Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson | TED

Summary

El discurso explora tres temas clave: la creatividad humana, la incertidumbre del futuro y la capacidad innovadora de los niños. El orador argumenta que la creatividad es tan importante como la alfabetización y debería ser tratada con igual importancia en la educación. Critica la jerarquía de las materias en el sistema educativo y sugiere que debemos reconsiderar nuestra comprensión de la inteligencia para educar a los niños de manera más holística y prepararlos para un futuro incierto.

Takeaways

• 🌟 La creatividad humana es extraordinaria y se refleja en la diversidad y el rango de las presentaciones y personas en la conferencia.
• 🔮 La incertidumbre sobre el futuro es un tema central, y la educación tiene un papel crucial en preparar a los niños para un mundo impredecible.
• 🏫 El interés en la educación es universal, ya que afecta profundamente a las personas, al igual que la religión y el dinero.
• 🧠 La creatividad es tan importante en la educación como la alfabetización y debería tratarse con el mismo estatus.
• 👶 Los niños tienen una capacidad innata para la innovación y el riesgo, pero a menudo la perdemos a medida que crecen.
• 🎨 La jerarquía de las disciplinas en la educación, con las matemáticas y las lenguas en la cima y las artes en la base, es universal pero cuestionable.
• 💃 La danza y otras artes corporales son importantes pero no se enseñan con la misma frecuencia que las matemáticas, a pesar de su valor.
• 🤔 La educación se ha enfocado en la capacidad académica, pero esto no refleja la diversidad y la dinamismo de la inteligencia humana.
• 🌐 Los sistemas educativos fueron diseñados para satisfacer las necesidades de la industrialización y no están adaptados a los cambios del siglo XXI.
• 🎓 La inflación académica y el valor disminuido de los títulos universitarios hacen necesario repensar la estructura y el enfoque de la educación.
• 🌱 La inteligencia es diversa, dinámica y distinta, y la educación debe reconocer y fomentar estas múltiples formas de ser inteligente.

Q & A

¿Cuáles son los tres temas mencionados en la conferencia que están relacionados con lo que el orador quiere discutir?

Los tres temas mencionados son: la extraordinaria evidencia de la creatividad humana, la incertidumbre sobre el futuro y el reconocimiento de las extraordinarias capacidades de innovación de los niños.

¿Por qué es importante la creatividad en la educación según el orador?

El orador argumenta que la creatividad es tan importante en la educación como la alfabetización y que debería tratarse con el mismo estatus, dado que es fundamental para enfrentar un futuro impredecible.

¿Qué ejemplos brinda el orador para ilustrar cómo los niños son capaces de tomar chances y ser creativos?

El orador relata la historia de una niña de seis años que dibujó una imagen de Dios y el incidente humorístico en el que un niño en un drama natal confundió 'frankincense' con 'Frank sent this', demostrando cómo los niños no tienen miedo de equivocarse y están dispuestos a probar cosas nuevas.

¿Cómo describe el orador la actitud de la sociedad hacia los errores en el contexto educativo y empresarial?

El orador menciona que la sociedad estigmatiza los errores, lo que resulta en un miedo a equivocarse, algo que se refleja tanto en el ámbito empresarial como en los sistemas educativos, donde los errores son vistos como el peor error que se puede cometer.

¿Qué cambios ha observado el orador en la jerarquía de las materias en los sistemas educativos a lo largo del mundo?

El orador nota que en todos los sistemas educativos, las matemáticas y las lenguas están en la cima de la jerarquía, seguido por las humanidades, y las artes, especialmente la danza, están en la parte inferior.

¿Qué sugiere el orador sobre la relación entre la educación y la inteligencia?

El orador sugiere que la educación actual se basa en la capacidad académica y en la idea de que las materias más útiles para el trabajo están en la cima, lo que ha llevado a una visión limitada de la inteligencia y a una falta de valoración de habilidades creativas y artísticas.

¿Cuál es la historia personal que el orador comparte para ilustrar el potencial de la creatividad y la importancia de reconocer las habilidades únicas de cada individuo?

El orador comparte la historia de Gillian Lynne, quien fue etiquetada como problemática en la escuela pero luego descubrió su pasión y talento por la danza, convirtiéndose en una coreógrafa exitosa, lo que demuestra la importancia de reconocer y cultivar las habilidades únicas de cada persona.

¿Qué cambios predice el orador para el sistema educativo en los próximos años?

El orador predice que habrá un cambio radical en la estructura del sistema educativo debido a la tecnología, la inflación académica y el crecimiento demográfico, lo que requerirá una reevaluación de la inteligencia y una educación más holística.

¿Cómo define el orador la creatividad y cómo se relaciona con la inteligencia?

El orador define la creatividad como el proceso de tener ideas originales que tienen valor, y argumenta que la inteligencia es diversa, dinámica y distinta, lo que significa que puede manifestarse de muchas maneras diferentes, incluyendo las artes y el movimiento.

¿Qué llamamiento a la acción hace el orador al final de su discurso?

El orador hace un llamado a la acción para que se adopte una nueva concepción de la ecología humana que valore la riqueza de la capacidad humana, y para que se eduque a los niños de manera integral para que puedan enfrentar el futuro.

Outlines

00:00

🌟 Creación y educación en el futuro incierto

El orador comienza su discurso reconociendo la creatividad humana presente en la conferencia y sugiere que esta creatividad, junto con el interés en la educación, es fundamental para prepararse para un futuro impredecible. Destaca la importancia de la educación, a pesar de que a menudo se ve desvalorizada en eventos sociales, y señala que todos tenemos una gran inversión en ella, ya que es la educación la que debe llevarnos al futuro. Explica que los niños que comienzan la escuela hoy podrían estar retirándose en 2065, y nadie tiene ni idea de cómo será el mundo en cinco años. Sin embargo, estamos en la obligación de educarlos para ese futuro. El orador también menciona la capacidad innovadora de los niños, da el ejemplo de una niña que dibujó a Dios y de su hijo en un drama de Natividad, y argumenta que la creatividad es tan importante como la alfabetización y que debemos tratarla con el mismo estatus.

05:01

🎨 La jerarquía de las artes y la educación

El discurso continúa con el orador reflexionando sobre la jerarquía de las materias en los sistemas educativos, donde las matemáticas y las lenguas están en la cima y las artes en la base. Cuestiona por qué no se enseña danza diariamente como se enseña matemáticas y sugiere que esto es importante. Con un toque de humor, el orador compara la vida mental de los profesores universitarios con la de otras personas, sugiriendo que viven en sus cabezas y no fully valoran su cuerpo. Critica la educación por centrarse en la capacidad académica y por ser un sistema diseñado para preparar a futuros profesores universitarios,而非 todos los estudiantes. Argumenta que la educación actual está desactualizada y que, con la revolución tecnológica y la inflación académica, necesitamos reconsiderar nuestra visión de la inteligencia y la creatividad.

10:03

🧠 Diversidad e inteligencia en la educación

El orador habla sobre la inteligencia y cómo la educación actual la ha definido de manera restringida. Expone que la inteligencia es diversa, dinámica y distinta, y que la creatividad a menudo surge de la interacción de diferentes disciplinas. Utiliza el ejemplo de Gillian Lynne, una coreógrafa exitosa que inicialmente fue vista como una estudiante problemática, para ilustrar cómo el sistema educativo puede fallar al no reconocer y cultivar el talento y la creatividad de los estudiantes. Argumenta que necesitamos un nuevo enfoque en la educación que reconozca la riqueza de la capacidad humana y prepare a los niños para un futuro que no podemos prever.

15:05

🌱 La importancia de la imaginación y la creatividad

En el último párrafo, el orador hace un llamado a la acción para que reconozcamos y valoremos la creatividad y la imaginación en nuestros hijos y en nosotros mismos. Cita a Jonas Salk para enfatizar la importancia de la vida y la ecología humana, y sugiere que nuestra única esperanza para el futuro es adoptar una nueva concepción de la ecología humana que valore la riqueza de la capacidad humana. El orador concluye agradeciendo a la audiencia y enfatizando la responsabilidad que tenemos de educar a los niños para que puedan hacer algo valioso de su futuro.

Keywords

💡creatividad

La creatividad es el proceso de generar ideas originales que tengan valor. En el vídeo, se argumenta que la creatividad es tan importante en la educación como la alfabetización y debe ser tratada con el mismo estatus. El orador utiliza ejemplos como la historia de la niña que dibuja a Dios y la actuación de su hijo en la obra 'Nacimiento' para ilustrar cómo los niños toman chances y no temen equivocarse, rasgo esencial de la creatividad.

💡educación

La educación es el tema central del discurso, donde se discute cómo el sistema educativo actual no valora adecuadamente la creatividad y las capacidades artísticas de los niños. El orador sugiere que la educación debería preparar a los niños para un futuro incierto y que la creatividad es esencial para eso, dado que los niños que comienzan la escuela hoy podrían estar retirándose en 2065, en un mundo muy diferente.

💡inteligencia

La inteligencia en el vídeo se describe como diversa, dinámica y distinta. El orador argumenta que la inteligencia no se limita a la habilidad académica, sino que incluye diferentes formas de pensar y experiencias, como el pensamiento visual, auditivo y cinestésico. Esta visión más amplia de la inteligencia es crucial para entender y cultivar la creatividad en la educación.

💡miedo al error

El miedo al error se menciona como un obstáculo para la creatividad, ya que los niños creciendo en un sistema educativo que estigmatiza los errores pueden perder la capacidad de pensar de manera original. El orador subraya que para ser creativos, uno debe estar dispuesto a cometer errores, una actitud que a menudo se pierde con el crecimiento y la educación tradicional.

💡hierarquía de las disciplinas

La jerarquía de las disciplinas en la educación se refiere a cómo ciertos campos de estudio, como las matemáticas y las lenguas, son valorados más que otros, como el arte y la danza. El orador cuestiona esta jerarquía, sugiriendo que todos los campos, incluidas las artes, son importantes y deben ser enseñados con la misma frecuencia y seriedad.

💡imaginación

La imaginación se presenta como un don humano que debe ser utilizado sabiamente. El orador menciona que TED celebra la imaginación humana y que nuestra única esperanza para el futuro es adoptar una nueva concepción de la ecología humana que reconozca la riqueza de la capacidad humana, incluyendo la imaginación.

💡industria

El orador menciona que los sistemas educativos modernos surgieron para satisfacer las necesidades de la industria, lo que ha llevado a una estructura educativa centrada en habilidades académicas y utilidad laboral, a menudo a expensas de la creatividad y las artes. Este contexto histórico es importante para entender por qué ciertos campos de estudio son valorados más que otros.

💡errores

Los errores se presentan como un componente inevitable de la creatividad y el aprendizaje. El orador critica la cultura educativa que estigmatiza los errores y sugiere que debemos cambiar nuestra actitud hacia los errores para fomentar el pensamiento creativo.

💡talento

El talento se discute como una capacidad innata que todos los niños poseen, pero que a menudo se malgasta o se ignora en el sistema educativo actual. El orador da el ejemplo de Gillian Lynne, una coreógrafa exitosa, que fue considerada problemática en la escuela hasta que se descubrió su talento para la danza, demostrando cómo el reconocimiento de los talentos individuales puede cambiar la vida de alguien.

💡riqueza de capacidades humanas

La riqueza de capacidades humanas hace referencia a la variedad de habilidades y talentos que los seres humanos pueden desarrollar, más allá de la inteligencia académica tradicional. El orador argumenta por la importancia de reconocer y cultivar esta riqueza en la educación para preparar a los niños para un futuro incierto y dinámico.

Highlights

Human creativity is a central theme of the conference, with a vast variety and range of examples.

The future is unpredictable, and this uncertainty is a significant aspect of the discussion on education.

Education is a topic of deep interest to everyone, often leading to passionate discussions.

Children starting school today will retire in 2065, emphasizing the challenge of preparing them for an unknown future.

Creativity is as important in education as literacy and should be treated with equal status.

Children have extraordinary capacities for innovation, which are often squandered.

Children are not afraid of being wrong, which is essential for creativity.

Adults often lose the ability to be creative due to a fear of being wrong.

Our education systems and companies stigmatize mistakes, which hampers creativity.

All children are born artists, but the problem is retaining that creativity as we grow up.

Education systems worldwide have a hierarchy that prioritizes academic subjects over the arts.

Dance and movement are important for children but are not emphasized in education.

Public education systems were designed for the industrial era and may not serve the needs of the future.

Intelligence is diverse, interactive, and distinct, and our education system should reflect this.

Gillian Lynne's story illustrates how recognizing and nurturing talent can lead to outstanding success.

Our education system should reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.

The future depends on our ability to use the gift of human imagination wisely.

Our task is to educate the whole being of our children to help them face the future.

Transcripts

Good morning. How are you?

(Audience) Good.

It's been great, hasn't it?

I've been blown away by the whole thing.

In fact, I'm leaving.

(Laughter)

There have been three themes running through the conference,

which are relevant to what I want to talk about.

One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity

in all of the presentations that we've had

and in all of the people here;

just the variety of it and the range of it.

The second is that it's put us in a place

where we have no idea what's going to happen

in terms of the future.

No idea how this may play out.

I have an interest in education.

Actually, what I find is, everybody has an interest in education.

Don't you?

I find this very interesting.

If you're at a dinner party, and you say you work in education --

actually, you're not often at dinner parties, frankly.

(Laughter)

If you work in education, you're not asked.

(Laughter)

And you're never asked back, curiously. That's strange to me.

But if you are, and you say to somebody,

you know, they say, "What do you do?"

and you say you work in education,

you can see the blood run from their face.

They're like, "Oh my God. Why me?"

(Laughter)

"My one night out all week."

(Laughter)

But if you ask about their education, they pin you to the wall,

because it's one of those things that goes deep with people, am I right?

Like religion and money and other things.

So I have a big interest in education, and I think we all do.

We have a huge vested interest in it,

partly because it's education that's meant to take us into this future

that we can't grasp.

If you think of it,

children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065.

Nobody has a clue,

despite all the expertise that's been on parade for the past four days,

what the world will look like in five years' time.

And yet, we're meant to be educating them for it.

So the unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary.

And the third part of this is that we've all agreed, nonetheless,

on the really extraordinary capacities that children have --

their capacities for innovation.

I mean, Sirena last night was a marvel, wasn't she?

Just seeing what she could do.

And she's exceptional, but I think she's not, so to speak,

exceptional in the whole of childhood.

What you have there is a person of extraordinary dedication

who found a talent.

And my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents,

and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.

So I want to talk about education,

and I want to talk about creativity.

My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy,

and we should treat it with the same status.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)

That was it, by the way. Thank you very much.

(Laughter)

So, 15 minutes left.

(Laughter)

"Well, I was born ... "

(Laughter)

I heard a great story recently -- I love telling it --

of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson.

She was six, and she was at the back, drawing,

and the teacher said this girl hardly ever paid attention,

and in this drawing lesson, she did.

The teacher was fascinated.

She went over to her, and she said, "What are you drawing?"

And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God."

And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like."

And the girl said, "They will in a minute."

(Laughter)

When my son was four in England --

actually, he was four everywhere, to be honest.

(Laughter)

If we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was four that year.

He was in the Nativity play. Do you remember the story?

(Laughter)

No, it was big, it was a big story.

Mel Gibson did the sequel, you may have seen it.

(Laughter)

"Nativity II."

But James got the part of Joseph, which we were thrilled about.

We considered this to be one of the lead parts.

We had the place crammed full of agents in T-shirts:

"James Robinson IS Joseph!"

(Laughter)

He didn't have to speak, but you know the bit where the three kings come in?

They come in bearing gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh.

This really happened.

We were sitting there, and I think they just went out of sequence,

because we talked to the little boy afterward and said,

"You OK with that?" They said, "Yeah, why? Was that wrong?"

They just switched.

The three boys came in, four-year-olds with tea towels on their heads.

They put these boxes down, and the first boy said, "I bring you gold."

And the second boy said, "I bring you myrrh."

And the third boy said, "Frank sent this."

(Laughter)

What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance.

If they don't know, they'll have a go.

Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong.

I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative.

What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong,

you'll never come up with anything original --

if you're not prepared to be wrong.

And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity.

They have become frightened of being wrong.

And we run our companies like this.

We stigmatize mistakes.

And we're now running national education systems

where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.

And the result is that we are educating people

out of their creative capacities.

Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born artists.

The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.

I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity,

we grow out of it.

Or rather, we get educated out of it.

So why is this?

I lived in Stratford-on-Avon until about five years ago.

In fact, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles.

So you can imagine what a seamless transition this was.

(Laughter)

Actually, we lived in a place called Snitterfield,

just outside Stratford,

which is where Shakespeare's father was born.

Are you struck by a new thought? I was.

You don't think of Shakespeare having a father, do you?

Do you?

Because you don't think of Shakespeare being a child, do you?

Shakespeare being seven?

I never thought of it.

I mean, he was seven at some point.

He was in somebody's English class, wasn't he?

(Laughter)

How annoying would that be?

(Laughter)

"Must try harder."

(Laughter)

Being sent to bed by his dad, to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now!"

To William Shakespeare.

"And put the pencil down!"

(Laughter)

"And stop speaking like that."

(Laughter)

"It's confusing everybody."

(Laughter)

Anyway, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles,

and I just want to say a word about the transition.

Actually, my son didn't want to come.

I've got two kids; he's 21 now, my daughter's 16.

He didn't want to come to Los Angeles.

He loved it, but he had a girlfriend in England.

This was the love of his life, Sarah.

He'd known her for a month.

(Laughter)

Mind you, they'd had their fourth anniversary,

because it's a long time when you're 16.

He was really upset on the plane.

He said, "I'll never find another girl like Sarah."

And we were rather pleased about that, frankly --

(Laughter)

because she was the main reason we were leaving the country.

(Laughter)

But something strikes you when you move to America

and travel around the world:

every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects.

Every one. Doesn't matter where you go.

You'd think it would be otherwise, but it isn't.

At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities.

At the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on earth.

And in pretty much every system, too, there's a hierarchy within the arts.

Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools

than drama and dance.

There isn't an education system on the planet

that teaches dance every day to children

the way we teach them mathematics.

Why?

Why not?

I think this is rather important.

I think math is very important, but so is dance.

Children dance all the time if they're allowed to, we all do.

We all have bodies, don't we? Did I miss a meeting?

(Laughter)

Truthfully, what happens is, as children grow up,

we start to educate them progressively from the waist up.

And then we focus on their heads.

And slightly to one side.

If you were to visit education as an alien

and say "What's it for, public education?"

I think you'd have to conclude, if you look at the output,

who really succeeds by this,

who does everything they should,

who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners --

I think you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education

throughout the world

is to produce university professors.

Isn't it?

They're the people who come out the top.

And I used to be one, so there.

(Laughter)

And I like university professors,

but, you know, we shouldn't hold them up

as the high-water mark of all human achievement.

They're just a form of life.

Another form of life.

But they're rather curious.

And I say this out of affection for them:

there's something curious about professors.

In my experience -- not all of them, but typically -- they live in their heads.

They live up there and slightly to one side.

They're disembodied, you know, in a kind of literal way.

They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads.

(Laughter)

Don't they?

It's a way of getting their head to meetings.

(Laughter)

If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, by the way,

get yourself along to a residential conference of senior academics

and pop into the discotheque on the final night.

(Laughter)

And there, you will see it.

Grown men and women writhing uncontrollably, off the beat.

(Laughter)

Waiting until it ends, so they can go home and write a paper about it.

(Laughter)

Our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability.

And there's a reason.

Around the world, there were no public systems of education,

really, before the 19th century.

They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism.

So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas.

Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top.

So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school

when you were a kid,

things you liked,

on the grounds you would never get a job doing that.

Is that right?

"Don't do music, you're not going to be a musician;

don't do art, you won't be an artist."

Benign advice -- now, profoundly mistaken.

The whole world is engulfed in a revolution.

And the second is academic ability,

which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence,

because the universities design the system in their image.

If you think of it,

the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process

of university entrance.

And the consequence is that many highly talented,

brilliant, creative people think they're not,

because the thing they were good at at school

wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized.

And I think we can't afford to go on that way.

In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO,

more people worldwide will be graduating through education

than since the beginning of history.

More people.

And it's the combination of all the things we've talked about:

technology and its transformational effect on work,

and demography and the huge explosion in population.

Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything.

Isn't that true?

When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job.

If you didn't have a job, it's because you didn't want one.

And I didn't want one, frankly.

(Laughter)

But now kids with degrees are often heading home

to carry on playing video games,

because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA,

and now you need a PhD for the other.

It's a process of academic inflation.

And it indicates the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet.

We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.

We know three things about intelligence.

One, it's diverse.

We think about the world in all the ways that we experience it.

We think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically.

We think in abstract terms, we think in movement.

Secondly, intelligence is dynamic.

If you look at the interactions of a human brain,

as we heard yesterday from a number of presentations,

intelligence is wonderfully interactive.

The brain isn't divided into compartments.

In fact, creativity --

which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value --

more often than not comes about

through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.

By the way, there's a shaft of nerves that joins the two halves of the brain,

called the corpus callosum.

It's thicker in women.

Following off from Helen yesterday,

this is probably why women are better at multitasking.

Because you are, aren't you?

There's a raft of research, but I know it from my personal life.

If my wife is cooking a meal at home, which is not often ...

thankfully.

(Laughter)

No, she's good at some things.

But if she's cooking, she's dealing with people on the phone,

she's talking to the kids, she's painting the ceiling --

(Laughter)

she's doing open-heart surgery over here.

If I'm cooking, the door is shut, the kids are out,

the phone's on the hook,

if she comes in, I get annoyed.

I say, "Terry, please, I'm trying to fry an egg in here."

(Laughter)

"Give me a break."

(Laughter)

Actually, do you know that old philosophical thing,

"If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody hears it, did it happen?"

Remember that old chestnut?

I saw a great T-shirt recently, which said,

"If a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no woman hears him,

is he still wrong?"

(Laughter)

And the third thing about intelligence is,

it's distinct.

I'm doing a new book at the moment called "Epiphany,"

which is based on a series of interviews with people

about how they discovered their talent.

I'm fascinated by how people got to be there.

It's really prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman

who maybe most people have never heard of, Gillian Lynne.

Have you heard of her? Some have.

She's a choreographer, and everybody knows her work.

She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera."

She's wonderful.

I used to be on the board of The Royal Ballet, as you can see.

(Laughter)

Gillian and I had lunch one day. I said, "How did you get to be a dancer?"

It was interesting.

When she was at school, she was really hopeless.

And the school, in the '30s, wrote to her parents and said,

"We think Gillian has a learning disorder."

She couldn't concentrate; she was fidgeting.

I think now they'd say she had ADHD.

Wouldn't you?

But this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn't been invented at this point.

It wasn't an available condition.

(Laughter)

People weren't aware they could have that.

(Laughter)

Anyway, she went to see this specialist.

So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her mother,

and she was led and sat on this chair at the end,

and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes,

while this man talked to her mother

about all the problems Gillian was having at school,

because she was disturbing people, her homework was always late, and so on.

Little kid of eight.

In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian and said,

"I've listened to all these things your mother's told me.

I need to speak to her privately.

Wait here. We'll be back. We won't be very long,"

and they went and left her.

But as they went out of the room,

he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk.

And when they got out of the room,

he said to her mother, "Just stand and watch her."

And the minute they left the room,

she was on her feet, moving to the music.

And they watched for a few minutes, and he turned to her mother and said,

"Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick.

She's a dancer.

Take her to a dance school."

I said, "What happened?"

She said, "She did. I can't tell you how wonderful it was.

We walked in this room, and it was full of people like me --

people who couldn't sit still,

people who had to move to think."

Who had to move to think.

They did ballet, they did tap, jazz; they did modern; they did contemporary.

She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School.

She became a soloist; she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet.

She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School,

founded the Gillian Lynne Dance Company,

met Andrew Lloyd Webber.

She's been responsible for

some of the most successful musical theater productions in history,

she's given pleasure to millions,

and she's a multimillionaire.

Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

(Applause)

What I think it comes to is this:

Al Gore spoke the other night

about ecology and the revolution that was triggered by Rachel Carson.

I believe our only hope for the future

is to adopt a new conception of human ecology,

one in which we start to reconstitute our conception

of the richness of human capacity.

Our education system has mined our minds

in the way that we strip-mine the earth for a particular commodity.

And for the future, it won't serve us.

We have to rethink the fundamental principles

on which we're educating our children.

There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said,

"If all the insects were to disappear from the Earth,

within 50 years, all life on Earth would end.

If all human beings disappeared from the Earth,

within 50 years, all forms of life would flourish."

And he's right.

What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination.

We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely,

and that we avert some of the scenarios that we've talked about.

And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities

for the richness they are

and seeing our children for the hope that they are.

And our task is to educate their whole being,

so they can face this future.

By the way -- we may not see this future,

but they will.

And our job is to help them make something of it.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)