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> Among the first talks posted was Sir Ken Robinson’s “Do Schools Kill Creativity?,” which has since become the most viewed TED talk of all time Here's the vid

• hatsubishi 5y ago
  It's way faster to learn by yourself than from someone teaching you because you can go directly to what you need to understand etc. So it's more suitable for geniuses. Counterexamples to your point: Mozart, guy was copying whole compositions by memory at age 14 Adrian Lamo: didn't finish high school Einstein? And many others
  • occamrazor 5y ago
    Einstein had a degree in Maths and Physics and did his PhD as an external student while working at the Patent Office. How is he an example of schools killing creativity?
    • hatsubishi 5y ago
      The 12-year-old Einstein taught himself algebra and Euclidean geometry over a single summer. Einstein also independently discovered his own original proof of the Pythagorean theorem at age 12. And more at Wikipedia. Point is geniuses learn way faster by themselves than going to a class. It's a huge waste of time to sit in a lecture of someone speaking at turtle pace, I would fall asleep. Sorry if you went through that.
      • ckastner 5y ago
        > Point is geniuses learn way faster by themselves than going to a class. It's a huge waste of time to sit in a lecture of someone speaking at turtle pace, I would fall asleep. Sorry if you went through that. You're generalizing from some poorly taught class, whereas it's unlikely that a genius would remain in such a class, and also unlikely that the education would not also be supplemented with other forms of teaching. Terence Tao was a child prodigy the likes of which are rarely seen, and his bio is full of classes/teachings.
        • Mezzie 5y ago
          Eh. It depends on the kid and their circumstances. I was a child prodigy (I'm a much less impressive adult), and since I was from a rural area with divorced parents without much time for me, I spent plenty of time in 'normal' classes in addition to supplemental classes and educational opportunities. The difference between me and my (non-prodigy) siblings was that the teachers normally didn't expect me to pay attention/I was allowed to do pretty much whatever I wanted after I finished the assignments. I have to agree with hatsubishi to a degree: It IS boring as hell to be in a classroom setting made for people behind your level, and this is especially likely to happen at early ages. I don't think it's schools alone that kill the creativity, though. It was interesting going to events/being around other prodigies, because often I was the only kid there whose parents/adults didn't have a career already picked out for them by the time we hit middle school. The expectations of perfection, the sense that you're public property (with great gifts come great responsibility), and the social isolation of child geniuses does more to stunt them than the education system, in my opinion/experience.
          • ckastner 5y ago
            > Eh. It depends on the kid and their circumstances. Absolutely, hence why I phrased it as "unlikely". The wrong environment will kill anything.
            • Mezzie 5y ago
              It's hard to know whether my experience or Tao's is more representative. There's selection bias going on with regards to people's conception of a typical child prodigy since people are going to be more aware of successful/properly educated prodigies than the others.
  • david-gpu 5y ago
    > Counterexamples to your point: Mozart, guy was copying whole compositions by memory at age 14 Mozart's father, a professional composer and director, had a lot to do with Mozart's early musical development [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Mozart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Mozart
  • masklinn 5y ago
    > Counterexamples to your point: Mozart, guy was copying whole compositions by memory at age 14 Mozart’s father was a minor composer, accomplished musician, and skilled teacher (he published a well regarded violin textbook the same year WA was born). Mozart started picking up musical education through his father teaching his older sister. > Einstein? The tutored son of an engineer, graduate of ETH Zurich? Both of them were geniuses, but in both cases their familial background and educational access were not exactly minor. If you’re looking for something even remotely close to an actual self-made genius, it’s probably Ramanujan you want. And here you could actually argue formal education was unsuitable and damaging: dude was only interested in pure mathematics so failed out of two colleges (as well as his FA), nearly starved until he chanced a meeting with V. Ramaswamy Aiyer (the founder of the Indian Mathematical Society). But such stark examples are not common at all. It’s almost certain we collectively missed on a much higher number of Einsteins and Mozarts because they did not have the early access and education to blossom, than we stifled and smothered ramanujans. Would Jacob Collier exist if he’d been born in a slum of Chennai, on the streets of Bogota, or in a project? That seems doubtful. But how many Jacob Colliers did, and were lost?
  • ckastner 5y ago
    > It's way faster to learn by yourself than from someone teaching you because you can go directly to what you need to understand etc. That is a pretty weak conjecture, I think. I can think of a ton of issues where the fastest way is almost certainly having the guidance and counsel of a great teacher. Sure it's possible to teach yourself calculus, relativity theory, or even QED. I find it highly doubtful though that any student of Feynman's, for example, would have learned faster in self-study than from sitting in his class.
  • watwut 5y ago
    > Einstein Einstein went to school, graduated and all that. It was only really at highest level when he went to work at that patent office.
  • efdee 5y ago
    Putting Adrian Lamo between Mozart and Einstein is ridiculous.
• wikfwikf 5y ago
  I honestly do not think that the logical conclusion is that Shakespeare's English teacher was the best English teacher of all time. I interpreted the implication of the talk as being that Shakespeare's formal schooling, or lack of it, was at best irrelevant to his development as a great creative writer. This still supports the thesis of the talk - that the price children pay to participate in formal schooling is not worth it.
  • bluesign 5y ago
    "price children pay to participate in formal schooling is not worth it." It should be more like: "If you are an exceptional child, price you pay to participate in formal schooling is not worth it"
  • watwut 5y ago
    Is there historical reason to think that? That Shakespeare's would be better off without schooling and that his teachers and parents were crappy? Or that if Shakespeare's parents enforced bed time, it was at detriment? In non-writing arts, I know for a fact that there is lineage of famous artists - each learning from predecessors.
    • jrumbut 5y ago
      Even if it was true that every bit of schooling hurt Shakespeare, that effect is dwarfed by the contributions to his career made by the various mediocre talents who wrote stuff like Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (where he got so much of his historical material) and the other playwrights in the revenge genre. Same with Einstein, he had his problems with institutions but his breakthroughs relied on the work of their legions of average minds who developed physics and mathematics over the centuries. We should think about how we can best support the handful of geniuses who are held back by the educational system, however I wouldn't be surprised if the kind of education that works for the >99.999th percentile would be terrible for the other 99.999%.
      • ghaff 5y ago
        It seems pretty clear that those in the upper 10% (to pick a random number) of broad intellectual curiosity, motivation, home environment, etc. would likely be much better off with more self-directed learning than a rigid program--with some exceptions like probably languages.
• imgabe 5y ago
  > But really? Isn't the logical conclusion the opposite? That Shakespeare's English teacher was the best English teacher there ever was, because (he) helped him grow into the author we know now? I'm sure he had help, but if it were due to the teacher, there would have been hundreds of Shakespeares from all the pupils that teacher taught throughout their career. That wasn't the case though. Out of all the pupils that Shakespeare's teacher had, only one of them became Shakespeare.
  • watwut 5y ago
    > if it were due to the teacher, there would have been hundreds of Shakespeares from all the pupils that teacher taught throughout their career. They would not. Because many of those kids would move on to do something different. And also because success is more then just ability. Economy can not have hundreds of famous play writers, there are not enough theaters.
  • julian37 5y ago
    It can be both: that the teacher helped a _gifted_ boy grow into the author we know now, and the boy wouldn't have become the author we know now without them. Just because their other pupils didn't turn out to be legendary doesn't invalidate the teacher's contribution, which is to say, doesn't mean the joke was in good taste.
  • Arisaka1 5y ago
    You're also assuming that Shakespeare had only one teacher. His environment was simply set up in a way to tap his inherent aptitude. The notion that having inherent aptitude implies that it will manifest itself to the world regardless of the quality of one's environment is at best toxic and at worse insulting. To quote Stephen Jay: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops". For example, I grew up in a broken family, living with a stepmother who did her best to trip me until my father gets convinced that I should live with my mother instead. As a result, when my father was away, I received no help in my homework. Her kids did. In this scenario, the "nature over nurture" debater will argue that if I was meant to be good in math then I would be able to push through on my own without external assistance when needed. But when I didn't, my lack of understanding snowballed, my confidence got hit and I ended up being a gang member who avoids school to waste time in the arcade, smoke and pinball. Don't make the mistake of thinking that what I'm saying is that I would have been the next Einstein or that I'm ultra-talented and I blame my stepmother for not having a math phd. But maybe I would have been good enough not to repeat the same school year twice. Maybe having access to someone explaining to me how important mathematics are to programming would stimulate my interest more and would motivate me to try and get good at them instead of dodging my responsibilities. I dedicate my life in 2 things: Combat ageism and expose to programming as many people as possible. They don't have to want to become developers but, maybe they'll find it interesting enough to change their life or their workflows. Because I am not just a person, I'm also part of someone else's environment.
• Ygg2 5y ago
  > the joke being, of course, that it's ludicrous to think anyone ever tried to teach English to the greatest English writer of all time That's not the joke. The joke is, you can't imagine some teacher today tolerating Shakespeare-like talk. See his intro anecdote. Someone fidgeting and being unruly is more likely to get medicated than educated. > But really? Isn't the logical conclusion the opposite? That Shakespeare's English teacher was the best English teacher there ever was Do you know that he wrote because he had the greatest English teacher? Or was it his own passion? Or did he just hate someone's guts enough. For example Harlan Ellison hated his writing teacher. I think the teacher even threw Harlan out of the class. So Harlan being the tiny ball of spite, as he was, mailed mentions of his rewards to the man, some letters even found him post-humously. Because Harlan forgot to check up on him.
  • ginko 5y ago
    >See his intro anecdote. Someone fidgeting and being unruly is more likely to get medicated than educated. I'd imagine a fidgeting and unruly student in a 16th century grammar school would get beaten.
    • Ygg2 5y ago
      I'd say brusies come and go but medicating something can alter neurochemistry on a much more fundamental level. Especially in children/teens.
      • watwut 5y ago
        Generally, they were just beaten and dropped out as soon as possible hating the school.
• avip 5y ago
  It's pretty irrelevant to derive any conclusion about mass public education systems based on extreme outliers. No one will "become Bach" by attending a school with good music curriculum, and no school could have input a Bach-level talent and output a median musician.
  • bluesign 5y ago
    That's the all selling point of the talk though. System is hiding potential outliers ( like the dancer example ) Although it is conveniently ignoring the failure examples.
  • watwut 5y ago
    Bach has gotten tons of schooling. He got born in family of musicians and was taught by them. When his parents died, he lived with brother that continued to teach him. And when he was 15, he went to prestigious school. Also, classical music in general involves a lot of theory. It is not just about "make nice sounding tune by intuition".
    • masklinn 5y ago
      Not just classical composition either, I really should not be at this point but I’m regularly surprised about “contemporary” (50s and forwards) musicians having a strong classical (playing) or formal background. Youtube has really opened my eyes on the subject as well: there are truckloads of jazz players discussing musical theory. Which makes a lot of sense in hindsight: properly deconstructing and playing with structures is difficult if you don’t deeply understand those structures. But I’m not really musically inclined and I’ve never been fond of jazz so I never saw this.
      • watwut 5y ago
        Yeah, Jazz is heavy on theory too. Especially for improvisation and jamming, you really really need to know what you are doing and which tone will match what the group is doing at the same time. But to play folk or rock music for example, you do not need that much of it. If you can read music sheet, you can reproduce the song. You can kinda create similar own going by intuition. But, creating the stuff Bach was creating absolutely does require tons of knowledge.
• lbriner 5y ago
  I think you are correct and I am struggling to understand why lots of intelligent people are missing the logical fallacy in their responses. I don't know the formal description but the logic is: Shakespeare didn't have a teacher and became a genius, therefore nobody should have teachers and they will become geniuses. It doesn't follow. Sharespeare like random other people were gifted in some way. If what others are saying is true, everyone in the olden days before widespread shooling would be amazing too. They weren't. Why? Because education is related to a whole load of variables. The support/lack of parents and the community they operate in. E.g. middle-class vs working class. Their nutrition level and ability to concentrate; the other kids in their classes who might support or detract from learning; the quality of the teaching in the school; and many other things. Clearly the best way to learn is to hang around people who are passionate about their subjects but probably the next best thing is a school where you can get a balanced education that is hopefully partially related to the basic skills you need to get around in life.
  • bluesign 5y ago
    This talk is using "feel good about yourself" playbook, that's why it is the most viewed one. - You cannot succeed unless you try. ( This is misinterpreted by average joe as "if I believe/try enough I will succeed, if not I didn't try enough ) - If you are a failure, it is not your fault. ( This one is the basic blame the system playbook ) Examples of exceptional people chosen specifically, Sharespeare, The Dancer, etc. Everybody thinks they have some undiscovered talent, nobody wants to be the average. There will be some exceptional people, and with current schooling some exceptional talent will be lost, but it is much better than having less than average educated majority.
  • bambax 5y ago
    I think the genius story is not only false, it is elitist and dangerous. What the joke says, in essence, is that a teacher's job is to identify the Shakespeares, and then prevent anyone from getting in their way. And what do we do with the non-Shakespeares? I guess we just dump them and move to another part of the world... Just like little Sarah, the girlfriend of the speaker's son he mentions at 8'15. > He [James, the speaker's son, who was 16 at the time] said 'I'll never find another girl like Sarah.' And we were rather pleased about that frankly, because she was the main reason we were leaving the country. Audience laughs and laughs at this. I don't care for that joke either. Yet the interesting part here is that, in some cases, it's apparently ok to intervene in your children's life -- as opposed to letting them do their thing and pursue their creativity. Isn't it possible however, that James and Sarah would have had a child who would have become another Mozart, or Einstein? We'll never know.
• Fiahil 5y ago
  You may criticize TED, but here we are, having a debate on one of the most popular talk. Isn't it the point ?
• mr_pinnen 5y ago
  The joke is about imagining a famous historic person as a child instead of an adult. I think it's just in there to lighten the presentation up rather than make a big point about Shakespeare. I think the idea you are presenting is a straw man.
• have_faith 5y ago
  > the joke being, of course, that it's ludicrous to think anyone ever tried to teach English to the greatest English writer of all time This isn't the joke exactly. It's a joke about what could have happened should Shakespeare at age seven had a miserable english education like many current people's experience. His argument throughout the talk is not anti-school or anti-teacher, his contention is with the arrangement of these elements that produce what we think of today as the schooling system. He's not advocating for children not to have teachers. > Isn't the logical conclusion the opposite? That Shakespeare's English teacher was the best English teacher there ever was If it was down to the brilliance of the teacher then that teacher could just produced more Shakespeare's throughout their career.
• mudita 5y ago
  A long time ago I read Dan Simmons series article “Writing well”, where he argued that Shakespeare greatly profited from his education in a - very uncreative -grammar school, which emphasised learning of latin and imitation of latin rhetoric. https://web.archive.org/web/20170411075439/http://www.dansimmons.com/writing_welll/archive/2009_06.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20170411075439/http://www.dansim...
• boh 5y ago
  Our culture is overly obsessed with the concept of certification as being a necessary precursor for professional legitimization. Shakespeare did not have anything close to what we'd interpret as a modern education and it's interesting that you regard some imaginary English teacher as a major influence. Artists for the majority of history learned most of their trades on the job. We mythologize the education system as the only legitimate venue for learning when it's a fairly new invention. Robinson's point wasn't attacking teachers, but the bureaucratic factory farm of universal education that does more to categorize and institutionalize labor, then foster creativity and critical thinking.
  • bambax 5y ago
    I didn't bring up Shakespeare's English teacher; Robinson did. But there have been teachers since at least Antiquity. And speaking of Antiquity, where do you think Shakespeare learned about Caesar, Cleopatra, Alexander? (Not by watching Youtube videos.) Here's an extract of a critic of the book "How the Classics Made Shakespeare" by Jonathan Bate: > Bate reminds us that in Shakespeare’s day, a boy from a solidly middle-class family like his would have gotten a rigorous classical education even at a regional local school in Stratford. In Elizabethan England the core of education was learning Latin and then reading and translating into English the Roman classics, including Ovid, Horace, Virgil, and Cicero. It was thus largely the classics that initially shaped Shakespeare’s basic conception of literature, offering him models of lyric poetry, comedy, and tragedy that he followed throughout his career. https://isi.org/modern-age/shakespeare-and-classical-antiquity/ https://isi.org/modern-age/shakespeare-and-classical-antiqui...
  • datavirtue 5y ago
    I took my son out of school in 4th-5th grade and did absolutely zero formal education with him. He entered college at 15, and has since noped out (at 18). Very sharp kid who is not terribly inspired by the prospect of working for any of our institutions. I'm quickly joining him.
    • jimbokun 5y ago
      What's he doing instead?
• lr4444lr 5y ago
  I dunno. Maybe the joke is spot on. Sure we can chicken-and-egg the problem, but someone has to be the first to make scientific discoveries just as much as reach new heights in poetry. And we surely have enough known examples of luminaries who had absolutely horrendous parents or teachers or life circumstances. We don't have great records about the historical Shakespeare, and I don't dismiss your PoV out of hand, but I am not sure it's totally correct either. We have to leave room for natural genius and insight.
• JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  I'm not so sure. My OK brother-in-law was decrying the state of his primary education. He mentioned it took a full year of remedial tutoring to be ready for college at 18. I asked "So, an entire primary education can be recapitulated in a few months by an 18-year-old. Why then do we torment children with 12 years of schooling? If it isn't necessary?" He had no answer, being a teacher himself. But I wonder.
  • kergonath 5y ago
    > So, an entire primary education can be recapitulated in a few months by an 18-year-old. That’s not exactly fair. During his primary education, he learnt enough to complete it in a few months. This does not tell how long it would have taken had he never gone to school at all.
  • hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    One year of one teacher tutoring one student contains far more attention than 12 years of one teacher teaching 30 children. Also, school is as much a daycare so the parents can go to work, as it is a place of "learning". Furthermore, you study specifically to pass tests. Actual learning is a secondary side-effect of education.
    • JoeAltmaier 5y ago
      Curiously if we stopped trying to teach infants for 12 years, there would be enough teachers to tutor 18-year-olds with proper attention. Daycare exists already. If that's what we want, that's what we should pay for and get. Seem like theatre to combine the two.
      • hypertele-Xii 5y ago
        A great deal of postmodern civilization indeed seems suspiciously much like theatre :)
• dmix 5y ago
  I want to go to the school you went to.
• fortran77 5y ago
  > This idea is a tale for little kids. You might even say, as Shakespeare would, that it is a "tale told by an idiot / Full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing."
• tim333 5y ago
  >the joke being, of course, that it's ludicrous to think anyone ever tried to teach English to the greatest English writer of all time I didn't take that as the joke. Not much is known about Shakespeare's childhood but if you look at someone like Mozart he was coached by family from an early age. By seven if he had had a music class at school he probably would have been way better by the teacher. If I was to bet on it I'd guess Shakespeare was taught English way before seven.
• teknofobi 5y ago
  Is that Jeff Bezos in the audience at 14:59, laughing at the joke about a man speaking his mind in the woods?