THE WORLD WE EXPLORE (Ken Robinson)

1. I think most people operate on a very limited conception of creativity and of intelligence. You see, my
experience of it is that people operate on all kinds of misconceptions about creativity. They think it's all about
the arts. And while the arts are terribly important, it's not just about the arts. They think it's about special
people. It's really not. I mean, if you're a human being, it comes with a kit. You are born with tremendous
creative capacities. The trouble is that creativity's a bit like literacy. You may have an aptitude for it but never
developed the abilities that are required to exercise it. That, to me, is a big fault of our education system. And
the third misconception is there's nothing you can do about it. You're creative or not, and that's the end of it.
And I believe there's a great deal you can do to make yourselves more creative.
2. I believe that our education systems currently are failing to keep pace with the developments in the external
world, which are moving with a tremendous speed and depth of change. And they have never been good at
connecting with our inner world. Very many people go through their education having no real sense of what lies
deep within them. I'm convinced of this, that we're all born with tremendous natural talents. But very few of us
actually get to tap into them, to tap into the depth of them.
3. So much has changed in the world around us. The rate of technological change has transformed everything.
And it will continue to. Many of the things that we think are so smart and groovy just now will be discarded
within ten years. I mean, I think if you show your grandchildren your iPad, they will smile at you with a kind of
patronizing look of how quaint it was that you thought this was so exciting.
4. The other fact is population growth, that's, I think, about to present us with challenges people haven't faced up
to. There was a very good program on the BBC last year. It was about how many people can live on Earth. And
they came to this view. You know, there are now seven and a half billion people on the planet, seven and a half
-- heading for seven and a half billion, which is more people than the whole history of humanity, by a long way.
And we don't know if the Earth can handle it. So they said if everybody on Earth were to consume at the same
rate as the average person in Rwanda -- you know, consume food, fuel, water, air, space. They said if everybody
on Earth were to consume at the same rate as the average person in Rwanda, that the Earth could sustain a
maximum population of 15 billion people. So we're halfway to that. The trouble, of course, is, we don't all
consume at the same rate as they do in Rwanda. They said if everybody on Earth were to consume at the same
rate as the average person in North America -- that's us -- the Earth could sustain a maximum population of 1.2
billion. So we're five times past that currently. So if everybody on Earth wants to live as we do in North
America -- and, by the way, they do -- we would need four more planets to make this feasible, which we don't
have.
5. And there's a paradox here. All of these challenges are created by human ingenuity and human innovation
and creativity. It's not the lemurs that are causing the problem. It's us. And at the very point where we need to
get even more innovative, more inventive, more ingenious to deal with the challenges that we have created, our
education systems are stifling the very capacities on which we're about to depend.
6. We really live in two worlds, don't we? There's a world that exists whether or not you exist, a world that came
into being before you did. It was here before you got here. It will be here well long after you are gone. It's the
world of other people, events, other circumstances. Our education systems are pretty obsessed with that world.
But there's another world that exists only because you exist. It's the world of your own private consciousness,
the world that came into being when you did, the world, as somebody once said, where there's only one set of
footprints, a world of your private passions, your motivations, your aspirations, your hopes, and your talents.
And I believe the future of the world around us, so far as we're concerned, depends on understanding much
more about the world within us.
7. And the more standardized our education systems become, the less amenable they are to allowing us to make
those explorations. You have no idea what your talents are, I'm sure. Our education systems are based on
three principles which are the opposite of how human life flourishes. The first one is conformity. Our systems
are becoming more and more standardized; whereas the great pulse of human life is diversity. We are here in all
of our varied differences, we are centers of unique talents and possibilities, each of us in every child. The
second is our education systems are based on compliance, more and more. Whereas the energy of human life is
creativity and innovation. But the third is this: human life is organic. We create our lives, our education
systems are based on a principal of linearity. I would bet very few of are you of living the life now that you
anticipated you would be living when you left school; is that correct?
8. So what I'm saying is if we're serious about exploring the world around us, we have to explore the world within
us. We do that, as Van Jones I thought said beautifully earlier, by looking again at the broad structure of

education, we need to restore arts programs, sports programs, we need to re-professionalize the teaching
profession. Above all, we have to personalize education to every child in the system. We have the technology
now for the first time in human history to do it.
9. Don't worry about the planet. Worry about us. And what we can do to live harmoniously with it. When I asked
you how intelligent you are, that's the wrong question. The real question is how are you intelligent. The question
is not how creative are you; it's how are you creative. If we can flip our education to get to a better sense of
human capacity, then I think we'll have a better chance of understanding and making sense of the world within
us and the world around us.
10. H.G. Wells, the science fiction writer in the early '20s, said, "Civilization is a race between education and
catastrophe." Now, it may or may not be the case, but what we do know is that the great bridge between the
two worlds that we live in is education. And I think that we have to rebuild it so we can build a bridge to the
future.