RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigms — Transcript

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1. 0:12[Music]
2. 0:15every country on earth at the moment is
3. 0:17reforming public education there are two
4. 0:19reasons for it
5. 0:21the first of them is economic people are
6. 0:22trying to work out how do we
7. 0:26educate our children to take their place
8. 0:28in the economies of the 21st century how
9. 0:30do we do that
10. 0:31given that we can't anticipate what the
11. 0:33economy will look like at the end of
12. 0:35next week
13. 0:36as the recent turmoil is demonstrating
14. 0:40how do we do that
15. 0:42the second though is cultural every
16. 0:43country on earth on earth is trying to
17. 0:45figure out how do we
18. 0:47educate our children so they have a
19. 0:48sense of cultural identity and so that
20. 0:50we can pass on the cultural genes of our
21. 0:53communities
22. 0:54while being part of the process of
23. 0:56globalization how do you square that
24. 0:58circle
25. 0:59the problem is they're trying to meet
26. 1:02the future by doing what they did in the
27. 1:04past
28. 1:05and on the way they're alienating
29. 1:07millions of kids who don't see any
30. 1:08purpose in going to school
31. 1:10when we went to school
32. 1:12we were kept there with a story which is
33. 1:14if you worked hard and did well and got
34. 1:16a college degree you would have a job
35. 1:18our kids don't believe that and they're
36. 1:20right not to by the way you're better
37. 1:21having a degree than not but it's not a
38. 1:23guarantee anymore and particularly not
39. 1:26if the route to it marginalizes most of
40. 1:29things that you think are important
41. 1:30about yourself
42. 1:31some people say we have to raise
43. 1:32standards if this is a breakthrough
44. 1:34you know
45. 1:35like really yes we should
46. 1:37why would you lower them you know i mean
47. 1:40i haven't come across an argument that
48. 1:42persuades me of lowering them
49. 1:43but raising them of course we should
50. 1:45raise them
51. 1:46the problem is that the current system
52. 1:48of education was designed
53. 1:50and conceived
54. 1:52and structured for a different age
55. 1:55it was conceived
56. 1:57in the intellectual culture of the
57. 2:00enlightenment
58. 2:02and in the economic circumstances of the
59. 2:03industrial revolution
60. 2:06before the middle of the 19th century
61. 2:07there were no systems of public
62. 2:09education
63. 2:10not really i mean you could get educated
64. 2:11by jesuits you know if you had the money
65. 2:14but public education paid for from
66. 2:16taxation compulsory to everybody and
67. 2:18three at the point of delivery that was
68. 2:20a revolutionary idea
69. 2:22and many people objected to it they said
70. 2:24it's not possible
71. 2:27for many street kids working-class
72. 2:29children to benefit from public
73. 2:30education they're incapable of learning
74. 2:32to read and write and why we're spending
75. 2:33time on this
76. 2:34so there's also built into it a whole
77. 2:36series of
78. 2:37um assumptions about social structure
79. 2:39and capacity it was driven by an
80. 2:41economic imperative of the time but
81. 2:44running right through it
82. 2:46um was an intellectual
83. 2:48model of the mind which was essentially
84. 2:51the enlightenment view of intelligence
85. 2:52that real intelligence consists in this
86. 2:54capacity for a certain type of deductive
87. 2:56reasoning and the knowledge of the
88. 2:57classics originally
89. 2:59what we come to think of as academic
90. 3:01ability
91. 3:02and this is deep in the gene pool of
92. 3:04public education at the really two types
93. 3:06of people academic and non-academic
94. 3:09smart people and non-smart people and
95. 3:11the consequence of that is that many
96. 3:12brilliant people think they're not
97. 3:15because they've been judged against this
98. 3:17particular view of the mind
99. 3:19so we have twin pillars economic and
100. 3:22intellectual
101. 3:23and my view is
102. 3:24that this model has caused chaos in many
103. 3:28people's lives it's been great for some
104. 3:30there have been people who benefited
105. 3:31wonderfully from it but most people have
106. 3:34not
107. 3:35instead they suffer this
108. 3:37this is the modern epidemic and it's as
109. 3:39misplaced and it's as fictitious
110. 3:42this is the plague of adhd
111. 3:46now this is a map of the instance of
112. 3:48adhd in america or prescriptions
113. 3:52for adhd
114. 3:53don't mistake me i don't mean to say
115. 3:55there is no such thing
116. 3:57as attention deficit disorder i'm not
117. 4:00qualified to say if there is such a
118. 4:01thing i know that a great majority of
119. 4:03psychologists and children pediatrician
120. 4:05think there is such a thing
121. 4:06but it's still a matter of debate
122. 4:10what i do know for a fact is it's not an
123. 4:13epidemic
124. 4:15these kids are being medicated
125. 4:17as routinely as we had our tonsils taken
126. 4:20out and on the same whimsical basis and
127. 4:23for the same reason medical
128. 4:25fashion
129. 4:26our children are living in the most
130. 4:28intensely stimulating period in the
131. 4:30history of the earth
132. 4:33they're being besieged with information
133. 4:35and caused their attention from every
134. 4:38platform computers
135. 4:40from iphones from advertising holdings
136. 4:42from hundreds of television channels
137. 4:44and we're penalizing them now for
138. 4:46getting distracted
139. 4:48from what you know boring stuff
140. 4:51at school for the most part
141. 4:54it seems to me not a coincidence totally
142. 4:56that the incidence of adhd has risen in
143. 4:58parallel with the growth of standardized
144. 4:59testing
145. 5:01now these kids are being given ritalin
146. 5:03and adderall and all manner of things
147. 5:05often quite dangerous drugs
148. 5:07to get them focused and calm them down
149. 5:10but according to this attention deficit
150. 5:12order increases as you travel east
151. 5:14across the country
152. 5:15people start losing interest in oklahoma
153. 5:24they can hardly think straight in
154. 5:26arkansas
155. 5:27and by the time they get to washington
156. 5:28they've lost it completely
157. 5:31and there are separate reasons for that
158. 5:32i believe
159. 5:35it's a fictitious epidemic
160. 5:38if you think of it the arts
161. 5:40and i don't say this exclusively the
162. 5:42arts i think it's also true of science
163. 5:44and of maths but let me i say about the
164. 5:46art particularly because they are the
165. 5:48victims of this mentality currently
166. 5:50particularly
167. 5:52the arts
168. 5:53especially address the idea of
169. 5:56aesthetic
170. 5:57experience
171. 5:58an aesthetic experience is one in which
172. 6:00your senses are operating at their peak
173. 6:03when you're present in the current
174. 6:04moment when you're resonating with the
175. 6:06excitement of this thing that you're
176. 6:08experiencing when you are fully alive
177. 6:12an anesthetic is when you shut your
178. 6:14senses off
179. 6:16and deaden yourself to what's happening
180. 6:19and a lot of these drugs are that
181. 6:21we're getting our children through
182. 6:22education by anesthetizing them
183. 6:25and i think we should be doing the exact
184. 6:27opposite we shouldn't be putting them
185. 6:28asleep we should be waking them up to
186. 6:30what they have inside of themselves
187. 6:32but the model we have is this it's i
188. 6:34believe we have a system of education
189. 6:36that is modeled on
190. 6:38the interests of industrialism
191. 6:41and in the image of it
192. 6:43i'll give you a couple of examples uh
193. 6:45schools are still pretty much organized
194. 6:47on factory lines ringing bells separate
195. 6:49facilities
196. 6:51specialized into separate subjects
197. 6:54we still educate children by batches
198. 6:56you know we put them through the system
199. 6:58by age group
200. 7:00why do we do that you know why is there
201. 7:02this assumption
202. 7:03that the most important thing kids have
203. 7:04in common is how old they are
204. 7:07you know it's like the most important
205. 7:08thing about them is their date of
206. 7:09manufacture
207. 7:10what do you mean
208. 7:11well i know kids who are much better
209. 7:13than other kids at the same age in
210. 7:14different disciplines you know or at
211. 7:16different times of the day
212. 7:18or better in smaller groups than in
213. 7:19large groups or sometimes they want to
214. 7:21be on their own
215. 7:22if you're interested in the model of
216. 7:23learning you don't start from this
217. 7:24production line mentality these are it's
218. 7:27essentially about conformity and
219. 7:28increasingly it's about that as you look
220. 7:29at the growth of standardized testing
221. 7:31and standardized curricula
222. 7:33and it's about standardization
223. 7:35i believe we've got to go in the exact
224. 7:36opposite direction that's what i mean
225. 7:38about changing the paradigm
226. 7:40there was a great study done recently of
227. 7:41divergent thinking
228. 7:44published a couple of years ago
229. 7:45divergent thinking isn't the same thing
230. 7:47as creativity
231. 7:49i define creativity as the the process
232. 7:51of having original ideas that have value
233. 7:54divergent thinking isn't a synonym
234. 7:57but it's a
235. 7:58an essential
236. 7:59capacity for creativity
237. 8:01it's the ability to see lots of possible
238. 8:03answers
239. 8:04to a question lots of possible ways of
240. 8:06interpreting a question uh to think
241. 8:09what edward de boehner would probably
242. 8:10call laterally
243. 8:12to think not just in linear or
244. 8:15convergent ways
245. 8:17to see multiple answers not one
246. 8:19so i mean the test for this i mean one
247. 8:21kind of cod example would be people
248. 8:22might be asked to say
249. 8:23how many uses can you think of for a
250. 8:26paper clip
251. 8:28all those routine questions most people
252. 8:29might come with 10 or 15.
253. 8:31people are good at this might come up
254. 8:32with 200
255. 8:34and they do that by saying well could
256. 8:36the paper clip be 200 foot tall and be
257. 8:37made out of foam rubber
258. 8:39you know like does it have to be a paper
259. 8:40clip as we know it jim you know
260. 8:42um now they tested this and they gave
261. 8:44them to 1500 people in a book called
262. 8:46breakpoint and beyond
263. 8:48and on the protocol of the test if you
264. 8:50scored above a certain level
265. 8:52you'd be considered to be a genius at
266. 8:54divergent thinking
267. 8:56okay
268. 8:57so my question to you is what percentage
269. 8:59of
270. 9:00the people tested of the 1500
271. 9:03scored at genius level for divergent
272. 9:05thinking now you need to know one more
273. 9:06thing about them these were kindergarten
274. 9:09children
275. 9:10so what do you think what percentage at
276. 9:12genius level
277. 9:14eight eighteen
278. 9:16eighty okay
279. 9:1798
280. 9:18now the thing about this was it was a
281. 9:19longitudinal study
282. 9:21so they retested the same children
283. 9:24five years later
284. 9:25age of eight to ten what do you think
285. 9:2815.
286. 9:29they retested this them again
287. 9:31five years later ages
288. 9:3313-15
289. 9:35you can see a trend here can't you
290. 9:39now
291. 9:40this tells an interesting story
292. 9:43because you could have imagined it going
293. 9:44the other way couldn't you
294. 9:46you start off not being very good but
295. 9:48you get better as you get older but this
296. 9:50shows two things one is we all have this
297. 9:52capacity
298. 9:54and two it mostly deteriorates
299. 9:57now a lot of things have happened to
300. 9:58these kids as they've grown up a lot
301. 10:01but one of the most important things
302. 10:02that i'm convinced is that by now
303. 10:04they've become educated
304. 10:06they know they're spent ten years at
305. 10:07school being told there's one answer
306. 10:09it's at the back
307. 10:10and don't look
308. 10:12and don't copy
309. 10:14because that's cheating
310. 10:16i mean outside schools that's called
311. 10:17collaboration you know but inside
312. 10:19schools
313. 10:20now this isn't because teachers want it
314. 10:22this way it's just because it happens
315. 10:24that way
316. 10:25um it's because it's in the gene pool of
317. 10:28education
318. 10:29we have to think differently about human
319. 10:31capacity we have to get over this old
320. 10:33conception of academic non-academic
321. 10:37abstract theoretical vocational
322. 10:40and see it for what it is
323. 10:42a myth
324. 10:44secondly we have to recognize that most
325. 10:46great learning happens in groups the
326. 10:47collaboration is the stuff of growth
327. 10:50if we atomize people and separate them
328. 10:52and judge them separately
329. 10:54we
330. 10:56form a kind of disjunction between them
331. 10:57and their natural learning environment
332. 10:59and thirdly it's crucially about the
333. 11:01culture of our institutions the habits
334. 11:04of the institution and the habitats that
335. 11:06they occupy
336. 11:40you