WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.678 Good morning. How are you? 00:00:04.702 --> 00:00:05.912 (Laughter) 00:00:05.936 --> 00:00:08.249 It's been great, hasn't it? 00:00:08.273 --> 00:00:10.729 I've been blown away by the whole thing. 00:00:10.753 --> 00:00:12.245 In fact, I'm leaving. 00:00:12.269 --> 00:00:17.836 (Laughter) 00:00:18.015 --> 00:00:21.222 There have been three themes running through the conference 00:00:21.246 --> 00:00:23.753 which are relevant to what I want to talk about. 00:00:23.777 --> 00:00:28.467 One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity 00:00:28.491 --> 00:00:30.904 in all of the presentations that we've had 00:00:30.928 --> 00:00:32.729 and in all of the people here. 00:00:32.753 --> 00:00:35.404 Just the variety of it and the range of it. 00:00:36.158 --> 00:00:38.301 The second is that it's put us in a place 00:00:38.325 --> 00:00:40.822 where we have no idea what's going to happen, 00:00:40.846 --> 00:00:42.237 in terms of the future. 00:00:42.261 --> 00:00:44.976 No idea how this may play out. 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:46.892 I have an interest in education. 00:00:46.916 --> 00:00:51.048 Actually, what I find is everybody has an interest in education. 00:00:51.072 --> 00:00:52.210 Don't you? 00:00:52.234 --> 00:00:53.715 I find this very interesting. 00:00:53.739 --> 00:00:55.496 If you're at a dinner party, 00:00:55.596 --> 00:00:57.858 and you say you work in education -- 00:00:57.882 --> 00:01:00.846 Actually, you're not often at dinner parties, frankly. 00:01:00.870 --> 00:01:04.666 (Laughter) 00:01:04.690 --> 00:01:07.118 If you work in education, you're not asked. 00:01:07.142 --> 00:01:10.233 (Laughter) 00:01:10.257 --> 00:01:13.976 And you're never asked back, curiously. That's strange to me. 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:16.475 But if you are, and you say to somebody, 00:01:16.499 --> 00:01:18.276 you know, they say, "What do you do?" 00:01:18.300 --> 00:01:19.976 and you say you work in education, 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:22.076 you can see the blood run from their face. 00:01:22.100 --> 00:01:24.380 They're like, "Oh my God," you know, "Why me?" 00:01:24.404 --> 00:01:26.041 (Laughter) 00:01:26.065 --> 00:01:27.688 "My one night out all week." 00:01:27.712 --> 00:01:30.322 (Laughter) 00:01:30.346 --> 00:01:33.587 But if you ask about their education, they pin you to the wall. 00:01:33.611 --> 00:01:37.078 Because it's one of those things that goes deep with people, am I right? 00:01:37.194 --> 00:01:40.535 Like religion, and money and other things. 00:01:40.559 --> 00:01:44.911 So I have a big interest in education, and I think we all do. 00:01:44.935 --> 00:01:46.827 We have a huge vested interest in it, 00:01:46.851 --> 00:01:50.171 partly because it's education that's meant to take us into this future 00:01:50.195 --> 00:01:51.714 that we can't grasp. 00:01:51.873 --> 00:01:55.372 If you think of it, children starting school this year 00:01:55.396 --> 00:01:58.920 will be retiring in 2065. 00:02:00.209 --> 00:02:01.843 Nobody has a clue, 00:02:01.867 --> 00:02:05.311 despite all the expertise that's been on parade for the past four days, 00:02:05.450 --> 00:02:07.976 what the world will look like in five years' time. 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:10.294 And yet we're meant to be educating them for it. 00:02:10.318 --> 00:02:12.868 So the unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary. 00:02:12.892 --> 00:02:14.259 And the third part of this 00:02:14.283 --> 00:02:16.320 is that we've all agreed, nonetheless, 00:02:16.344 --> 00:02:21.649 on the really extraordinary capacities that children have -- 00:02:21.673 --> 00:02:24.007 their capacities for innovation. 00:02:24.031 --> 00:02:26.542 I mean, Sirena last night was a marvel, wasn't she? 00:02:26.566 --> 00:02:28.176 Just seeing what she could do. 00:02:28.200 --> 00:02:32.976 And she's exceptional, but I think she's not, so to speak, 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:36.956 exceptional in the whole of childhood. 00:02:36.980 --> 00:02:39.776 What you have there is a person of extraordinary dedication 00:02:39.800 --> 00:02:41.067 who found a talent. 00:02:41.091 --> 00:02:43.700 And my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents. 00:02:43.800 --> 00:02:45.776 And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly. 00:02:45.800 --> 00:02:47.976 So I want to talk about education 00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:49.872 and I want to talk about creativity. 00:02:49.896 --> 00:02:55.915 My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, 00:02:55.939 --> 00:02:58.803 and we should treat it with the same status. 00:02:58.827 --> 00:03:00.798 (Applause) Thank you. 00:03:00.822 --> 00:03:05.167 (Applause) 00:03:05.485 --> 00:03:06.744 That was it, by the way. 00:03:06.768 --> 00:03:07.771 Thank you very much. 00:03:07.795 --> 00:03:09.910 (Laughter) 00:03:09.934 --> 00:03:11.611 So, 15 minutes left. 00:03:11.635 --> 00:03:14.571 (Laughter) 00:03:14.595 --> 00:03:16.487 Well, I was born... no. 00:03:16.511 --> 00:03:19.543 (Laughter) 00:03:19.567 --> 00:03:22.312 I heard a great story recently -- I love telling it -- 00:03:22.336 --> 00:03:25.051 of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson. 00:03:25.075 --> 00:03:27.210 She was six, and she was at the back, drawing, 00:03:27.234 --> 00:03:30.034 and the teacher said this girl hardly ever paid attention, 00:03:30.058 --> 00:03:31.844 and in this drawing lesson, she did. 00:03:31.868 --> 00:03:33.208 The teacher was fascinated. 00:03:33.232 --> 00:03:35.994 She went over to her, and she said, "What are you drawing?" 00:03:36.018 --> 00:03:38.509 And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." 00:03:39.642 --> 00:03:42.960 And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." 00:03:42.984 --> 00:03:45.072 And the girl said, "They will, in a minute." 00:03:45.096 --> 00:03:51.878 (Laughter) 00:03:56.662 --> 00:03:58.929 When my son was four in England -- 00:03:59.413 --> 00:04:01.604 Actually, he was four everywhere, to be honest. 00:04:01.628 --> 00:04:03.295 (Laughter) 00:04:03.404 --> 00:04:06.791 If we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was four that year. 00:04:06.815 --> 00:04:09.453 He was in the Nativity play. Do you remember the story? 00:04:09.477 --> 00:04:10.696 (Laughter) 00:04:10.720 --> 00:04:12.547 No, it was big, it was a big story. 00:04:12.571 --> 00:04:14.876 Mel Gibson did the sequel, you may have seen it. 00:04:14.900 --> 00:04:16.161 (Laughter) 00:04:16.185 --> 00:04:17.495 "Nativity II." 00:04:17.519 --> 00:04:21.654 But James got the part of Joseph, which we were thrilled about. 00:04:21.678 --> 00:04:24.215 We considered this to be one of the lead parts. 00:04:24.239 --> 00:04:26.716 We had the place crammed full of agents in T-shirts: 00:04:26.740 --> 00:04:28.976 "James Robinson IS Joseph!" (Laughter) 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:30.607 He didn't have to speak, 00:04:30.631 --> 00:04:33.069 but you know the bit where the three kings come in? 00:04:33.093 --> 00:04:35.824 They come in bearing gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. 00:04:35.848 --> 00:04:36.962 This really happened. 00:04:36.986 --> 00:04:40.076 We were sitting there and I think they just went out of sequence, 00:04:40.100 --> 00:04:42.876 because we talked to the little boy afterward and we said, 00:04:42.900 --> 00:04:45.776 "You OK with that?" And he said, "Yeah, why? Was that wrong?" 00:04:45.800 --> 00:04:46.876 They just switched. 00:04:46.900 --> 00:04:48.076 The three boys came in, 00:04:48.100 --> 00:04:50.287 four-year-olds with tea towels on their heads, 00:04:50.311 --> 00:04:51.802 and they put these boxes down, 00:04:51.826 --> 00:04:53.875 and the first boy said, "I bring you gold." 00:04:53.899 --> 00:04:56.037 And the second boy said, "I bring you myrrh." 00:04:56.061 --> 00:04:58.065 And the third boy said, "Frank sent this." 00:04:58.089 --> 00:05:00.989 (Laughter) 00:05:10.711 --> 00:05:13.801 What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance. 00:05:13.825 --> 00:05:16.433 If they don't know, they'll have a go. 00:05:16.457 --> 00:05:19.994 Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong. 00:05:20.893 --> 00:05:24.400 I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. 00:05:24.886 --> 00:05:27.976 What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:30.367 you'll never come up with anything original -- 00:05:30.391 --> 00:05:32.476 if you're not prepared to be wrong. 00:05:32.877 --> 00:05:37.010 And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. 00:05:37.406 --> 00:05:39.926 They have become frightened of being wrong. 00:05:39.950 --> 00:05:41.640 And we run our companies like this. 00:05:41.664 --> 00:05:43.316 We stigmatize mistakes. 00:05:43.340 --> 00:05:45.642 And we're now running national education systems 00:05:45.666 --> 00:05:48.012 where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. 00:05:48.700 --> 00:05:51.908 And the result is that we are educating people 00:05:51.932 --> 00:05:54.223 out of their creative capacities. 00:05:54.247 --> 00:05:58.725 Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born artists. 00:05:58.749 --> 00:06:01.971 The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. 00:06:01.995 --> 00:06:05.076 I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, 00:06:05.100 --> 00:06:06.956 we grow out of it. 00:06:06.980 --> 00:06:08.863 Or rather, we get educated out if it. 00:06:09.247 --> 00:06:10.720 So why is this? 00:06:10.826 --> 00:06:14.907 I lived in Stratford-on-Avon until about five years ago. 00:06:14.931 --> 00:06:17.184 In fact, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles. 00:06:17.872 --> 00:06:20.536 So you can imagine what a seamless transition that was. 00:06:20.560 --> 00:06:21.976 (Laughter) 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:24.376 Actually, we lived in a place called Snitterfield, 00:06:24.400 --> 00:06:25.651 just outside Stratford, 00:06:25.675 --> 00:06:27.836 which is where Shakespeare's father was born. 00:06:28.082 --> 00:06:30.457 Are you struck by a new thought? I was. 00:06:30.481 --> 00:06:33.076 You don't think of Shakespeare having a father, do you? 00:06:33.100 --> 00:06:36.976 Do you? Because you don't think of Shakespeare being a child, do you? 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:38.567 Shakespeare being seven? 00:06:38.591 --> 00:06:39.840 I never thought of it. 00:06:39.864 --> 00:06:41.548 I mean, he was seven at some point. 00:06:41.572 --> 00:06:43.882 He was in somebody's English class, wasn't he? 00:06:43.906 --> 00:06:50.693 (Laughter) 00:06:50.717 --> 00:06:52.046 How annoying would that be? 00:06:52.070 --> 00:06:55.070 (Laughter) 00:06:59.729 --> 00:07:00.764 "Must try harder." 00:07:00.788 --> 00:07:04.688 (Laughter) 00:07:04.712 --> 00:07:08.176 Being sent to bed by his dad, you know, to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now! 00:07:08.200 --> 00:07:10.628 And put the pencil down." 00:07:10.652 --> 00:07:11.726 (Laughter) 00:07:11.750 --> 00:07:13.305 "And stop speaking like that." 00:07:13.329 --> 00:07:17.220 (Laughter) 00:07:17.244 --> 00:07:18.568 "It's confusing everybody." 00:07:18.592 --> 00:07:23.715 (Laughter) 00:07:23.739 --> 00:07:29.077 Anyway, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles, 00:07:29.101 --> 00:07:31.542 and I just want to say a word about the transition. 00:07:31.566 --> 00:07:32.976 My son didn't want to come. 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:35.976 I've got two kids; he's 21 now, my daughter's 16. 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:38.044 He didn't want to come to Los Angeles. 00:07:38.068 --> 00:07:41.024 He loved it, but he had a girlfriend in England. 00:07:41.048 --> 00:07:44.651 This was the love of his life, Sarah. 00:07:44.761 --> 00:07:46.136 He'd known her for a month. 00:07:46.160 --> 00:07:47.510 (Laughter) 00:07:47.534 --> 00:07:49.790 Mind you, they'd had their fourth anniversary, 00:07:49.814 --> 00:07:52.753 because it's a long time when you're 16. 00:07:52.777 --> 00:07:54.438 He was really upset on the plane, 00:07:54.462 --> 00:07:56.923 he said, "I'll never find another girl like Sarah." 00:07:56.947 --> 00:07:59.325 And we were rather pleased about that, frankly -- 00:07:59.349 --> 00:08:02.249 (Laughter) 00:08:07.395 --> 00:08:10.276 Because she was the main reason we were leaving the country. 00:08:10.300 --> 00:08:13.300 (Laughter) 00:08:16.059 --> 00:08:18.401 But something strikes you when you move to America 00:08:18.425 --> 00:08:19.791 and travel around the world: 00:08:19.815 --> 00:08:23.193 Every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. 00:08:23.537 --> 00:08:25.492 Every one. Doesn't matter where you go. 00:08:25.516 --> 00:08:27.786 You'd think it would be otherwise, but it isn't. 00:08:27.810 --> 00:08:29.776 At the top are mathematics and languages, 00:08:29.800 --> 00:08:32.234 then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts. 00:08:32.258 --> 00:08:33.376 Everywhere on Earth. 00:08:33.400 --> 00:08:37.495 And in pretty much every system too, there's a hierarchy within the arts. 00:08:37.519 --> 00:08:40.376 Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools 00:08:40.400 --> 00:08:41.567 than drama and dance. 00:08:41.591 --> 00:08:43.847 There isn't an education system on the planet 00:08:43.871 --> 00:08:45.929 that teaches dance everyday to children 00:08:45.953 --> 00:08:48.000 the way we teach them mathematics. Why? 00:08:48.524 --> 00:08:51.225 Why not? I think this is rather important. 00:08:51.249 --> 00:08:53.552 I think math is very important, but so is dance. 00:08:53.576 --> 00:08:56.476 Children dance all the time if they're allowed to, we all do. 00:08:56.500 --> 00:08:58.976 We all have bodies, don't we? Did I miss a meeting? 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:02.338 (Laughter) 00:09:02.510 --> 00:09:04.845 Truthfully, what happens is, as children grow up, 00:09:04.869 --> 00:09:07.637 we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. 00:09:07.661 --> 00:09:09.286 And then we focus on their heads. 00:09:09.310 --> 00:09:10.800 And slightly to one side. 00:09:11.319 --> 00:09:13.976 If you were to visit education, as an alien, 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:16.976 and say "What's it for, public education?" 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:19.776 I think you'd have to conclude, if you look at the output, 00:09:19.800 --> 00:09:21.176 who really succeeds by this, 00:09:21.200 --> 00:09:22.976 who does everything that they should, 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:25.731 who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners -- 00:09:25.755 --> 00:09:29.094 I think you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education 00:09:29.118 --> 00:09:30.215 throughout the world 00:09:30.239 --> 00:09:32.192 is to produce university professors. 00:09:32.216 --> 00:09:33.527 Isn't it? 00:09:33.551 --> 00:09:35.534 They're the people who come out the top. 00:09:35.558 --> 00:09:37.737 And I used to be one, so there. 00:09:37.761 --> 00:09:40.397 (Laughter) 00:09:40.421 --> 00:09:43.522 And I like university professors, but you know, 00:09:43.546 --> 00:09:45.021 we shouldn't hold them up 00:09:45.045 --> 00:09:47.976 as the high-water mark of all human achievement. 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:49.976 They're just a form of life, 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:51.560 another form of life. 00:09:51.584 --> 00:09:54.882 But they're rather curious, and I say this out of affection for them. 00:09:54.906 --> 00:09:57.876 There's something curious about professors in my experience -- 00:09:57.900 --> 00:10:00.576 not all of them, but typically, they live in their heads. 00:10:00.600 --> 00:10:02.743 They live up there, and slightly to one side. 00:10:03.495 --> 00:10:06.869 They're disembodied, you know, in a kind of literal way. 00:10:06.893 --> 00:10:09.986 They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads. 00:10:10.010 --> 00:10:16.176 (Laughter) 00:10:16.200 --> 00:10:17.216 Don't they? 00:10:17.240 --> 00:10:19.462 It's a way of getting their head to meetings. 00:10:19.486 --> 00:10:24.998 (Laughter) 00:10:25.022 --> 00:10:28.852 If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, 00:10:28.876 --> 00:10:32.362 get yourself along to a residential conference of senior academics, 00:10:32.386 --> 00:10:34.629 and pop into the discotheque on the final night. 00:10:34.653 --> 00:10:37.454 (Laughter) 00:10:37.478 --> 00:10:38.834 And there, you will see it. 00:10:38.858 --> 00:10:42.976 Grown men and women writhing uncontrollably, off the beat. 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:45.867 (Laughter) 00:10:45.891 --> 00:10:49.216 Waiting until it ends so they can go home and write a paper about it. 00:10:49.240 --> 00:10:51.144 (Laughter) 00:10:51.168 --> 00:10:55.011 Our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. 00:10:55.035 --> 00:10:56.276 And there's a reason. 00:10:56.300 --> 00:10:59.856 Around the world, there were no public systems of education, 00:10:59.880 --> 00:11:01.986 really, before the 19th century. 00:11:02.010 --> 00:11:04.967 They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. 00:11:05.269 --> 00:11:07.432 So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. 00:11:07.456 --> 00:11:12.053 Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. 00:11:12.077 --> 00:11:14.108 So you were probably steered benignly away 00:11:14.132 --> 00:11:17.066 from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, 00:11:17.090 --> 00:11:20.476 on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? 00:11:20.500 --> 00:11:22.881 Don't do music, you're not going to be a musician; 00:11:22.905 --> 00:11:24.706 don't do art, you won't be an artist. 00:11:24.730 --> 00:11:28.150 Benign advice -- now, profoundly mistaken. 00:11:28.174 --> 00:11:30.319 The whole world is engulfed in a revolution. 00:11:30.343 --> 00:11:32.440 And the second is academic ability, 00:11:32.464 --> 00:11:35.349 which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, 00:11:35.373 --> 00:11:38.276 because the universities designed the system in their image. 00:11:38.300 --> 00:11:41.794 If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world 00:11:41.818 --> 00:11:44.044 is a protracted process of university entrance. 00:11:44.068 --> 00:11:46.401 And the consequence is that many highly-talented, 00:11:46.425 --> 00:11:48.860 brilliant, creative people think they're not, 00:11:48.884 --> 00:11:51.022 because the thing they were good at at school 00:11:51.046 --> 00:11:53.154 wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized. 00:11:53.383 --> 00:11:55.679 And I think we can't afford to go on that way. 00:11:55.703 --> 00:11:58.167 In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, 00:11:58.191 --> 00:12:01.001 more people worldwide will be graduating 00:12:01.025 --> 00:12:03.571 through education than since the beginning of history. 00:12:03.595 --> 00:12:07.276 More people, and it's the combination of all the things we've talked about -- 00:12:07.300 --> 00:12:10.348 technology and its transformation effect on work, and demography 00:12:10.372 --> 00:12:12.176 and the huge explosion in population. 00:12:12.200 --> 00:12:15.065 Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything. 00:12:15.089 --> 00:12:16.469 Isn't that true? 00:12:16.723 --> 00:12:19.476 When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. 00:12:19.500 --> 00:12:22.276 If you didn't have a job, it's because you didn't want one. 00:12:22.300 --> 00:12:24.976 And I didn't want one, frankly. (Laughter) 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:29.074 But now kids with degrees 00:12:29.098 --> 00:12:32.143 are often heading home to carry on playing video games, 00:12:32.167 --> 00:12:35.365 because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, 00:12:35.389 --> 00:12:37.176 and now you need a PhD for the other. 00:12:37.200 --> 00:12:38.976 It's a process of academic inflation. 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:41.376 And it indicates the whole structure of education 00:12:41.400 --> 00:12:42.833 is shifting beneath our feet. 00:12:42.857 --> 00:12:45.477 We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence. 00:12:45.501 --> 00:12:47.496 We know three things about intelligence. 00:12:47.520 --> 00:12:48.747 One, it's diverse. 00:12:48.771 --> 00:12:51.776 We think about the world in all the ways that we experience it. 00:12:51.800 --> 00:12:54.776 We think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically. 00:12:54.800 --> 00:12:57.101 We think in abstract terms, we think in movement. 00:12:57.246 --> 00:12:59.000 Secondly, intelligence is dynamic. 00:12:59.587 --> 00:13:01.976 If you look at the interactions of a human brain, 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:04.976 as we heard yesterday from a number of presentations, 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:06.976 intelligence is wonderfully interactive. 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:09.238 The brain isn't divided into compartments. 00:13:09.873 --> 00:13:12.976 In fact, creativity -- which I define as the process 00:13:13.000 --> 00:13:15.325 of having original ideas that have value -- 00:13:15.349 --> 00:13:18.001 more often than not comes about through the interaction 00:13:18.025 --> 00:13:21.025 of different disciplinary ways of seeing things. 00:13:22.310 --> 00:13:25.976 By the way, there's a shaft of nerves that joins the two halves of the brain 00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:27.491 called the corpus callosum. 00:13:27.515 --> 00:13:28.781 It's thicker in women. 00:13:29.088 --> 00:13:30.829 Following off from Helen yesterday, 00:13:30.853 --> 00:13:33.976 this is probably why women are better at multi-tasking. 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:35.817 Because you are, aren't you? 00:13:35.841 --> 00:13:39.048 There's a raft of research, but I know it from my personal life. 00:13:39.738 --> 00:13:44.976 If my wife is cooking a meal at home -- which is not often, thankfully. 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:47.854 (Laughter) 00:13:47.878 --> 00:13:50.376 No, she's good at some things, but if she's cooking, 00:13:50.400 --> 00:13:52.276 she's dealing with people on the phone, 00:13:52.300 --> 00:13:54.856 she's talking to the kids, she's painting the ceiling, 00:13:54.880 --> 00:13:57.976 she's doing open-heart surgery over here. 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:00.976 If I'm cooking, the door is shut, the kids are out, 00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:03.976 the phone's on the hook, if she comes in I get annoyed. 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:07.071 I say, "Terry, please, I'm trying to fry an egg in here." 00:14:07.095 --> 00:14:13.825 (Laughter) 00:14:14.254 --> 00:14:15.454 "Give me a break." 00:14:15.478 --> 00:14:17.198 (Laughter) 00:14:17.222 --> 00:14:19.721 Actually, do you know that old philosophical thing, 00:14:19.745 --> 00:14:22.998 if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, did it happen? 00:14:23.252 --> 00:14:24.581 Remember that old chestnut? 00:14:24.605 --> 00:14:27.014 I saw a great t-shirt recently, which said, 00:14:27.038 --> 00:14:30.976 "If a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no woman hears him, 00:14:31.000 --> 00:14:32.396 is he still wrong?" 00:14:32.420 --> 00:14:38.026 (Laughter) 00:14:39.976 --> 00:14:41.976 And the third thing about intelligence is, 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:43.369 it's distinct. 00:14:43.754 --> 00:14:46.327 I'm doing a new book at the moment called "Epiphany," 00:14:46.351 --> 00:14:48.825 which is based on a series of interviews with people 00:14:48.849 --> 00:14:50.769 about how they discovered their talent. 00:14:50.793 --> 00:14:52.962 I'm fascinated by how people got to be there. 00:14:52.986 --> 00:14:56.176 It's really prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman 00:14:56.200 --> 00:14:58.876 who maybe most people have never heard of, Gillian Lynne. 00:14:58.900 --> 00:15:00.530 Have you heard of her? Some have. 00:15:00.554 --> 00:15:03.076 She's a choreographer, and everybody knows her work. 00:15:03.100 --> 00:15:05.101 She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera." 00:15:05.125 --> 00:15:06.103 She's wonderful. 00:15:06.127 --> 00:15:08.273 I used to be on the board of The Royal Ballet, 00:15:08.297 --> 00:15:09.498 as you can see. 00:15:09.522 --> 00:15:11.922 Anyway, Gillian and I had lunch one day and I said, 00:15:12.047 --> 00:15:13.847 "How did you get to be a dancer?" 00:15:13.976 --> 00:15:14.976 It was interesting. 00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:17.350 When she was at school, she was really hopeless. 00:15:17.374 --> 00:15:20.976 And the school, in the '30s, wrote to her parents and said, 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:23.000 "We think Gillian has a learning disorder." 00:15:23.024 --> 00:15:25.166 She couldn't concentrate; she was fidgeting. 00:15:25.190 --> 00:15:28.480 I think now they'd say she had ADHD. Wouldn't you? 00:15:28.504 --> 00:15:32.563 But this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn't been invented at this point. 00:15:32.587 --> 00:15:34.976 It wasn't an available condition. 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:37.737 (Laughter) 00:15:37.761 --> 00:15:39.821 People weren't aware they could have that. 00:15:39.845 --> 00:15:41.979 (Laughter) 00:15:42.003 --> 00:15:46.281 Anyway, she went to see this specialist. 00:15:46.305 --> 00:15:50.027 So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her mother, 00:15:50.051 --> 00:15:52.528 and she was led and sat on this chair at the end, 00:15:52.552 --> 00:15:56.191 and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this man talked to her mother 00:15:56.215 --> 00:15:58.543 about the problems Gillian was having at school. 00:15:58.567 --> 00:16:02.244 Because she was disturbing people; her homework was always late; and so on, 00:16:02.268 --> 00:16:03.364 little kid of eight. 00:16:03.388 --> 00:16:06.443 In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian, and said, 00:16:06.467 --> 00:16:09.172 "I've listened to all these things your mother's told me, 00:16:09.196 --> 00:16:10.815 I need to speak to her privately. 00:16:10.839 --> 00:16:13.215 Wait here. We'll be back; we won't be very long," 00:16:13.239 --> 00:16:15.564 and they went and left her. 00:16:15.588 --> 00:16:17.224 But as they went out of the room, 00:16:17.248 --> 00:16:19.748 he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk. 00:16:20.342 --> 00:16:23.772 And when they got out, he said to her mother, "Just stand and watch her." 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:26.991 And the minute they left the room, 00:16:27.015 --> 00:16:29.499 she was on her feet, moving to the music. 00:16:29.523 --> 00:16:32.976 And they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said, 00:16:33.000 --> 00:16:36.976 "Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick; she's a dancer. 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:38.976 Take her to a dance school." 00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:40.976 I said, "What happened?" 00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:43.976 She said, "She did. I can't tell you how wonderful it was. 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:46.753 We walked in this room and it was full of people like me. 00:16:46.777 --> 00:16:48.976 People who couldn't sit still. 00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:53.587 People who had to move to think." Who had to move to think. 00:16:53.746 --> 00:16:57.376 They did ballet, they did tap, jazz; they did modern; they did contemporary. 00:16:57.400 --> 00:17:00.220 She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School; 00:17:00.244 --> 00:17:03.543 she became a soloist; she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet. 00:17:03.567 --> 00:17:06.175 She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School, 00:17:06.200 --> 00:17:08.175 founded the Gillian Lynne Dance Company, 00:17:08.200 --> 00:17:09.443 met Andrew Lloyd Weber. 00:17:09.568 --> 00:17:10.977 She's been responsible for 00:17:11.001 --> 00:17:14.147 some of the most successful musical theater productions in history, 00:17:14.172 --> 00:17:17.244 she's given pleasure to millions, and she's a multi-millionaire. 00:17:17.269 --> 00:17:21.339 Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down. 00:17:21.364 --> 00:17:28.146 (Applause) 00:17:28.575 --> 00:17:30.176 What I think it comes to is this: 00:17:30.200 --> 00:17:31.976 Al Gore spoke the other night 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:36.269 about ecology and the revolution that was triggered by Rachel Carson. 00:17:37.111 --> 00:17:39.277 I believe our only hope for the future 00:17:39.301 --> 00:17:43.134 is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, 00:17:43.158 --> 00:17:45.976 one in which we start to reconstitute our conception 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:47.976 of the richness of human capacity. 00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:51.499 Our education system has mined our minds 00:17:51.523 --> 00:17:54.799 in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. 00:17:55.188 --> 00:17:57.672 And for the future, it won't serve us. 00:17:57.696 --> 00:17:59.976 We have to rethink the fundamental principles 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:01.968 on which we're educating our children. 00:18:02.087 --> 00:18:04.761 There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said, 00:18:04.785 --> 00:18:09.824 "If all the insects were to disappear from the Earth, 00:18:09.848 --> 00:18:12.689 within 50 years all life on Earth would end. 00:18:13.688 --> 00:18:16.760 If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, 00:18:16.784 --> 00:18:19.418 within 50 years all forms of life would flourish." 00:18:20.244 --> 00:18:21.529 And he's right. 00:18:22.291 --> 00:18:25.925 What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination. 00:18:26.417 --> 00:18:28.488 We have to be careful now 00:18:28.512 --> 00:18:30.767 that we use this gift wisely 00:18:30.791 --> 00:18:34.020 and that we avert some of the scenarios that we've talked about. 00:18:34.044 --> 00:18:37.976 And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:39.610 for the richness they are 00:18:39.634 --> 00:18:42.816 and seeing our children for the hope that they are. 00:18:42.840 --> 00:18:45.238 And our task is to educate their whole being, 00:18:45.262 --> 00:18:46.746 so they can face this future. 00:18:46.770 --> 00:18:48.976 By the way -- we may not see this future, 00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:50.430 but they will. 00:18:50.454 --> 00:18:53.533 And our job is to help them make something of it. 00:18:53.557 --> 00:18:54.557 Thank you very much. 00:18:54.581 --> 00:18:57.581 (Applause)