- What's the topic of the TED talk? what's the main idea? When does the speaker introduce his idea? How?
The main idea is how we squander kids' talents in schools; mistakes are stigmatized so we educate people out of their creative capacities.
- What are the means of support used by the speaker to support his idea? Examples.
He uses lots of examples, quotations and anecdotes. For example, he talks about a girl who was told she had a learning disorder because she couldn't stay still, but she ended up being a great dancer.
- What's the speaker conclusion? How does he "conclude"?
He concludes reviewing everything he's said and he thinks that yes, of course schools kill creativity, the education system seems made for that purpose.
I believe the speaker is being very reasonable, schools do not allow creativity; instead, they usually teach children to study ideas without thinking about them, because they only need to repeat them. So not only is he right, but he seems to understand the key problem about the education system: discarding people who don't fit the criteria, even if they have another kind of intelligence. Nowadays, it seems like you are only going to be successful if you go to university and study very hard; therefore, students who are more creative or who have another interests, are forced to study something they don't like or to be seen as lazy people who don't care about their future. If schools allowed and encouraged creativity, we could have a better and more diverse world, full of people reaching their full capabilities and being able to have a nice life putting those capabilities to work.
Notes I took while I was watching the TED Talk:
How we squander kids' talents. Creativity should be given a higher status in education. Supports his idea using stories: the girl who drew God; a kid who said "Frank sent this"; Shakespeare being a child; choreographer being told she had a learning disorder when she was a kid because she couldn't sit still in class, but she had amazing talent for dancing, she had to move to think.If you're not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with something great. We stigmatize mistakes. As a result, we are educating people out of their creative capacities, we grow out of creativity or we are educated out of it.Every education system has the same subject hierarchy: humanities and art are at the bottom. What's public education for? The purpose is to produce university professors, the biggest form of achievement, supposedly. Academic capability makes talented people think they're not ready for higher forms of education or good for school. Degrees aren't worth anything now. There's academic inflation. Intelligence is diverse, dynamic and distinct. Human ecology -- the education system won't serve us for the future. Quote about human beings disappearing from Earth. We have to celebrate human imagination. Educate kids so they can make something of their future.