Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!

Improve your listening skills!!!:


I was here four years ago, and I remember, at the time, that the talks weren't put online. I think they were given to TEDsters in a box, a box set of DVDs, which they put on their shelves, where they are now.

(Laughter)

And actually, Chris called me a week after I'd given my talk and he said, "We're going to start putting them online. Can we put yours online?" And I said, "Sure."

And four years later, as I said, it's been seen by four ... Well, it's been downloaded four million times. So I suppose you could multiply that by 20 or something to get the number of people who've seen it. And, as Chris says, there is a hunger for videos of me.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

... don't you feel?

(Laughter)

So, this whole event has been an elaborate build-up to me doing another one for you, so here it is.

(Laughter)

Al Gore spoke at the TED conference I spoke at four years ago and talked about the climate crisis. And I referenced that at the end of my last talk. So I want to pick up from there because I only had 18 minutes, frankly. So, as I was saying...

(Laughter)

You see, he's right. I mean, there is a major climate crisis, obviously, and I think if people don't believe it, they should get out more. (Laughter) But I believe there's a second climate crisis, which is as severe, which has the same origins, and that we have to deal with with the same urgency. And I mean by this -- and you may say, by the way, "Look, I'm good. I have one climate crisis; I don't really need the second one." But this is a crisis of, not natural resources -- though I believe that's true -- but a crisis of human resources.

I believe fundamentally, as many speakers have said during the past few days, that we make very poor use of our talents. Very many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of. I meet all kinds of people who don't think they're really good at anything.

Actually, I kind of divide the world into two groups now. Jeremy Bentham, the great utilitarian philosopher, once spiked this argument. He said, "There are two types of people in this world: those who divide the world into two types and those who do not." (Laughter) Well, I do. (Laughter)

I meet all kinds of people who don't enjoy what they do. They simply go through their lives getting on with it. They get no great pleasure from what they do. They endure it rather than enjoy it and wait for the weekend. But I also meet people who love what they do and couldn't imagine doing anything else. If you said to them, "Don't do this anymore," they'd wonder what you were talking about. Because it isn't what they do, it's who they are. They say, "But this is me, you know. It would be foolish for me to abandon this, because it speaks to my most authentic self." And it's not true of enough people. In fact, on the contrary, I think it's still true of a minority of people. I think there are many

possible explanations for it. And high among them is education, because education, in a way, dislocates very many people from their natural talents. And human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they're not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves. And you might imagine education would be the way that happens, but too often it's not. Every education system in the world is being reformed at the moment and it's not enough. Reform is no use anymore, because that's simply improving a broken model. What we need -- and the word's been used many times during the course of the past few days -- is not evolution, but a revolution in education. This has to be transformed into something else.

(Applause)

One of the real challenges is to innovate fundamentally in education. Innovation is hard because it means doing something that people don't find very easy, for the most part. It means challenging what we take for granted, things that we think are obvious. The great problem for reform or transformation is the tyranny of common sense; things that people think, "Well, it can't be done any other way because that's the way it's done."

I came across a great quote recently from Abraham Lincoln, who I thought you'd be pleased to have quoted at this point. (Laughter) He said this in December 1862 to the second annual meeting of Congress. I ought to explain that I have no idea what was happening at the time. We don't teach American history in Britain. (Laughter) We suppress it. You know, this is our policy. (Laughter) So, no doubt, something fascinating was happening in December 1862, which the Americans among us will be aware of.

But he said this: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion." I love that. Not rise to it, rise with it. "As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

I love that word, "disenthrall." You know what it means? That there are ideas that all of us are enthralled to, which we simply take for granted as the natural order of things, the way things are. And many of our ideas have been formed, not to meet the circumstances of this century, but to cope with the circumstances of previous centuries. But our minds are still hypnotized by them, and we have to disenthrall ourselves of some of them. Now, doing this is easier said than done. It's very hard to know, by the way, what it is you take for granted. (Laughter) And the reason is that you take it for granted.

So let me ask you something you may take for granted. How many of you here are over the age of 25? That's not what I think you take for granted, I'm sure you're familiar with that already. Are there any people here under the age of 25? Great. Now, those over 25, could you put your hands up if you're wearing your wristwatch? Now that's a great deal of us, isn't it? Ask a room full of teenagers the same thing. Teenagers do not wear wristwatches. I don't mean they can't or they're not allowed to, they just often choose not to. And the reason is, you see, that we were brought up in a pre-digital culture, those of us over 25. And so for us, if you want to know the time you have to wear something to tell it. Kids now live in a world which is digitized, and the time, for them, is everywhere. They see no reason to do this. And by the way, you don't need to do it either; it's just that you've always done it and you carry on doing it. My daughter never wears a watch, my daughter Kate, who's 20. She doesn't see the point. As she says, "It's a single function device." (Laughter) "Like, how lame is that?" And I say, "No, no, it tells the date as well." (Laughter) "It has multiple functions."

But, you see, there are things we're enthralled to in education. Let me give you a couple of examples. One of them is the idea of linearity: that it starts here and you go through a track and if you do everything right, you will end up set for the rest of your life. Everybody who's spoken at TED has told us implicitly, or sometimes explicitly, a different story: that life is not linear; it's organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they help to create for us. But, you know, we have become obsessed with this linear narrative. And probably the pinnacle for education is getting you to college. I think we are obsessed with getting people to college. Certain sorts of college. I don't mean you shouldn't go to college, but not everybody needs to go and not everybody needs to go now. Maybe they go later, not right away.

And I was up in San Francisco a while ago doing a book signing. There was this guy buying a book, he was in his 30s. And I said, "What do you do?" And he said, "I'm a fireman." And I said, "How long have you been a fireman?" He said, "Always. I've always been a fireman." And I said, "Well, when did you decide?" He said, "As a kid." He said, "Actually, it was a problem for me at school, because at school, everybody wanted to be a fireman." He said, "But I wanted to be a fireman." And he said, "When I got to the senior year of school, my teachers didn't take it seriously. This one teacher didn't take it seriously. He said I was throwing my life away if that's all I chose to do with it; that I should go to college, I should become a professional person, that I had great potential and I was wasting my talent to do that." And he said, "It was humiliating because he said it in front of the whole class and I really felt dreadful. But it's what I wanted, and as soon as I left school, I applied to the fire service and I was accepted." And he said, "You know, I was thinking about that guy recently, just a few minutes ago when you were speaking, about this teacher," he said, "because six months ago, I saved his life." (Laughter) He said, "He was in a car wreck, and I pulled him out, gave him CPR, and I saved his wife's life as well." He said, "I think he thinks better of me now."

(Laughter)

(Applause)

You know, to me, human communities depend upon a diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability. And at the heart of our challenges -- (Applause) At the heart of the challenge is to reconstitute our sense of ability and of intelligence. This linearity thing is a problem.

When I arrived in L.A. about nine years ago, I came across a policy statement -- very well-intentioned -- which said, "College begins in kindergarten." No, it doesn't. (Laughter) It doesn't. If we had time, I could go into this, but we don't. (Laughter) Kindergarten begins in kindergarten. (Laughter) A friend of mine once said, "You know, a three year-old is not half a six year-old." (Laughter) (Applause) They're three.

But as we just heard in this last session, there's such competition now to get into kindergarten -- to get to the right kindergarten -- that people are being interviewed for it at three. Kids sitting in front of unimpressed panels, you know, with their resumes, (Laughter) flipping through and saying, "Well, this is it?" (Laughter) (Applause) "You've been around for 36 months, and this is it?" (Laughter) "You've achieved nothing -- commit. Spent the first six months breastfeeding, the way I can see it." (Laughter) See, it's outrageous as a conception, but it [unclear].

The other big issue is conformity. We have built our education systems on the model of fast food. This is something Jamie Oliver talked about the other day. You know there are two models of quality assurance in catering. One is fast food, where everything is standardized. The other are things like Zagat and Michelin restaurants, where everything is not standardized, they're customized to local circumstances. And we have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education, and it's impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.

(Applause)

I think we have to recognize a couple of things here. One is that human talent is tremendously diverse. People have very different aptitudes. I worked out recently that I was given a guitar as a kid at about the same time that Eric Clapton got his first guitar. You know, it worked out for Eric, that's all I'm saying. (Laughter) In a way, it did not for me. I could not get this thing to work no matter how often or how hard I blew into it. (Laughter) It just wouldn't work.

But it's not only about that. It's about passion. Often, people are good at things they don't really care for. It's about passion, and what excites our spirit and our energy. And if you're doing the thing that you love to do, that you're good at, time takes a different course entirely. My wife's just finished writing a novel, and I think it's a great book, but she disappears for hours on end. You know this, if you're doing something you love, an hour feels like five minutes. If you're doing something that doesn't resonate with your spirit, five minutes feels like an hour. And the reason so many people are opting out of education is because it doesn't feed their spirit, it doesn't feed their energy or their passion.

So I think we have to change metaphors. We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.

So when we look at reforming education and transforming it, it isn't like cloning a system. There are great ones, like KIPP's; it's a great system. There are many great models. It's about customizing to your circumstances and personalizing education to the people you're actually teaching. And doing that, I think, is the answer to the future because it's not about scaling a new solution; it's about creating a movement in education in which people develop their own solutions, but with external support based on a personalized curriculum.

Now in this room, there are people who represent extraordinary resources in business, in multimedia, in the Internet. These technologies, combined with the extraordinary talents of teachers, provide an opportunity to revolutionize education. And I urge you to get involved in it because it's vital, not just to ourselves, but to the future of our children. But we have to change from the industrial model to an agricultural model, where each school can be flourishing tomorrow. That's where children experience life. Or at home, if that's where they choose to be educated with their families or their friends.

There's been a lot of talk about dreams over the course of this few days. And I wanted to just very quickly ... I was very struck by Natalie Merchant's songs last night, recovering old poems. I wanted to read you a quick, very short poem from W. B. Yeats, who some of you may know. He wrote this to his love, Maud Gonne, and he was bewailing the fact that he couldn't really give her what he thought she wanted from him. And he says, "I've got something else, but it may not be for you."

He says this: "Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with gold and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." And every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams beneath our feet. And we should tread softly.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you very much.

Marco común europeo de referencia para las lenguas

FUENTE: WIKIPEDIA

El Marco común europeo de referencia para las lenguas: aprendizaje, enseñanza y evaluación es un estándar que pretende servir de patrón internacional para medir el nivel de comprensión y expresión orales y escritas en una lengua.

Pincha en la imagen para ver mas grande.

Distribución de los exámenes de la Universidad de Cambridge por el nivel en que se sitúan según el marco de referencia Europeo.

El Marco común europeo de referencia establece una serie de niveles para todas las lenguas a partir de los cuales se favorece la comparación u homologación de los distintos títulos emitidos por las entidades certificadas.

Bloque A: Usuario básico.

Nivel A1: Acceso.

Nivel A2: Plataforma.

Bloque B: Usuario independiente.

Nivel B1: Umbral.

Nivel B2: Avanzado.

Bloque C: Usuario competente.

Nivel C1: Dominio operativo eficaz.

Nivel C2: Maestría.

Why don't you try next thursday?

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Why don't you try next thursday?

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Pronunciation Poem

Team Hoyt

The Early Years

Rick was born in 1962 to Dick and Judy Hoyt. As a result of oxygen deprivation to Rick's brain at the time of his birth, Rick was diagnosed as a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy. Dick and Judy were advised to institutionalize Rick because there was no chance of him recovering, and little hope for Rick to live a "normal" life. This was just the beginning of Dick and Judy's quest for Rick's inclusion in community, sports, education and one day, the workplace.

Dick and Judy soon realized that though Rick couldn't walk or speak; he was quite astute and his eyes would follow them around the room. They fought to integrate Rick into the public school system, pushing administrators to see beyond Rick's physical limitations. Dick and Judy would take Rick sledding and swimming, and even taught him the alphabet and basic words, like any other child. After providing concrete evidence of Rick's intellect and ability to learn like everyone else, Dick and Judy needed to find a way to help Rick communicate for himself. 

With $5,000 in 1972 and a skilled group of engineers at Tufts University, an interactive computer was built for Rick. This computer consisted of a cursor being used to highlight every letter of the alphabet. Once the letter Rick wanted was highlighted, he was able to select it by just a simple tap with his head against a head piece attached to his wheelchair. When the computer was originally first brought home, Rick surprised everyone with his first words. Instead of saying, "Hi, Mom," or "Hi, Dad," Rick's first "spoken" words were: "Go, Bruins!" The Boston Bruins were in the Stanley Cup finals that season. It was clear from that moment on, that Rick loved sports and followed the game just like anyone else.

In 1975, at the age of 13, Rick was finally admitted into public school. After high school, Rick attended Boston University, and he graduated with a degree in Special Education in 1993. Dick retired in 1995 as a Lt. Colonel from the Air National Guard, after serving his country for 37 years.

The Beginning of Team Hoyt

In the spring of 1977, Rick told his father that he wanted to participate in a 5-mile benefit run for a Lacrosse player who had been paralyzed in an accident. Far from being a long-distance runner, Dick agreed to push Rick in his wheelchair and they finished all 5 miles, coming in next to last. That night, Rick told his father, "Dad, when I'm running, it feels like I'm not handicapped."

This realization was just the beginning of what would become over 1,000 races completed, including marathons, duathlons and triathlons (6 of them being Ironman competitions). Also adding to their list of achievements, Dick and Rick biked and ran across the U.S. in 1992, completing a full 3,735 miles in 45 days. 

In a triathlon, Dick will pull Rick in a boat with a bungee cord attached to a vest around his waist and to the front of the boat for the swimming stage. For the biking stage, Rick will ride a special two-seater bicycle, and then Dick will push Rick in his custom made running chair (for the running stage).

Rick was once asked, if he could give his father one thing, what would it be? Rick responded, "The thing I'd most like is for my dad to sit in the chair and I would push him for once."

The 2009 Boston Marathon was officially Team Hoyt's 1000th race. Rick always says if it comes down to doing one race a year he would like it to be the Boston Marathon: his favorite race. Dick Hoyt hopes that he is able to push Rick in the Boston Marathon when he is 70 years old (2011)! Neither Dick or Rick are ready to retire yet.

http://www.teamhoyt.com/index.html

News for the New Year 2012

Events for the new season:

January: 

Paul, voluntary native speaker and good friend is coming back to Spain and to the group this month. 

Welcome back to our speaking group!!

March:

English Camp: All the details will be here soon.