WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000 Good morning. How are you? It's been great, hasn't it? 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:11.000 I've been blown away by the whole thing. 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:15.000 In fact, I'm leaving. (Laughter) 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:19.000 There have been three themes, haven't there, 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:23.000 running through the conference, which are relevant 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:25.000 to what I want to talk about. 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:29.000 One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:32.000 in all of the presentations that we've had 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:35.000 and in all of the people here. Just the variety of it 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:38.000 and the range of it. The second is that 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:41.000 it's put us in a place where we have no idea what's going to happen, 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:43.000 in terms of the future. No idea 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:45.000 how this may play out. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:48.000 I have an interest in education -- 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:51.000 actually, what I find is everybody has an interest in education. 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:53.000 Don't you? I find this very interesting. 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:56.000 If you're at a dinner party, and you say 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:59.000 you work in education -- 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:06.000 actually, you're not often at dinner parties, frankly, if you work in education. 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:09.000 (Laughter) You're not asked. 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:14.000 And you're never asked back, curiously. That's strange to me. 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:16.000 But if you are, and you say to somebody, 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:18.000 you know, they say, "What do you do?" 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:20.000 and you say you work in education, 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:24.000 you can see the blood run from their face. They're like, 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:30.000 "Oh my God," you know, "Why me? My one night out all week." (Laughter) 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:32.000 But if you ask about their education, 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.000 they pin you to the wall. Because it's one of those things 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:37.000 that goes deep with people, am I right? 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:40.000 Like religion, and money and other things. 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:44.000 I have a big interest in education, and I think we all do. 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:46.000 We have a huge vested interest in it, 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:49.000 partly because it's education that's meant to 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:52.000 take us into this future that we can't grasp. 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:55.000 If you think of it, children starting school this year 00:01:55.000 --> 00:02:01.000 will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue -- 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:04.000 despite all the expertise that's been on parade for the past four days -- 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:06.000 what the world will look like 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:08.000 in five years' time. And yet we're meant 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:11.000 to be educating them for it. So the unpredictability, I think, 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:13.000 is extraordinary. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:15.000 And the third part of this is that 00:02:15.000 --> 00:02:20.000 we've all agreed, nonetheless, on the 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:23.000 really extraordinary capacities that children have -- 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:25.000 their capacities for innovation. I mean, Sirena last night was a marvel, 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:28.000 wasn't she? Just seeing what she could do. 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:33.000 And she's exceptional, but I think she's not, so to speak, 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:36.000 exceptional in the whole of childhood. 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:39.000 What you have there is a person of extraordinary dedication 00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:41.000 who found a talent. And my contention is, 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:43.000 all kids have tremendous talents. 00:02:43.000 --> 00:02:45.000 And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly. 00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:48.000 So I want to talk about education and 00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:51.000 I want to talk about creativity. My contention is that 00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:54.000 creativity now is as important in education as literacy, 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:58.000 and we should treat it with the same status. 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:06.000 (Applause) Thank you. That was it, by the way. 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:10.000 Thank you very much. (Laughter) So, 15 minutes left. 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:17.000 Well, I was born ... no. (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:21.000 I heard a great story recently -- I love telling it -- 00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:25.000 of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson. She was six 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:27.000 and she was at the back, drawing, 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:29.000 and the teacher said this little girl hardly ever 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:33.000 paid attention, and in this drawing lesson she did. 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:35.000 The teacher was fascinated and she went over to her 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:38.000 and she said, "What are you drawing?" 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:41.000 And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:44.000 And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:51.000 And the girl said, "They will in a minute." 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:52.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:57.000 When my son was four in England -- 00:03:57.000 --> 00:04:00.000 actually he was four everywhere, to be honest. (Laughter) 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:06.000 If we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was four that year. 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:08.000 He was in the Nativity play. 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:11.000 Do you remember the story? No, it was big. 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:14.000 It was a big story. Mel Gibson did the sequel. 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:19.000 You may have seen it: "Nativity II." But James got the part of Joseph, 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:22.000 which we were thrilled about. 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:24.000 We considered this to be one of the lead parts. 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:26.000 We had the place crammed full of agents in T-shirts: 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:29.000 "James Robinson IS Joseph!" (Laughter) 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:31.000 He didn't have to speak, but you know the bit 00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:34.000 where the three kings come in. They come in bearing gifts, 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:36.000 and they bring gold, frankincense and myrhh. 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:38.000 This really happened. We were sitting there 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:40.000 and I think they just went out of sequence, 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:42.000 because we talked to the little boy afterward and we said, 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:44.000 "You OK with that?" And he said, "Yeah, why? Was that wrong?" 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:46.000 They just switched, that was it. 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:47.000 Anyway, the three boys came in -- 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:49.000 four-year-olds with tea towels on their heads -- 00:04:49.000 --> 00:04:52.000 and they put these boxes down, 00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:54.000 and the first boy said, "I bring you gold." 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:57.000 And the second boy said, "I bring you myrhh." 00:04:57.000 --> 00:05:11.000 And the third boy said, "Frank sent this." (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:13.000 What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance. 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:16.000 If they don't know, they'll have a go. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:19.000 Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong. 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:24.000 Now, I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:25.000 What we do know is, 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:28.000 if you're not prepared to be wrong, 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:31.000 you'll never come up with anything original -- 00:05:31.000 --> 00:05:34.000 if you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:36.000 most kids have lost that capacity. 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:39.000 They have become frightened of being wrong. 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:41.000 And we run our companies like this, by the way. 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:44.000 We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:47.000 national education systems where 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:50.000 mistakes are the worst thing you can make. 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:53.000 And the result is that we are educating people out of 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:56.000 their creative capacities. Picasso once said this -- 00:05:56.000 --> 00:05:59.000 he said that all children are born artists. 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:03.000 The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:05.000 that we don't grow into creativity, 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:08.000 we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it. 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:10.000 So why is this? NOTE Paragraph 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:14.000 I lived in Stratford-on-Avon until about five years ago. 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:16.000 In fact, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles. 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:20.000 So you can imagine what a seamless transition that was. 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:22.000 (Laughter) Actually, 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:24.000 we lived in a place called Snitterfield, 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:26.000 just outside Stratford, which is where 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:31.000 Shakespeare's father was born. Are you struck by a new thought? I was. 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:33.000 You don't think of Shakespeare having a father, do you? 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:35.000 Do you? Because you don't think of 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:37.000 Shakespeare being a child, do you? 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:40.000 Shakespeare being seven? I never thought of it. I mean, he was 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:42.000 seven at some point. He was in 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:51.000 somebody's English class, wasn't he? How annoying would that be? 00:06:51.000 --> 00:07:05.000 (Laughter) "Must try harder." Being sent to bed by his dad, you know, 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:08.000 to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now," 00:07:08.000 --> 00:07:10.000 to William Shakespeare, "and put the pencil down. 00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:18.000 And stop speaking like that. It's confusing everybody." 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:23.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:26.000 Anyway, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles, 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:30.000 and I just want to say a word about the transition, actually. 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:33.000 My son didn't want to come. 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:36.000 I've got two kids. He's 21 now; my daughter's 16. 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:38.000 He didn't want to come to Los Angeles. He loved it, 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:43.000 but he had a girlfriend in England. This was the love of his life, Sarah. 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:45.000 He'd known her for a month. 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:48.000 Mind you, they'd had their fourth anniversary, 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:52.000 because it's a long time when you're 16. 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:54.000 Anyway, he was really upset on the plane, 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:56.000 and he said, "I'll never find another girl like Sarah." 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:58.000 And we were rather pleased about that, frankly, 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:10.000 because she was the main reason we were leaving the country. 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:13.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:16.000 But something strikes you when you move to America 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:18.000 and when you travel around the world: 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:22.000 Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:24.000 Every one. Doesn't matter where you go. 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:26.000 You'd think it would be otherwise, but it isn't. 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:29.000 At the top are mathematics and languages, 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:31.000 then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts. 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:33.000 Everywhere on Earth. 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:36.000 And in pretty much every system too, 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:38.000 there's a hierarchy within the arts. 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:40.000 Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:43.000 than drama and dance. There isn't an education system on the planet 00:08:43.000 --> 00:08:45.000 that teaches dance everyday to children 00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:48.000 the way we teach them mathematics. Why? 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:50.000 Why not? I think this is rather important. 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:53.000 I think math is very important, but so is dance. 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:56.000 Children dance all the time if they're allowed to, we all do. 00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:59.000 We all have bodies, don't we? Did I miss a meeting? 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:03.000 (Laughter) Truthfully, what happens is, 00:09:03.000 --> 00:09:05.000 as children grow up, we start to educate them 00:09:05.000 --> 00:09:08.000 progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads. 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:10.000 And slightly to one side. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:14.000 If you were to visit education, as an alien, 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:17.000 and say "What's it for, public education?" 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:19.000 I think you'd have to conclude -- if you look at the output, 00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:21.000 who really succeeds by this, 00:09:21.000 --> 00:09:23.000 who does everything that they should, 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:26.000 who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners -- 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:29.000 I think you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:30.000 throughout the world 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:34.000 is to produce university professors. Isn't it? 00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:36.000 They're the people who come out the top. 00:09:37.000 --> 00:09:40.000 And I used to be one, so there. (Laughter) 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:44.000 And I like university professors, but you know, 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:48.000 we shouldn't hold them up as the high-water mark of all human achievement. 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:50.000 They're just a form of life, 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:52.000 another form of life. But they're rather curious, 00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:54.000 and I say this out of affection for them. 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:57.000 There's something curious about professors in my experience -- 00:09:57.000 --> 00:10:00.000 not all of them, but typically -- they live in their heads. 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:02.000 They live up there, and slightly to one side. 00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:06.000 They're disembodied, you know, in a kind of literal way. 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:08.000 They look upon their body 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:17.000 as a form of transport for their heads, don't they? 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:24.000 (Laughter) It's a way of getting their head to meetings. 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:27.000 If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, 00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:30.000 by the way, get yourself along to a residential conference 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:32.000 of senior academics, 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:35.000 and pop into the discotheque on the final night. 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:39.000 (Laughter) And there you will see it -- grown men and women 00:10:39.000 --> 00:10:43.000 writhing uncontrollably, off the beat, 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:47.000 waiting until it ends so they can go home and write a paper about it. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:53.000 Now our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:56.000 And there's a reason. 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:58.000 The whole system was invented -- around the world, there were 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:00.000 no public systems of education, really, before the 19th century. 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:03.000 They all came into being 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:04.000 to meet the needs of industrialism. 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:07.000 So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:11.000 Number one, that the most useful subjects for work 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:13.000 are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:15.000 from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, 00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:17.000 on the grounds that you would 00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:20.000 never get a job doing that. Is that right? 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:22.000 Don't do music, you're not going to be a musician; 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:24.000 don't do art, you won't be an artist. 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:29.000 Benign advice -- now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:30.000 is engulfed in a revolution. 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:33.000 And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate 00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:34.000 our view of intelligence, 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:37.000 because the universities designed the system in their image. 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:39.000 If you think of it, the whole system 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:41.000 of public education around the world is a protracted process 00:11:41.000 --> 00:11:43.000 of university entrance. 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:46.000 And the consequence is that many highly talented, 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:48.000 brilliant, creative people think they're not, 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:50.000 because the thing they were good at at school 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:54.000 wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized. 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:56.000 And I think we can't afford to go on that way. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:58.000 In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, 00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:01.000 more people worldwide will be graduating 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:03.000 through education than since the beginning of history. 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:05.000 More people, and it's the combination 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:07.000 of all the things we've talked about -- 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:10.000 technology and its transformation effect on work, and demography 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:12.000 and the huge explosion in population. 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:15.000 Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:19.000 When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:22.000 If you didn't have a job it's because you didn't want one. 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:25.000 And I didn't want one, frankly. (Laughter) 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:30.000 But now kids with degrees are often 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:31.000 heading home to carry on playing video games, 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:34.000 because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:37.000 and now you need a PhD for the other. 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:39.000 It's a process of academic inflation. 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:41.000 And it indicates the whole structure of education 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:43.000 is shifting beneath our feet. We need to radically rethink 00:12:43.000 --> 00:12:44.000 our view of intelligence. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:46.000 We know three things about intelligence. 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:49.000 One, it's diverse. We think about the world in all the ways 00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:51.000 that we experience it. We think visually, 00:12:51.000 --> 00:12:54.000 we think in sound, we think kinesthetically. 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:57.000 We think in abstract terms, we think in movement. 00:12:57.000 --> 00:12:59.000 Secondly, intelligence is dynamic. 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:02.000 If you look at the interactions of a human brain, as we heard 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:05.000 yesterday from a number of presentations, 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:07.000 intelligence is wonderfully interactive. 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:10.000 The brain isn't divided into compartments. 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:13.000 In fact, creativity -- which I define as the process 00:13:13.000 --> 00:13:15.000 of having original ideas that have value -- 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:18.000 more often than not comes about through the interaction 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:21.000 of different disciplinary ways of seeing things. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:23.000 The brain is intentionally -- by the way, 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:26.000 there's a shaft of nerves that joins the two halves of the brain 00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:28.000 called the corpus callosum. It's thicker in women. 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:30.000 Following off from Helen yesterday, I think 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:34.000 this is probably why women are better at multi-tasking. 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:36.000 Because you are, aren't you? 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:39.000 There's a raft of research, but I know it from my personal life. 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:41.000 If my wife is cooking a meal at home -- 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:45.000 which is not often, thankfully. (Laughter) 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:48.000 But you know, she's doing -- no, she's good at some things -- 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:50.000 but if she's cooking, you know, 00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:52.000 she's dealing with people on the phone, 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:55.000 she's talking to the kids, she's painting the ceiling, 00:13:55.000 --> 00:13:58.000 she's doing open-heart surgery over here. 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:01.000 If I'm cooking, the door is shut, the kids are out, 00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:04.000 the phone's on the hook, if she comes in I get annoyed. 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:17.000 I say, "Terry, please, I'm trying to fry an egg in here. Give me a break." (Laughter) 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:19.000 Actually, you know that old philosophical thing, 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:22.000 if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:25.000 did it happen? Remember that old chestnut? 00:14:25.000 --> 00:14:28.000 I saw a great t-shirt really recently which said, "If a man speaks his mind 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:31.000 in a forest, and no woman hears him, 00:14:31.000 --> 00:14:40.000 is he still wrong?" (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:42.000 And the third thing about intelligence is, 00:14:43.000 --> 00:14:45.000 it's distinct. I'm doing a new book at the moment 00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:47.000 called "Epiphany," which is based on a series of 00:14:47.000 --> 00:14:49.000 interviews with people about how they discovered 00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:51.000 their talent. I'm fascinated by how people got to be there. 00:14:51.000 --> 00:14:54.000 It's really prompted by a conversation I had 00:14:54.000 --> 00:14:56.000 with a wonderful woman who maybe most people 00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:58.000 have never heard of; she's called Gillian Lynne -- 00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:00.000 have you heard of her? Some have. She's a choreographer 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:02.000 and everybody knows her work. 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:04.000 She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera." 00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:08.000 She's wonderful. I used to be on the board of the Royal Ballet in England, 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:10.000 as you can see. 00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:12.000 Anyway, Gillian and I had lunch one day and I said, 00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:14.000 "Gillian, how'd you get to be a dancer?" And she said 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:16.000 it was interesting; when she was at school, 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:19.000 she was really hopeless. And the school, in the '30s, 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:21.000 wrote to her parents and said, "We think 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:23.000 Gillian has a learning disorder." She couldn't concentrate; 00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:25.000 she was fidgeting. I think now they'd say 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:29.000 she had ADHD. Wouldn't you? But this was the 1930s, 00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:32.000 and ADHD hadn't been invented at this point. 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:35.000 It wasn't an available condition. (Laughter) 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:39.000 People weren't aware they could have that. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:39.000 --> 00:15:43.000 Anyway, she went to see this specialist. So, this oak-paneled room, 00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:46.000 and she was there with her mother, 00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:49.000 and she was led and sat on this chair at the end, 00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:51.000 and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while 00:15:51.000 --> 00:15:53.000 this man talked to her mother about all 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:57.000 the problems Gillian was having at school. And at the end of it -- 00:15:57.000 --> 00:15:59.000 because she was disturbing people; 00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:01.000 her homework was always late; and so on, 00:16:01.000 --> 00:16:04.000 little kid of eight -- in the end, the doctor went and sat 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:06.000 next to Gillian and said, "Gillian, 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:08.000 I've listened to all these things that your mother's 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:10.000 told me, and I need to speak to her privately." 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:13.000 He said, "Wait here. We'll be back; we won't be very long," 00:16:13.000 --> 00:16:15.000 and they went and left her. 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:17.000 But as they went out the room, he turned on the radio 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:19.000 that was sitting on his desk. And when they 00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:21.000 got out the room, he said to her mother, 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:24.000 "Just stand and watch her." And the minute they left the room, 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:28.000 she said, she was on her feet, moving to the music. 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:30.000 And they watched for a few minutes 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:33.000 and he turned to her mother and said, 00:16:33.000 --> 00:16:37.000 "Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick; she's a dancer. 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:39.000 Take her to a dance school." NOTE Paragraph 00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:41.000 I said, "What happened?" 00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:44.000 She said, "She did. I can't tell you how wonderful it was. 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:46.000 We walked in this room and it was full of 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:49.000 people like me. People who couldn't sit still. 00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:52.000 People who had to move to think." Who had to move to think. 00:16:52.000 --> 00:16:54.000 They did ballet; they did tap; they did jazz; 00:16:54.000 --> 00:16:56.000 they did modern; they did contemporary. 00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:59.000 She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School; 00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:01.000 she became a soloist; she had a wonderful career 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:03.000 at the Royal Ballet. She eventually graduated 00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:05.000 from the Royal Ballet School and 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:08.000 founded her own company -- the Gillian Lynne Dance Company -- 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:11.000 met Andrew Lloyd Weber. She's been responsible for 00:17:11.000 --> 00:17:13.000 some of the most successful musical theater 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:18.000 productions in history; she's given pleasure to millions; 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:21.000 and she's a multi-millionaire. Somebody else 00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:25.000 might have put her on medication and told her 00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:27.000 to calm down. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:30.000 Now, I think ... (Applause) What I think it comes to is this: 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:32.000 Al Gore spoke the other night 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:35.000 about ecology and the revolution that was triggered by Rachel Carson. 00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:39.000 I believe our only hope for the future 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:42.000 is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:46.000 one in which we start to reconstitute our conception 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:48.000 of the richness of human capacity. 00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:52.000 Our education system has mined our minds in the way 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:54.000 that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:57.000 And for the future, it won't serve us. 00:17:57.000 --> 00:18:00.000 We have to rethink the fundamental principles 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:02.000 on which we're educating our children. There was 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:06.000 a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said, "If all the insects 00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:09.000 were to disappear from the earth, 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:12.000 within 50 years all life on Earth would end. 00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:15.000 If all human beings disappeared from the earth, 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:19.000 within 50 years all forms of life would flourish." 00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:21.000 And he's right. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:21.000 --> 00:18:24.000 What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination. 00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:28.000 We have to be careful now that we use this gift 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:31.000 wisely and that we avert some of the scenarios 00:18:31.000 --> 00:18:34.000 that we've talked about. And the only way 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:38.000 we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:40.000 for the richness they are and seeing 00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:43.000 our children for the hope that they are. And our task 00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:46.000 is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future. 00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:49.000 By the way -- we may not see this future, 00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:52.000 but they will. And our job is to help 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:54.000 them make something of it. Thank you very much.