Listen to this interesting talk about creativity and fill in the gaps. Then you can check your answers reading the KEY below. You can read the rest of the transcripts here: transcripts
Good morning. How are you? It's been great,___________? I've been blown away by the whole thing. In fact, I'm leaving.
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 ______ 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 ______ play out.
I have an interest in education -- actually, what I find is, everybody has an interest ____ 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, if you _____ in education, you're not asked. 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," you know, "why me? My one night ____ all week." But if you ask people 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.
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 ______ grasp.
If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a ______, 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 _____________ on the really extraordinary capacity 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 ___________ found a talent.
And my contention is, all kids have tremendous _______ 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.
That was it, by the way, thank you very much. Soooo, 15 minutes _____. Well, I was born ...
I heard a great story recently, I love telling it, of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson, she was 6 and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this little girl hardly paid attention, and in this drawing lesson she did. The teacher _______________ and 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."
When my son was 4 in England -- actually he was 4 ______________, to be honest; if we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was 4 that year -- he was in the nativity play. Do you remember the story? No, it was big, it was a big story. Mel Gibson did the sequel, you may have seen it, "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!" He __________________ to speak, but you know the bit where the three kings come in. They come in bearing gifts, and they bring gold, frankincense and myrhh. This really happened -- we were sitting there and we think they just went out of sequence, we talked to the little boy afterward and we said, "You OK with that" and he said "Yeah, why, was that wrong?" -- they just switched, I think that was it. Anyway, the three boys came in, little 4-year-olds with tea towels on their heads, and they put these boxes down, and the first boy said, "I bring you gold." The second boy said, "I bring you myrhh." And the third boy said, "Frank sent this."
What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have _______________. Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong.
Now, 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___________ 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, by the way, we stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you _________________.
And the result is, 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 ______________________. 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?
KEY:
Good morning. How are you? It's been great, hasn't it? I've been blown away by the whole thing. In fact, I'm leaving.
There have been three themes, haven't there, 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, if you work in education, you're not asked. 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," you know, "why me? My one night out all week." But if you ask people 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.
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 capacity 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.
That was it, by the way, thank you very much. Soooo, 15 minutes left. Well, I was born ...
I heard a great story recently, I love telling it, of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson, she was 6 and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this little girl hardly paid attention, and in this drawing lesson she did. The teacher was fascinated and 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."
When my son was 4 in England -- actually he was 4 everywhere, to be honest; if we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was 4 that year -- he was in the nativity play. Do you remember the story? No, it was big, it was a big story. Mel Gibson did the sequel, you may have seen it, "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!" He didn't have to speak, but you know the bit where the three kings come in. They come in bearing gifts, and they bring gold, frankincense and myrhh. This really happened -- we were sitting there and we think they just went out of sequence, we talked to the little boy afterward and we said, "You OK with that" and he said "Yeah, why, was that wrong?" -- they just switched, I think that was it. Anyway, the three boys came in, little 4-year-olds with tea towels on their heads, and they put these boxes down, and the first boy said, "I bring you gold." The second boy said, "I bring you myrhh." And the third boy said, "Frank sent this."
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.
Now, 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, by the way, we stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.
And the result is, 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?
