teacher.

0:08:19.689,0:08:21.086
The third that couldn't name a teacher

0:08:21.086,0:08:22.103
could always name a mentor by the way.

0:08:22.103,0:08:23.198
Very important.

0:08:23.198,0:08:25.994
We underestimate the importance of mentoring.

0:08:25.994,0:08:30.360
So I went and interviewed each one of those teachers and mentors.

0:08:30.360,0:08:33.806
And I made, what was for me, a shocking discovery.

0:08:33.806,0:08:36.421
In every single case, the teachers whom I interviewed --

0:08:36.421,0:08:39.353
and I interviewed teachers from elementary school [br]to graduate school.

0:08:39.353,0:08:41.071
The full spectrum.

0:08:41.071,0:08:43.924
In every case, every one of those teachers

0:08:43.924,0:08:48.013
was an outlier in his or her school setting.

0:08:48.013,0:08:51.101
In fact, I went to five colleges.

0:08:51.101,0:08:54.423
Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Tulane.

0:08:54.423,0:08:55.869
All five of those college teachers

0:08:55.869,0:08:58.392
having produced brilliant innovators and continued to do so,

0:08:58.392,0:08:59.820
none of them had tenure

0:08:59.820,0:09:02.714
nor were they ever going to get tenure.

0:09:02.714,0:09:04.393
What's the problem here?

0:09:04.393,0:09:06.274
Well, what I came to learn

0:09:06.274,0:09:09.328
is that the culture of schooling,

0:09:09.328,0:09:11.259
as we have grown up with it,

0:09:11.259,0:09:14.621
is radically at odds with the culture of learning

0:09:14.621,0:09:19.014
that produces innovators in five central respects.

0:09:19.014,0:09:21.920
No. 1, we celebrate and award individual achievement,

0:09:21.920,0:09:23.218
and sure there's an important place for that,

0:09:23.218,0:09:26.055
but, as you well know, innovation is a team sport.

0:09:26.055,0:09:29.703
And all of these teachers built real, accountable teamwork

0:09:29.703,0:09:33.291
and collaboration in all of their assignments.

0:09:33.291,0:09:36.349
No. 2, we are all about specialization in American education.

0:09:36.349,0:09:38.437
High school, universities are divided and conquered

0:09:38.437,0:09:40.475
by something we call Carnegie units,

0:09:40.475,0:09:43.406
which are 115 years old.

0:09:43.406,0:09:45.678
Chemistry this, biology that, and so on.

0:09:45.678,0:09:48.326
The world of innovation is interdisciplinary.

0:09:48.326,0:09:50.944
And problem-based learning.

0:09:50.944,0:09:52.643
Judy Gilbert at Google, she said to me,

0:09:52.643,0:09:55.893
if there's one thing educators must understand,

0:09:55.893,0:09:58.867
is that problems can no longer be solved

0:09:58.867,0:10:00.369
nor even understood

0:10:00.369,0:10:05.056
within the bright lines of academic disciplines.

0:10:05.056,0:10:08.740
No. 3, the culture of schooling is all about

0:10:08.740,0:10:13.407
risk aversion and penalizing failure.

0:10:13.407,0:10:15.506
Students' job is to figure out what the teacher needs.

0:10:15.506,0:10:17.457
Give the teacher whatever the teacher wants.

0:10:17.457,0:10:19.407
Teacher's job is to avoid trouble, you know.

0:10:19.407,0:10:24.403
We are not encouraged to take risks as educators, right?

0:10:24.403,0:10:26.565
The world of innovation, as you will know,

0:10:26.565,0:10:28.562
is all about taking risks,

0:10:28.562,0:10:31.404
making mistakes, and learning from them.

0:10:31.404,0:10:32.870
I went to IDEO, the most

0:10:32.870,0:10:35.442
innovative design company in the world, they said to me,

0:10:35.444,0:10:39.889
"Our motto is, 'Fail early and fail often.'"

0:10:39.889,0:10:44.472
That's because there is no innovation without trial and error.

0:10:44.472,0:10:47.175
I went to the D School started by David Kelley from IDEO,

0:10:47.175,0:10:50.477
an amazing interdisciplinary program at Stanford.

0:10:50.477,0:10:53.551
They were talking around a table together saying,

0:10:53.551,0:10:56.427
"You know we are actually thinking F is the new A."

0:10:56.427,0:11:00.553
Try selling that report card back at your schools.

0:11:00.553,0:11:02.458
I talked to a student at Owen College.

0:11:02.458,0:11:04.041
Owen is by the way, probably the best

0:11:04.041,0:11:05.731
college in the country right now today.

0:11:05.731,0:11:07.745
Every course, interdisciplinary,

0:11:07.745,0:11:11.295
team based, project based -- extraordinary place.

0:11:11.295,0:11:13.091
Talked to a student at Owen, he said,

0:11:13.091,0:11:15.811
"You know, we don't even talk about failure much here.

0:11:15.811,0:11:18.812
We talk about iteration."

0:11:18.812,0:11:22.029
Heck, I don't think I knew what the word meant five years ago.

0:11:22.029,0:11:24.861
But it's become something so important as a concept to me.

0:11:24.861,0:11:27.768
In learning, there are no mistakes, there are iterations.

0:11:27.768,0:11:29.320
Although I have to ask you, how many of you learn

0:11:29.320,0:11:31.294
more from your mistakes than your successes.

0:11:31.294,0:11:32.365
Raise your hands.

0:11:32.365,0:11:34.236
Yeah, me too. God, that hurt sometimes.

0:11:34.236,0:11:35.808
That's painful.

0:11:35.808,0:11:38.287
But the point is, we protect children

0:11:38.287,0:11:40.074
in school, we protect children at home,

0:11:40.074,0:11:41.445
the helicopter parents hover.

0:11:41.445,0:11:43.308
They don't want their children to make mistakes

0:11:43.308,0:11:46.775
lest their perfect record become blemished in some way.

0:11:46.775,0:11:50.273
But that's the only source of real self-confidence.

0:11:50.273,0:11:52.219
That you can learn that you can recover from a mistake.

0:11:52.219,0:11:54.027
And you don't wanna learn that when you're 35, [br]

0:11:54.027,0:11:57.372
because it hurts a lot more then.

0:11:57.372,0:12:00.193
The fourth one. You know, the culture of learning

0:12:00.193,0:12:02.892
is so much about passive consumption.

0:12:02.892,0:12:05.238
In fact I think that's where we all learn

0:12:05.238,0:12:07.004
to be good little consumers, in school.

0:12:07.004,0:12:09.894
Because we sit and get all day long.

0:12:09.894,0:12:13.072
The classrooms of innovators are all about creating.

0:12:13.072,0:12:16.352
Creating real products for real audiences.

0:12:16.352,0:12:19.095
Lastly and most important,

0:12:19.095,0:12:22.897
we rely on extrinsic incentives for learning.

0:12:22.897,0:12:27.114
Carrots and sticks. Money for good grades.

0:12:27.114,0:12:29.986
The world of innovation, these young innovators,

0:12:29.986,0:12:32.160
every one of them whom I've interviewed,

0:12:32.160,0:12:36.687
was far more intrinsically motivated.

0:12:36.687,0:12:39.039
They want to make a difference in the world.

0:12:39.039,0:12:41.268
And so then when I look back at what these parents had done

0:12:41.268,0:12:43.420
and what these teachers had done to encourage

0:12:43.420,0:12:47.515
this intrinsic motivation, I found another pattern.

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Play to passion to purpose.

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Parents and teachers alike encouraging more exploratory play,

0:12:54.784,0:12:58.762
fewer toys, toys without batteries, less screen time,

0:12:58.762,0:13:03.717
more time that was unstructured. Get out, and play.

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Parents who encouraged students to find and pursue a passion,

0:13:06.569,0:13:09.984
who knew that was more important than mere academic achievement.

0:13:09.984,0:13:13.521
Teachers who encourage students, made time in every class

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for students to do projects, to do research, to do experimentation,

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to find and pursue an intellectual or artistic passion.

0:13:22.130,0:13:25.323
And every case as these kids have developed passions,

0:13:25.323,0:13:27.266
they morphed, they changed, they evolved

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into a deeper sense of purpose.

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Because parents and teachers alike said one thing:

0:13:35.903,0:13:38.671
"Give back. Make a difference."

0:13:38.671,0:13:41.412
And all of them have that value,

0:13:41.412,0:13:45.402
want, in some way, to make a difference.

0:13:45.402,0:13:47.235
So what does this mean for our work?

0:13:47.235,0:13:49.156
Well, we can have a lot of long conversations

0:13:49.156,0:13:51.189
about how the system needs reinventing.[br]

0:13:51.189,0:13:52.791
I've written some things about that.

0:13:52.791,0:13:55.900
But, you know, I come back to what each one of us can do.

0:13:55.900,0:13:59.129
And I come back to the idea that, first of all,

0:13:59.129,0:14:02.266
we have to be innovators in our teaching,

0:14:02.266,0:14:05.202
and in our mentoring. We have to model

0:14:05.202,0:14:08.223
the values, the behaviors of innovation.

0:14:08.223,0:14:12.198
We have to, in our teaching, be willing to take risks.

0:14:12.198,0:14:15.129
Be willing to learn from mistakes.

0:14:15.129,0:14:19.320
Work more collaboratively with our colleagues.

0:14:19.320,0:14:21.025
But I think above all,

0:14:21.025,0:14:23.796
maybe what's most important for me is that I,

0:14:23.796,0:14:27.520
as a teacher and a mentor, now think much more about

0:14:27.520,0:14:30.137
where and how am I encouraging

0:14:30.137,0:14:34.008
the play, the passion, and the purpose

0:14:34.008,0:14:36.693
in everything that I do with the young people.

0:14:36.693,0:14:37.739
Thank you very much.

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(Applause)