Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson | TED

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 relevantClosely connected or appropriate to what is being done or said. to what I want to talk about.

One is the extraordinaryVery unusual or surprising 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, franklyIn a direct and honest way..

(Laughter) If you work in education, you're not asked.

(Laughter) And you're never asked back, curiouslyIn a strange or unusual way..

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.