It's incredibly upsetting how old is this and how everything is still the same.

I hate it when you do something a certain way that works efficiently and correctly but the teacher gets mad because it's not the way you're supposed to do it.

R.I.P Ken Robinson (1950 - 2020). Thank you for your work.

14 years and this is still relevant. When will schools realize that grades aren’t a fair way to test effort and just imposes the notion that failure is wrong? I could only hope some brilliant people would think of a way to design school and the whole system such that kids learn and teachers teach, where everyone does their job in an environment that fuels each kids interests and potential.

Clap clap. 12 years have gone by, we're still in the same boat.

Loved this quote: "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original" - Sir Ken Robinson

11:27 - 11:50 - his words were spot on. In a world of youtubers, digital creators and meme makers, you actually don't need a degree in, you need creativity.

16 years later, still my favorite TED talk. RIP sir Ken

Almost 10 years since this video was posted and unfortunately nothing has changed.

Modern education: Creating people who are smart enough to accurately repeat what they're told and follow orders, and dumb enough to think this makes them smarter than everyone else.

"The whole purpose of public education, throughout the world, is to produce university professors...The universities designed the system in their own image [and the system itself] is a protracted process of university entrance. " *Finally,* someone *said* what so many uni students have been *thinking* and *realizing.*

I remember watching this years ago as a teenager. It's amazing how forward-thinking he is! Can you imagine that the issues that he mentioned happening 15 years ago are still relevant till this day.

It’s so sad now that he’s gone, he will be dearly missed, Rest in peace Sir Ken

The audience is laughing but actually what he says is very painful. Schools kill not only creativity, but also innocence.

At first I felt despairing for my kids who have adhd, are medicated and are schooled in a mainstream school that they get bored by... But I also see that I can support their creativity outside of school by listening to and observing them, taking note of their interests and offering them space and opportunities to explore them.

My whole dissertation stemmed from this ted talk, I am an actor and have just started temporarily working in Education in between jobs, heartbroken to find the education still in the exact same state as he talks about, academic subjects with such a hierarchy and creativity still being shrinked if not killed. I hope I live to see this change

Do schools kill creativity? Making an entire class write something they have no interest in and forcing them to have X amount of words. Yes. I would say it does. It kills the want to learn.

Now im staring at my Homework thinking if I should do it or not,

"Academic inflation" is a good way to describe it. One of the main problems is that individual students don't get the required help they actually need, and many children that have one or more talents never discover what their talents really are. I also strongly agree that intelligence is interactive. That's how you learn. Later, when you have accumulated enough knowledge and experience, you can use this in combination with your intelligence, but before that you need to learn through an active feedback system.

I come back to this every couple of years as it is simply the perfect speech.

As Mark Twain said: "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education".

“I never let school get in the way of my education” -Mark Twain

To this day I get anxiety when summer ends only because the little boy in me is terrified of having to go back to school. Schools did everything to make pupils the same and discourage any form of creativity

This is the best Ted Talk out there. Period . Equally engaging, enlightening and hilarious; delivered in a way that people are not bored nor swaying away from the topic at hand ! All Hail Sir Ken Robinson 🙌

School kills everything. Creativity, The Soul, Self Esteem, Individuality, Innocence, Critical Thought, etc.

Who's here after hearing of his passing? This is one of the best TedTalks I've watched. It definitely helped me shape my principles as a teacher. You will be missed.

Intelligence, irony, comedy and depth united in this conference. Extraordinary. Thank you👋👋👋

I shall cherish this day that I'm here watching this as a perspective teacher... Shall try and bring change 🙏

My kindergarten teacher crushed my dreams when she told me that I can't be a Jedi because they don't exist. Many tears were had that night.

Education system cause many highly-brilliant people think they're not. -Sir Ken Robinson Best quote ever!

I'm from those kids who had started there education journey in 2006 I'm not willing to retired in 2065!, instead I'll retire before middle 30's. I quit from studying Dentistry because it wasn't my passion and I'm that crazy dude in the entire family who believes in what he capable of, and I'll Push myself in sake for helping others and stand against greedyness❤

I consider this a valuable lecture. RIP Sir Ken Robinson. I didn't know he had passed away. A man with a great mind. I hope my creativity hasn't dissapeared yet 😭

I really do think school kills creativity.

14 years later after this video I'm still sitting sitting in a room 7 hours a day not learning anything. Nothing changed what a waste.

The best TED talk ever.

"Imagination is a weapon. Those who lack it are first to die."

Watching this 13 years later. It Makes more sense. His son is still four.

came for learning, stayed for comedy. and learning.

Brilliant .. having ADHD and being an artist and one of lifes creatives, I can totally relate to this 🙏🏿

I will continue to watch this over and over and over again and recommend it to others for the rest of my life. It will always be relevant and enjoyable. You live on sir Ken

I hope that people don't misunderstand this video. It's not that school isn't important. It obviously is. However, creativity is not something you learn through typical education. Art is more about experience than it is about knowledge. That being said, knowledge is still very important.

He's the funniest comedian I've ever seen and he's not even a comedian

Rest in peace Sir Ken Robinson...I rewatched this at times for some inspiration. Just learned about it today.

This video is mind blowing..... We need more Ken Robinsons in this world today.....

This video was 10 years ago. Nothing's changed.

School can also kill self esteem.

This video is 15 years old and already true about education inflation. People are educating and competition is so high that creativity is becoming extinct and noble pursuits of life unfollowed.

I've just started reading ''Out of Our Minds'' by Sir Ken R., which brought me here. He did so much; I so enjoyed this video--especially as an artist and art educator. So for more of his ideas--and humor--there is the legacy of his books. I eventually taught teachers--Art in the Classroom, and Art for themselves, and heard again that the art activities (where probably almost none would have chosen an art course) were the highlight of their week, their only time of pure pleasure.

So sad to hear of Sir Ken Robinson’s passing yesterday (Aug 21, 2020). This talk from more than a decade ago was one of my favorites growing up, and I hoped to meet him in person someday. An inspiration to so many. RIP Sir Ken Robinson (1950-2020).

I forgot 75% of what I learned in high school. The other 25% that I remember is useless.

I'm an educator and on the way to reach higher levels. Everything start from THIS video.

Rip Sir Robinson, thank you for your passion and dedication, for changing my perspective on education and myself. I really hope to be able to put everything you spoke about into action. You were a blessing to us all.

I totally agree. As said in the video. “All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” -Pablo Picasso. When we grow up, we become frightened for being wrong and in the school system, mistakes are the worst thing you can make. But isn't school supposed to prepare us for the future? The knowledge we gain from school matters but creativity is still necessary. Students spend 18+ years in their lives taking tests, memorizing informations and spent hours finishing homeworks. However, true learning is born out of lasting understanding, not grades and tests. The informations we memorize fades by the time, but our creativity won’t. In school, even if you’re allowed to be creative, they put a lot of restrictions in it. Students are expected to follow methods instead of creating their own. For example, in Literature. Students are often given strict guidelines for writing things like poems. School makes us create poems that have precise rules for each individual line, making poetry seem very constricted and uncreative. School drains out creativity of oneself.That’s why school must focus on empowering students’ creativity.

Is this guy an educator or comedian? Apparently he's both and he seems quite effective at them as well.

"Classes will dull your mind Destroy the potential for any creativity"

I'm not one to sit for long periods of time and listen to people just talk, but when i tell you that this session has done something to my soul and i would'nt even consider myself as an active creative. Thank you for this.

It's incredibly upsetting how old is this and how everything is still the same. School killed my will to live

10 years later and still relevant, that's the problem

I had the pleasure and honor to spend time with Sir Kenneth Robinson in October of 2017. I sat next to him at a dinner I hosted at my family's restaurant. He told a story of meeting Sir Paul McCartney, and how they mutually agreed to stop calling each other with a "Sir" prefix since both were "Sirs." I couldn't stop laughing. He asked me my favorite Beatle song ("not fair, there are so many. All of them?" I replied) I finally decided on A Day in the Life as my current favorite. He told me that use to be his favorite, but now it's Please Please Me because it was one of the few helped launch them into eternity. RIP Sir Kenneth Robinson (my dinner friend).

It is very true that people give sometimes very little to creativity.

I can definitely tell you that school killed my creativity. I used to come up with so many different charecters and stories and all that when I was younger, but I seperated myself from my younger self. I had more important things to do like get good grades and write 3 page essays about a debate as stupid as apples to oranges. And when he came back to me in 9th grade and asked me if I wanted to write a story, I felt nothing but disgust at the thought of having to open microsoft word again having already done so for so many hours. And now I'm in 10th grade and I regret pushing him away and letting him go, and I keep trying to trace his footsteps but he's running faster than I can track and his voice becomes more and more faint. I try and I try so hard but I can't bring back the person I once was after so many years of being told to let him go.

Reminds me of how much I HATED school and school hated me.... except for a handful of wonderful teachers who made a difference. Thank you to Tommy Jones (simply for conversations) R Gerallt Jones (who gave a label to what I was interested in... and gave me a book "The Prison Letters of George Jackson"), Dr I D Williams (hands on Nuffield Physics) and Mrs Bowen (English Language and Literature). There were some who should have been put in jail and I spit on their graves; but not these.

He was a symbol of wisdom for me. :( Rest in Peace! 💚

14 years later, I hope we learned smth from his talk and are making a difference now! Great one ☝️

Yes, it does. I love writing, I'm trying to write a book, but I never have time to do so. I have no time to do anything I love - I have to write essays, tests, worksheets about things I don't care about. Now to open MS Word brings a tsunami of anxiety down upon me when I want to work on my passion project. My mind is mush by the end of the day, and I can't do it anymore... it's disheartening.

I was just saying that kids tend to know what they want to be when they grow up. High school kids don't have a clue. That is evidence that there is something wrong with our system.

I come back to this talk every now and then to remind me how to present. Its just incredible.

After so many years still such a great talk. Guy deserves all kinds of praise... 🙌😌💐💐🎉

I learned more maths, physics, biology, philosophy, law, history, critical thinking and skepticism from my public library than I ever did in school. School should be a place where you find your happiness in what you want to do for the rest of your life, not kill your passions.

Mistakes were punished so harshly in my family that I learned how to expertly avoid responsibility. Can't fail if you never try, right? What a wonderful lesson that was imparted onto me, thank you education system and parents!

Such a brilliant talk. The story he told about the dancer and her discovery of her gift was so powerful! What if we didn’t give people the advice to numb that which makes them special, and instead gave them support to grow their talents behind their wildest dreams? What would this world look like? We must move out of the vibration that lowers the value of creativity and into the vibration that truly understands the power of creativity, and the unlimited potential that exists to humanity when we combine creativity with intellect.

Each of us can be a creative person, the main thing is to understand what we like to do the most, what brings pleasure, and also delights other people. It is very important to learn to listen to yourself and realize your talents, to be creative. I really liked Ken Robinson's monologue

I wish I had seen this video when I was at school

Let’s have a moment of silence for the memory of Sir Ken Robinson, rest in peace

Rip legend. We will do everything we can to continue your vision and makes the world a more creative place

One of the worst things about school is the wonky distribution of subjects. For some reason you just get way more time for some subjects than you do for others. I am failing one of the classes I care about the most and put some of the most effort into simply because I haven't had the time to work on some of the tasks. Meanwhile, I'm doing just fine on my least favourite subject, English, because we've got two periods of it every day except Wednesday (and the weekend). It pisses me off how I have to spend more time on the subjects I hate than the ones I actually want to be doing.

A decade later and nothing has changed

I rarely put my hand up to answer a question or ask a question in fear of getting it wrong and being yelled at. Some of my teachers get angry when we ask a "stupid" question or don't know easy things and this is putting me off learning.

I never tire of listening to this man, never. RIP Sir Ken.

Wow! That's actually the most inspiring TED talk I've watched. This man passed away but he is changinng the world

I'm an English teacher who is still at the bottom of the totem pole but when I get onto campus, my students gather around me while each one of them is trying to chat with me. I don't go to the office for a while. I just stay there between them while the other experienced teacher usually sneer at my from behind the window. I'm not sure whether this is completely correct, but I've never been too strict with my students. When I'm with them I don't worry to wear my heart on my sleeve. We love and understand each other. Sometimes we don't do homework. Sometimes we watch movies instead of doing grammar exercises. I believe they learn much better this way and I've seen it they do. I just hope in the long run, I'll be remembered as the English teacher who made them smile at class.

I remember vividly my mother defending my right to be left handed in 1954. "Common sense" was the argument for swatting my hand if I used the "wrong" one. Love ya mom.....

Something that school definitely kills for me is the desire to read. At the end of last summer I decided to finally finish the Mistborn books. I read through books 2-6 in about 2.5 weeks. The fastest I'd ever read a series. Then this past school year came along and as usual we had to read some "classics" in English and do some personal reading. I read roughly the same amount of book in those 2.5 weeks as I did over a 9 month school year. Only now when I have nothing to occupy my time in summer am I now dipping my toes back into reading on my own. Luckily, I don't need to take an English class next year.

Sir Ken Robinson. Thank you. You're among us still going amazing. Love never dies.

video quality: 240p speech quality: 4K

That's why I prioritize my personal work rather than school

To this date an incredible thought leader in this space. Always fun, inspiring and thought provoking to watch! What a shame he had to leave us so soon.

I've just re-watched this, years after I first saw it and the message is as powerful now as it was 16 years ago!

1. I agree that schools have become a kid storage facility for children while the adults are at work, teaching them one-size-fits-all random things just for the sake of teaching, and have them remember the information long enough to pass a test. Most Parents of course think this is good, but is it effective? 2. School also serve a more valuable purpose; socializing. This can go both ways if stopping bullying is not a primary initiative, but school is a place where kids learn how to socialize and interact with other kids, which is probably the most important knowledge they'll take away from attending school in the first place. 3. Other than maths, a bit of history and languages, I find that most of what I was taught over the decades I have attend school has been forgotten, because 95% of it has been either uninteresting or inapplicable to daily life. All the skills I utilize in my career have been taught through on-the-job experience. Do we really need 2 decades of school to apply for a job? 4. Why do schools not prepare children for life? Why are there literally no to minimal focus on entrepreneurship/doing your taxes/home economics/cooking/agriculture/world politics/problems?

I'm 16, I've been telling stories for as long as I can remember, and I started putting them to paper three years ago. I've always been a "gifted" child--I excelled in math and science, and everyone told me how important and special I was because of my academic achievements, so I thought that my passion for writing was unimportant. I hid it. Even my parents and many of my closest friends had no idea I would pour hours and hours into my stories weekly, or even daily. This year, though, I took a high school writing class, which accompanied my English class. My teacher not only writes but is also very well-respected in the theater community, and has written several original pieces. It was only recently that I had the opportunity to write something creative for his class--a script for an original scene--and by the time I got around to it, I was exhausted from all of my academic work. I wrote the script in under two hours. It was far from my best work, but I simply didn't have the extra time to put into it. After I turned it in, my writing teacher approached me and told me it was outstanding, that he wished he'd had the opportunity to read my creative writing earlier, and that he wanted me to polish it and enter it in a short play contest next year. I'd hidden my love of writing for three years, and almost nobody had ever read, let alone praised, my work, so I was blown away--and I still am. I never dreamed that my "hobby" could be worth acknowledging, but now I was finally being told it was--not by the school system, but by a man who worked in a creative field. In the past few weeks I've opened up more and let more and more people read my work, again, outside of the school curriculum, and I've been told time and time again that I have a promising future in creative writing, if I choose to take it. I've been offered advice, I've been called a prodigy, people have offered to mentor me--it's astounding. And nothing I've shown people has been my best work! But I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that my creative achievements are more important than my academic ones...because only academic achievement is praised by the school system. I still have to sacrifice most of my time to math and science, because in the eyes of the school system, my writing is not worth a grade. In the eyes of the school system, my passion, my devotion to a creative outlet, means nothing. I'm not the only person I know in this situation--my experience might be somewhat of an extreme case, but I know gifted artists and musicians who are also seeing their talent and creativity squandered by the school system. I've seen it at every school I've ever been to, with dozens and dozens of passionate people. I've witnessed the exact moment when people gave up on their dreams because they were told math and science were more important than what they loved. The school system kills creativity.

I started kindergarten the year he gave this talk, so the kids that he mentioned as “entering school this year” just graduated high school. Time flies

I love how he cracks the audience up each time he delivers his speech!! 😂 very powerful speaker. ✨

My creativity died long ago, still finishing thesis for master degree. Now I'm afraid to get wrong, I punish myself when doing it wrong. I hate myself because why now I realized that all the time I insulted my creativity. I hope when I'm graduate, I can get my creativity back.

I failed school, but school failed me first.

Still rewatching, and re-laughing at all of his jokes right now And for sure will watch and laugh in the future. Truly an inspiration!

Watching the video now that I spent years in education and I work online as an engineer the whole day with my feet and fingers that continuosly vibrate to move out from the desk. Caught in the act!! Great video

It blows my mind that this talk was on Buzzfeed's list of worst TED Talks of all time. It very well may be the best.

"She's not sick... she's a dancer." Best line ever.

I watched this talk for many times and every time I'm touched deeply by his wise words. Unfortunately, he is no longer with us. Thank you so much, Ken!

This is really good. I'm a high school student and I've noticed since grade 9 they push the idea of secondary school like a goal and not an option. This is my favourite TED talk. Unfortunately , things haven't changed since then