Do Schools Kill Creativity?
Brad: Okay I'm here joined by my wife Morgan, and we just watched Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk from 2006 titled Do schools kill creativity?
Morgan: Yes.
Brad: It's about 20 minutes long, it keeps your attention the whole time. We both took notes while we were watching it. Things that are takeaways, and this is how we prepared for my TED Talk, we watched others and we decided let's just take and steal the best ideas that we can use for our presentation.
Morgan: Exactly.
Brad: Morgan, what stood out to you from watching his talk?
Morgan: Well it's very interesting. He starts with a joke, "Good morning, how are you? It's been great, hasn't it?" And we wouldn't normally recommend that someone start like that because one thing he's doing really well is he's really engaging the audience that's in front of him and the audience that's right there. And that's a beautiful thing, that's a wonderful thing, you'll want to do that, but you'll also want to keep in mind the YouTube audience, the future people who are not sitting there watching you in-person live, that are watching you after the fact. And so he kind of starts slow and at first I wonder, "Oh gosh, maybe this isn't the best opening." But then he kind of lands with a joke and it works. He's not there too long.
Brad: Yeah, I thought it worked. What's interesting about this talk is just the time it took place in the life cycle of TED. TED was started in '84, went one year, then it didn't happen again for another six years. The organizers didn't make any money at it so they stopped. And then in 2001, Chris Anderson purchased TED. And then I don't think the videos started going online until after this year.
Morgan: Oh, I see.
Brad: Or maybe in-
Morgan: After the 2006 year?
Brad: Yeah, maybe 2009, something like that. But it's interesting because the lighting, he can see the audience, whereas TED and TEDx talks now, you can't see the audience.
Morgan: Because they're being recorded for the internet world.
Brad: Yeah, and this is before things were recorded for the internet world. And so the biggest thing I took away from his talk was just how comfortable he felt up there.
Morgan: Yes.
Brad: He may have been nervous but I couldn't tell that he was nervous.
Morgan: I wonder if some of that is because of his experience as a professor. He probably did a lot of lecture halls.
Brad: Yeah, that's a huge advantage.
Morgan: Very comfortable with the message.
Brad: Yeah, and that's why on our program I've talked to people about becoming a part of Toastmasters. And if you're not a part of Toastmasters and you've been selected to speak, becoming a part of Toastmasters and then giving your speech to different clubs, they will let you do that if they know you're going to do a TED Talk.
Morgan: That's right, because they're intrigued. It's intriguing.
Brad: Oh well, yeah. And people respect the TED Talk.
Morgan: Absolutely. And your church, group of friends, you can do that as well. As much practice as you can get in as possible. That's really advisable.
Brad: So anyway.
Morgan: Yeah.
Brad: What were your [crosstalk 00:03:23]?
Morgan: Another thought I had was I noticed a lot of pausing for effect. I think the pausing for effect is very good. He has really good timing. It's really tricky because if you're going to tell a joke of any kind, you're going to need to be really good at it. You have to be really comfortable with it and we don't usually recommend doing jokes if it's not something you've done plenty before. He had really good timing and pause, pause for effect. So that was something that really stuck out to me.
Brad: Yeah, something about the humor piece. Obviously, this is probably the funniest TED Talk I've ever listened to. The humor, and there is another very funny TED Talk on the top 10 list. It's the guy who replies to spam, spam email.
Morgan: Oh yeah that's funny.
Brad: We just saw that the other day. But Sir Ken Robinson, he's an academic. He's not a comedian. But I think part of what makes him so funny is that you're not expecting him to be funny.
Morgan: That's right. And you can tell, I think what helps his humor is his relaxed state. If he were maybe uncomfortable, then the audience is going to feel uncomfortable. And humor can be a way to relax yourself and relax the audience.
Brad: Yeah, and it's an English type of humor. It's very-
Morgan: Yeah, dry.
Brad: Dry, little quips, wordy. It's very English, kind of like a Fawlty Towers type of humor, John Cleese type of humor.
Morgan: Yeah.
Brad: What was interesting too about his talk is there wasn't a clear structure to it.
Morgan: Well there was some structure and I kind of wanted to point that out too.
Brad: Oh, sure.
Morgan: He was very good at saying, "Okay there's three things here. There's two things there." And he very clearly stated the problem: it's education that's meant to take us into this future that we can't grasp. This one thing he said, "If you think of it, children are starting school now and we are having to educate them to prepare them for 2065," years into the future where how can we know what the demands on these children will be if we don't even know what the world's going to look like in 2065? And so, he brings up this problem. And it's not even like he solves the problem in the TED Talk.
Brad: Yeah, he doesn't give a solution, other than like we need to change how we're doing academics.
Morgan: Oh, and I guess one solution that he might be pointing at is, creativity needs to be on the same level as literacy. We should look at creativity as just as important, because if somebody's going to be creative, they can be thinking outside of the box that we're currently in to prepare them and to actually do something worthwhile in 2065 whatever the world will look like then.
Morgan: And the one thing that really stuck out to me as well, I don't mean to hog this, but one thing that stuck out to me because I really like this talk, is that he said that we need to be free and able to take risks. Just being wrong doesn't make us necessarily, but it's the freedom and the bravery to be wrong that will allow us to be creative. And so helping our children to not be afraid to take risks. He did a beautiful job illustrating this with a few jokes. The Frank sent this. "We've never seen God." "Well you'll see him in a moment." That was just cute and it was very timely. And I think it was a perfect way to illustrate it in a humorous and engaging way.
Brad: Yeah, I thought so too. Humor is what stands out the most. He is somebody who lives his talk. And I would imagine how this talk came about was number one, there's always some sort of pressure on yourself when you're going to give a talk publicly, but TED wasn't known as TED yet to the general audience, to the general public. So it wasn't like, "Oh my God, I've got to give the talk of my life."
Morgan: Right.
Brad: My opinion, I think a lot of the key to his success and this being so popular is that he didn't rehearse this talk to death, where he lost all spontaneity. This is a very natural talk, very relaxed talk. And I think he is a natural... I think he does public speaking for a living. Like you said he's a professor. Did a little Google search on him. He is a sir, so he's been knighted by Queen of England. And so he's been around, he's well known. He does a lot of speaking. And I would imagine part of how this talk came about is, "I'm going to share some of my best ideas. I've got 20 minutes, I'm not going to present for a very lengthy period of time, and I'm just going to share the things that I think are most powerful that's worth spreading."
Morgan: Yeah.
Brad: I would assume he probably took things that he knew worked well, or that knew would be part of a good talk and combined those together. I don't think this was totally original, because everything he said, if you took out... If you look at his other previous, he has other TED Talks that he's done and they're nearly as good because they're more for made online. And I haven't seen them all, I just watched one, and I didn't finish it all. Honestly, most TED Talks I watch I start but I don't finish. The premise of the idea or the title is enough to get me in, but then the delivery and the execution of that talk is not enough to keep me watching. So most of these talks I don't even finish, but his, of course I did. It's very good.
Brad: But I think part of what helped him is not only just is he relaxed, I think he has experience in knowing and interacting with people on this idea. It's not a totally new subject to him. He lives it and he's interacted with people on it. And he knows how to keep an audience's attention because he's talked about this previously to people.
Morgan: Right, and you can tell that it comes from his heart, that it's very natural as you're saying because he has experience with it and he knows it intimately. And I love the way he uses quotes from important people to kind of back up his ideas. He used several quotes from Jonas Salk and other people to kind of illustrate the ideas. I think it's very impactful and it's powerful. And I think it's a good idea to do.
Brad: Yeah. And something he did, just kind of looking over my notes, he said nothing that I really disagree with. There's nothing in here I disagree with.
Morgan: Right, yeah.
Brad: He didn't get into the practicality of how to execute it. Like if he said, "Here's how we have to make creativity blah, blah, blah, blah, blah is important as literacy and you have to spend creativity class an hour a day like you do a reading class," yeah maybe I would disagree with some of that. But I agree with the idea, creativity's really important because we don't know what the world's going to look like in 65 years when these kids are retiring. And so we have to prepare them for that.
Morgan: And you know what's beautiful with the way he presented it too, it's almost like he's allowing you then to be creative and figure it out for yourself. He's not bogging us down with the pains of the minutiae and all of those details because that can be done in academic papers. I think that the way it was delivered was beautiful and he allows the audience to sort of come away with him in the idea of creativity and here's some fun stories, here's the main point. He always has this through line. The main point is creativity should be just as important as literacy. And that's the one thing that you should come away with, right?
Brad: Yeah. He did a fantastic talk and he ends with the story of the dancer, the girl that today we would put her on ADHD medicine and keep her from her potential.
Morgan: Right, which is just moving. It kind of makes you want to-
Brad: It's sad because it's like-
Morgan: What's happening in the world.
Brad: Well yeah, it happens, but like Walt Disney would probably be on ADHD medicine, somebody like him, very creative people. And we see that as an outlier and we think that's a problem, we've got to fix it because you've got to conform to the rest of the group.
Brad: He ended with a very moving story. He had some other stories earlier that... Basically part of what he did is he had a story and then he delivered his point.
Morgan: Right.
Brad: Kids aren't afraid of being wrong. He shared the church nativity story. Kids aren't afraid of being wrong. "If you're not afraid of being wrong, you won't be original," he says. And we get educated out of our creativity. And then he talks about Shakespeare as a child.
Morgan: And we don't think of children as being... We don't think of these great minds, these adults, as being children at one point. And where my brain goes at that point is, well how did those parents and teachers allow that child to flourish? How did they not get tamped down?
Brad: Yeah. Now when I listen to his talk I don't think of that as like oh my gosh that's a great idea. That's not the most original idea I've ever heard from a TED Talk. Are schools killing creativity? It's probably the best delivery I've ever heard out of a TED Talk.
Morgan: Right, which made it that much more viral.
Brad: Yeah. And it's also funny.
Morgan: Yes. People actually watch it.
Brad: When I did my talk, some of the feedback I got because I did it front of Toastmaster groups was, I need to have some humor in it. And the only place I could really include humor in mine was pretty much close to the beginning when I made my first point, after my introduction. My first a-ha, which is... My talk was basically what makes love last? I'm a marriage counselor, so what makes love last? I talk about couples. These couples that love lasts, they have a lot of problems. So I tried to give some humorous examples of that. If you're going to use humor, it's always best to practice in front of other people, especially on a platform like TED. But his idea isn't really the strongest part of this.
Morgan: Right, yeah.
Brad: Everybody who would agree with him are all the people who... You know maybe part of why this is viral? Maybe it is the idea. It's the people who weren't' academic. It's all the people who were somebody who said, "I didn't fit in at school because I was too creative and they tried to force me."
Morgan: Or, "I was too this," or "I was too that."
Brad: Yeah. I think that is part of what makes his talk resonate with people.
Morgan: The misfits and the outliers.
Brad: Yeah, because part of what he said in the talk is that there's different types of intelligence. You can learn by hearing, reading-
Morgan: Kinetic.
Brad: Kinetic, all these different ways, but the ways public schools teach, and really all schools pretty much teach, is about 30% of the kids learn that way. And so you're leaving 70% of the kids out. So maybe a talk like this, maybe part of why it's so important, is it actually reaches people-
Morgan: A large-
Brad: A large audience, more than you would think.
Morgan: Right.
Brad: A lot of these TED Talks are also watched in schools. Maybe that's part of it. So maybe there is more appeal to that idea than just on the surface. It's not like, "Oh okay." Somebody, if you've been in school and you're not one of the people who learn by hearing and reading and some of the other ways that you're normally taught, then you're going to be like, "Oh, yeah. Of course, man. This guy gets me."
Morgan: Yeah, "They get me." I think kind of the underlying current of what you're saying is, people can identify with it. It's almost like he's telling them, "There's nothing wrong with you, the system is broken. It's not you, it's them."
Brad: Yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah, it's not you that's at fault, it's the system that's broken.
Morgan: Which I think is a very, I think that's something we should all put in our talk, right?
Brad: Yeah.
Morgan: We should all be able to say, "It's not you and here's why."
Brad: That's a very good point.
Morgan: "It's the system that you're part of." I think that's a crucial element.
Brad: You know what though, what makes the talk better is the fact that he didn't say it explicitly like that.
Morgan: He didn't, you're right.
Brad: I think if people did that it would sound like pandering.
Morgan: Yeah, it would.
Brad: And that's part of what... Since in my talk, I talked about everybody has a lot of problems.
Morgan: Right, it's not just you.
Brad: What I said is, is that you can have a good marriage until you encounter a lot of these life transitions or disrupting experiences. And that was in my way of saying a similar thing. Like, "Hey you are good enough. It's just this other thing happened that stumbled you." So I think that's a really good point you're making. But he didn't say it explicitly. I think if he did it would've sounded like gobbly goop self-help.
Morgan: Yeah, people would kind of roll their eyes and be like, "Okay."
Brad: Yeah, roll their eyes. But he's giving examples of it.
Morgan: Yeah.
Brad: And then you've got your life experience that confirms it and you're like, "Oh, my God this guy gets me."
Morgan: Yeah, "This is great. I'll keep watching."
Brad: Yeah, "I'm going to keep watching. I'm going to see what else he says." And then you're going to share it to other people and say, "This is why I live in my mother's basement. Listen to this guy."
Morgan: Yeah, "It's excuses for why I didn't make it." No, I'm just kidding. Anyways.
Brad: Yeah, it's a very good talk, very good delivery.
Morgan: Yes.
Brad: The other thing I wanted to point out, is there's a lot of pressure we put on ourselves when we give a TED Talk. I got sick after giving mine because I had so much pressure, "This has got to be great. I want to use this not only to help others, of course, but I also want to use it as a stepping stone in my career." I don't even think that was on his radar.
Morgan: No, he didn't need it.
Brad: He didn't need it.
Morgan: His career was already-
Brad: He was already Sir Ken Robinson probably at that point.
Morgan: He was just there for fun.
Brad: Yeah, he was there for fun.
Morgan: He said that at the beginning, "Well everybody was really great. Okay, see you later." There's a piece of his humor.
Brad: But he wasn't talking for an online audience.
Morgan: That's right.
Brad: TED is now evolved into something way different. So I don't think he was limited by the pressure.
Morgan: That's true, that's right.
Brad: So I think today, in a way, we kind of are at a disadvantage than he was.
Morgan: Yeah, it's hard to overcome that piece.
Brad: And then the other thing is, two final points and then if you've got any final points. Basically when he tells his story about the girl that's a dancer but the doctor says, the mom what she told him, he's using dialogue.
Morgan: Right.
Brad: He's not just narrating it, he's using dialogue.
Morgan: Right, so he kind of illustrates the scene.
Brad: Yeah, and he ends with a positive story about what we should do.
Morgan: Right.
Brad: He doesn't end with a story on what we shouldn't do. When we end with a story on what we shouldn't do, it tends to be more of a depressing, negative talk. But it's still a moving talk because you're like, man, that girl easily could have just ended up as a statistic or never reached her true potential, but there was a doctor who recognized the important of creativity. And how rare is that? Especially back then in the 30s or 40s. You rarely find that today, but even back it would've been more rare.
Brad: My final thought, this is probably the easiest TED Talk I've ever listened to or watch.
Morgan: Yeah, it's very easy. It was a smooth 19 minutes.
Brad: It's very natural.
Morgan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Brad: I think a lot of the talks, we watched one by Meg Jay about-
Morgan: Which I love her book.
Brad: Yeah, we watched this last night. Is 30 the new 20? Very good ideas. It's one of those that you're like, every young kids needs to listen to this who's in their 20s. But as far as like, was it easy to listen to? Probably not.
Morgan: She was clearly uncomfortable.
Brad: Yeah, she's not a natural public speaker. She doesn't do that for a living.
Morgan: Right.
Brad: And she may have done book tours with her book and promoted it, but it's not her normal part of her job.
Morgan: Right, but it was still very enjoyable and we can talk more about hers later.
Brad: Yeah.
Morgan: That's great, thanks for including me.
Brad: Yeah.
Morgan: We'll go on to the next one.
