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Every country on earth, at the moment,
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is reforming public education.
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There are two reasons for it.
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The first of them is economic.
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People are trying to work out
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how do we educate our children
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to take their place in the economies of 21st century,
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How do we do that?
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Given that we can't anticipate
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what the economy would look like
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at the end of next week,
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as the recent turmoil is demonstrating.
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How do we do that?
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The second one though is cultural.
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Every country on earth is trying to figure out
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how do we educate our children
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so that they have a sense of cultural identity
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so that we
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can pass on the cultural genes of our communities
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while being a part of the process of globalisation.
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How do we square that circle?
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The problem is they are trying to meet the future
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by doing what they did in the past.
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On the way they are alienating millions of kids
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who don't see any purpose in going to school.
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When we went to school,
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we were kept there with a story
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which was if you worked hard and did well
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and got a college degree,
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you would have a job.
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Our kids don't believe that.
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And they are right not to, by the way.
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You are better having a degree than not.
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But it's not a guarantee anymore.
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And particularly not if the route to it marginalises
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most things you think are important about yourself.
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Some people say we have to raise standards
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as if this is a breakthrough.
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Like really? Yes, we should.
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Why would you lower them?
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I haven't come across an argument that
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persuades me alluringly.
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But raise them? Of course, we should raise them.
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The problem is
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that the current system of education
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was designed and conceived and structured
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for a different age.
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It was conceived
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in the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment.
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And in the economic circumstances
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of the Industrial Revolution.
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Before the middle of the 19th century,
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there were no systems of public education.
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Not really.
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You could get educated by the Jesuits
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if you had the money.
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But public education paid for from taxation,
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compulsory to everybody,
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and free at the point of delivery.
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That was a revolutionary idea.
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And many people objected to it.
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They said
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It's not possible for many street kids,
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working class children
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to benefit from public education.
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They are incapable of learning to read and write
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Why are we spending time on this?
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So they are all sort of built into it.
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A whole series of assumptions
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about social structure and capacity
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It was driven by the economic imperative of the time.
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But running right through it,
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was an intellectual model of the mind.
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which was essentially
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the Enlightenment view of intelligence.
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That real intelligence consists in
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capacity of certain type of deductive reasoning,
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and the knowledge of the classics originally
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what we come to think of as academic ability.
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And this is deep in the gene pool of public education
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There are two types of people.
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Academic and non-academic.
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Smart people and non-smart people.
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And the consequence of that is
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that many brilliant people think they are not.
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Because they are being judged
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against this particular view of the mind.
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So we have twin pillars
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Economic and intellectual
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And my view is
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that this model has caused chaos
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in many people's lives
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It's been great for some.
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There have been people
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who have benefitted wonderfully from it.
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But most people have not.
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Intead they suffered this.
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This is the modern epidemic.
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And it's as misplaced
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and it's as fictitious.
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This is the plague of ADHD.
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Now this is a map of instances of ADHD in America.
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Or the prescription for ADHD.
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Don't mistake me.
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I don't mean to say that there is no such thing as
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Attention Deficit Disorder.
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I am not qualified to say that there is such a thing.
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I know that a great majority of
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psychologists and pediatricians
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think that there is such a thing.
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But it's still a matter of debate.
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What I do know for a fact is
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that it's not an epidemic.
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These kids are being medicated as routinely
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as we had our tonsils taken out.
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And on the same whimsical basis
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and for the same reason, medical fashion.
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Our children are living
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in the most intensely stimulating period
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in the history of the Earth.
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They are being beseiged with information
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and calls for their attention from every platform.
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computers,
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from iPhones,
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from advertising hoardings,
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from hundreds of television channels.
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And we are penalising them now,
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for getting distracted.
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From what?
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Boring stuff.
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At school, for the most part.
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It seems to me that it's not a coincidence totally.
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that the incidence of ADHD has risen
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in parallel with the growth of standardised testing.
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Now these kids are being given
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Ritilin and Adderall and all manner of things,
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often quite dangerous drugs.
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to get them focussed and calm them down.
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But according to this, Attention Deficit Disorder
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increases as you travel east across the country.
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People start losing interest in Oklahoma,
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they can hardly think straight in Arkansas,
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and by the time they get to Washington
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they've lost it completely.
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And there are separate reasons for that, I believe.
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It's a fictitious epidemic.
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If you think of it, the arts,
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and I don't say this exclusively of the arts.
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I think it's also true of science.
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and of maths.
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But let me
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I say about the arts particularly
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because they are victims of this mentality currently.
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Particularly.
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The arts,
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especially address the idea of aesthetic experience.
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An aesthetic experience is
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one in which your senses are operating at their peak.
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When you are present in the current moment,
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When you are resonating with the excitement
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of this thing that you are experiencing.
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When you are fully alive.
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An anaesthetic is when you shut your senses off.
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And deaden yourself to what's happening.
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And a lot of these drugs are that.
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We are getting our children through education
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by anaesthetising them.
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And I think we should be doing the exact opposite.
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We shouldn't be putting them to sleep.
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We should be waking them up.
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to what they have inside of themselves.
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But the model we have is this.
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I believe we have a system of education
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that is modeled on the interests of Industrialism
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and in the image of it.
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I will give you a couple of examples.
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Schools are
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still pretty much organized on factory lines.
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So ringing bells,
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separate facilities,
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specialised inter-separate subjects.
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We still educate children by batches.
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We put them through the system by age group.
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Why do we do that?
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Why is there this assumption that
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the most important thing kids have in common
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is how old they are.
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It's like the most important thing about them
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is their date of manufacture.
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Well I know kids who are much better than other kids
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at the same age and different disciplines.
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Or different times of the day.
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Or better in smaller groups than in large groups.
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Or sometimes they want to be on their own.
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If you are interested in the model of learning,
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you don't start from this production line mentality.
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It's essentially about conformity
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and increasingly it's about that.
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as you look at the growth of standardised testing
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and standardised curricula,
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and it's about standardisation.
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I believe we got to go in the exact opposite direction.
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That's what I mean by changing the paradigm.
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There is a great study done recently,
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of divergent thinking,
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published couple of years ago,
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Divergent thinking isn't the same thing as creativity.
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I define creativity
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as the process of having original ideas,
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that have value.
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Divergent thinking isn't a synonym.
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But it's an essential capacity for creativity.
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It's the ability
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to see lots of possible answers to a question.
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Lots of possible ways of interpreting a question.
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To think what Edward de Bono would call "laterally",
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to think not just in linear or convergent ways.
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To see multiple answers not one.
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I mean, there are tests for this.
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One kind of cod example would be
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People might be asked to say,
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How many uses can you think of for a paper clip?
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Routine questions.
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Most people might come up with 10 or 15.
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People who are good at this might come up with 200.
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And they do that by saying well,
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could the paper clip be 200 ft tall
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and made out of foam rubber?
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Does it have to be paper clip as we know it, Jim?
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Now there are tests for this.
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They gave them to 1,500 people
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in a book called Break Point & Beyond,
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and on the protocol of the test,
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if you scored above a certain level,
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you would be considered genius at divergent thinking.
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OK?
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So my question to you is,
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what percentage of the people tested of the 1500
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scored genius level for divergent thinking?
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And you need to know one more thing about them.
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These were kindergarden children.
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So what do you think?
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What percentage genius level?
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80%? Thank you.
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80%. OK.
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98%.
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Now the thing about this was that
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it was a longitudinal study.
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So they retested the same children 5 years later.
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Age of 8 to 10.
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What do you think? 50%?
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They retested them again 5 years later.
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Ages 13 to 15.
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You can see a trend here, can't you?
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Now, this tells an interesting story.
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Because you could've imagined it going the other way, couldn't you?
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You start off not being very good,
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but you get better as you get older.