From Open Culture, the collectors of cool on the internets, this is an excellent TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson on the incredible dysfunction of the American, test-centric educational quagmire.

He is the author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything (2009), a New York Times bestseller, as well as his classic work on creativity and innovation, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative (2011, 10th anniversary edition), and his latest book, Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life, which will be published by Viking, May 21, 2013.

Ken Robinson Explains How to Escape the Death Valley of American Education

May 15th, 2013


Right now, you can find 1,520 TED Talks compiled into a neat online spreadsheet. That’s a lot of TED Talks. And the most popular one (in case you’re wondering) was delivered by Sir Ken Robinson in 2006. If you regularly visit our site, then chances are you’re among the 20 million people who have viewed Robinson’s talk on why Schools Kill Creativity. There’s also a good chance that you’ll want to watch his newly-released TED Talk, How to Escape Education’s Death Valley. Filmed just last month, this talk takes aim at America’s test-centric educational system, a system that increasingly treats education as an industrial process and bleeds creativity and curiosity out of our classrooms. You get that problem when you put technocrats and politicians, not teachers, in charge of things. And you’re only going to get more of it (sorry to say) as computer scientists start putting their stamp on America’s educational future.

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Robinson's TED bio:

Why you should listen to him:

Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. It's a message with deep resonance. Robinson's TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? "Everyone should watch this."

A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His 2009 book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, is a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 21 languages. A 10th anniversary edition of his classic work on creativity and innovation, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, was published in 2011. His latest book, Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life, will be published by Viking in May 2013.

"Ken's vision and expertise is sought by public and commercial organizations throughout the world."

~ BBC Radio 4

Quotes by Ken Robinson
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”