12 August 2009

TED and Reddit asked Sir Ken Robinson anything -- and he answered

For the first in a new series of community-driven Q&As, TED and Reddit joined forces to ask creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson any question. TED fans converged on this article on Reddit to post their questions, and to vote on questions posed by others. Today, we asked Sir Ken the 10 questions with the most votes. Here are his answers:

submitted by kn0thing
What specific actions do you recommend taking to overhaul, say, public education to maximize how we identify and nurture creativity? And what place do you think things like critical thinking and logic (also noticeably absent) have in basic education?

Sir Ken: The basis of my argument is: creativity isn't a specific activity; it's a quality of things we do. You can be creative in anything -- in math, science, engineering, philosophy -- as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance. And you can certainly be involved in the arts in ways that are especially creative. And so it's important to emphasize that it's not about creating some small space in schools where people can be creative, and particularly not if that means just tacking on some art programs on a Friday afternoon. It's about the way we do things.

And that really has a couple of implications. One of them is, if you want to encourage creativity in education, there are a couple of ways to think about it. One is that there are skills of creative thinking that can be taught. I think of this as general creativity. You can help them think productively, generate ideas effectively, help them to think of alternative approaches to issues and questions. So there are very specific skills that can be taught, and in a metaphorical sense, it's kind of like a grammar of creativity. It's a series of processes, not an event. And helping people understand how that works is an important part of being creative. You wouldn't expect people to become literate just by hoping it'd happen. There was a time when people argued seriously that it was difficult to teach working class people to read and write -- that they didn't have the capacity for it. This was before the beginning of public education. But now we know that most people -- we take it as axiomatic and ethically important that most people can be taught to read or write. But they have to be taught. They have to be given tools and techniques for it.

And I think it's true in many areas of creative thinking that people can be helped by learning techniques and processes. So there's a sense in which you talk about creativity in a general way. But I also think of it as a personal process, too. That's what this new book I've written, The Element, is all about. It's about people finding their particular, individual creative strengths, because we all have very different strengths and capacities. There are different types of intellectual strengths. Some people are very visual. Some are very verbal. Some people are good physically. Some people are good at mathematics, kind of naturally.

So that's the first thing: Creativity can be facilitated in any sort of activity. Secondly that we can think about personal and general forms of creativity. When it comes to education, it has implications in three big areas. One of them is the curriculum. A lot of what I argue for in schools is we need to re-think the school curriculum. It has major implications for what it is people are meant to learn and understand, which is what the curriculum is. The second big piece of education is teaching, or pedagogy. There's a question later on about this, so I'll come to it there. And thirdly, there's assessment -- what we reward and the form the reward takes when we come to judge the work.

I did a big report for the British government called All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education. It's available online. The British government put together a national strategy to promote creativity in education. I also published a book a few years ago, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. The idea is you have to make the idea of creativity clear and operational. Like we have done with literacy. And when you've done that, then the practical tasks become clearer.

submitted by guru
As a kid, I spent all of my free time at a computer, soaking up as much as I could about how it worked on every level. All that exploration really made my career possible.

But I didn't have great grades in school, because I had a hard time developing a curiosity about much beyond the computer. My dad always said, "You need to be more well-rounded," and he encouraged me to take on a sport or a musical instrument. But like many of the subjects in school, those things never really stuck for me when I was growing up.

As an adult, my interests have expanded far beyond the computer screen. In college I minored in photography, and at first it was a technical interest in the gear and the magic of the darkroom, but that quickly gave way a deeper interest in visual aesthetics, design, and the whole world of art and art history. I've found over time that similar links exist between all of my interests, and learning a new subject is only a matter of finding the right bridge from my current interests.

I imagine this is how most people learn. So why do we make these distinctions between "math", "biology", "history", and "art", when they are all linked, and when the interconnections so often make them meaningful? Is it OK if children are not "well-rounded," as long as they are following their curiosities, or does a lack of "well-roundedness" mean we are not exposing them to enough bridges to new interests?

Sir Ken: I think he's completely right about this. One of the points I make in the TEDTalk, and that I make generally, is that the human mind is essentially created. We live in worlds that we have forged and composed. It's much more true than any of the species that you see. I mean, it seems to me that one of the most distinctive features of human intelligence is the capacity to imagine, to project out of our own immediate circumstances and to bring to mind things that aren't present here and now. You know, to conceive of the past, to anticipate the future, and not just a future but multiple possible futures and many different sorts of pasts.

So this capacity for imagination, to me, is absolutely at the heart of this whole argument.Creativity to me is a step on. Creativity is putting your imagination to work and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture. I mean, it is really the foundation of human culture, I believe. And it's generated multiple ways of looking at the world, multiple ways of seeing it, multiple ways of thinking about it.

What happened over the course of the development of our public institutions is that these different ways of thinking tend to become formalized into subjects. Schools and universities are built upon different forms of knowledge, and the way we most commonly think about them is as subjects.

And I think subjects is a poor idea, really, for the kind of work I'm interested to promote, because it suggests that the world is definable into entirely different sorts of content or subject matter. And this really matters to me, because what happens then is that people are employed at institutions to teach these things, and to teach their own sort of specialism, so that math becomes separate from languages. It becomes separated from science, and you know it's a different subject because it's on a Thursday and it's taught by different people. It's less true in elementary school, and especially true in high schools. But what we also know about knowledge is that its constantly evolving and morphing and mutating, and the history of ideas, the history of leading edge thinking is of the constant reconfiguration of disciplines and of concepts.

So now, we live in an age where there are multiple variations of different disciplines -- the merging of physics and chemistry and of engineering and genetics. And the problem is that schools and institutions are often slow to keep up with these changes. They often run far ahead of institutions' capability to respond to them.

So, I think, firstly, I think this question pokes at an informed truth. I think it's seeing connections rather than differences which is the heart, I believe, of human progress. And we spend a lot of time, in the West particularly I think, insisting on ways of thinking that are based on seeing differences rather than seeing relationships. You know, formal logic is a bit like that. It's seeing clear distinctions. Well, distinctions are important, but relationships are equally important. You see it especially in areas like medicine, where you have people specializing in one organ or another organ without looking at the whole organism. So, schools, I think, tend to compound that.

I want, really, to get away from the idea of subjects and I think disciplines is a much better idea. A discipline suggests something which is a kind of an amalgam, a mixture of concepts, of practical skills, of techniques, of ideas, of data. I mean, mathematics isn't really a subject. It's a whole series of different sorts of disciplines. And I think that's true of music. Music isn't really a subject, but practicing music involves extraordinary levels -- different levels -- of ideas, of practical skills, of sensibility.

So, I think part of the problem that we make these distinctions is historical and I think our guy here, guru, is right, that the way that I might think about education is from a much dynamic and fluid set of relationships between different forms of knowledge, different ways of thinking.

But I also think the second part is true as well. That is, I agree with the second point which is that one of the results of this overspecialization is that people do lose a sense of balance. We spend too much time, very often, focused on our particular area and lose sight of the larger picture. So when he says "Is it OK if children are not well-rounded as long as they follow their curiosities?" I don't think so, really. I mean, I think it's important for us all to find our particular passions and our strengths, but I think it's equally important that we can at least pull back and look into other fields and other disciplines to see connections.

submitted by kunjaan
What do you think is the correct way to grade/rank/assess an individual's academic performance?

And what do you think should & should not be included in standardized entrance exams like SAT?

Sir Ken: Just two quick thought about this -- one is to ask why we have these systems of assessment in the first place. I'm not against standardized testing in itself. Some things we can clearly submit to a standardized test. There are some things which we agree are true or not true. There are some skills we've either got or we haven't got, some things we know or we don't know, you know, in terms of propositional ideas, and we can test them. If I want to understand if somebody hasn't got a proper grasp of French grammar and French vocabulary, then I don't have any objection to figuring out a test which helps me to make a judgment about that. And it's true in areas of the arts. In music, there are lots of standardized tests which grade competencies in dexterity with the instrument and knowledge of music instrumentation and ideas and skills.

It's not that I am against standardized testing. What I've personally got a rant about is the extent to which standardized testing, firstly, has become a massive commercial industry which is detached, in most cases, from the real purpose of education. And secondly, the extent to which we've come to associate standardizing with raising standards. Now, everybody agrees we should raise standards in schools. Of course you should. But, the primary instrument that's being used is standardized testing. And the problem with it is that it fails to do the one thing we know works if we want to improve standards in schools, which is to address personal development.

The larger argument about this is that when I say public education arose in response to industrialism, it also developed in the image of industrialism. If you look at public education systems in their general shape, they are manufacturing processes. And a lot of it happens -- we separate people by age, it's a very linear process, very focused on certain types of outcome. And standardized testing is, in a way, the grand example of the industrial method of education. It's not there to identify what individuals can do. It's there to look at things to which they conform.

You've almost got to get the balance right here, but we've had now years and years and billions of dollars worth of investment in the expansion of standardized testing, in American schools for example (but this isn't just America, it's around the world), and for the most part they've not been successful in doing what they're expected to, which is to raise standards. If anything, they seem to have contributed to a lowering of morale in schools. They seem to have contributed to an erosion of commitment. In America, for example, there's something like a minimum of 30 percent dropout rates from high schools -- it's much higher among certain ethnic communities. Kids are being turned off from school, in part because of the whole culture, not just the tests themselves, but the educational culture they promote.

So, my argument is that instead of standardizing everything in schools we should be going in the opposite direction. I don't think there's a kid in America, or anywhere in the world, who gets out of bed in the morning wondering what they can do to raise their state's reading standards. They get out of bed, if they're motivated, by their own interests and their own development. So I think we should be doing the opposite. I think we should be personalizing everything in schools. We should be looking at ways of making education relevant to each individual child. And there's no other way of improving standards. Actually, there's no other way of doing it on the grand scale.

Now the problem with standardized tests is that it's based on the mistake that we can simply scale up the education of children like you would scale up making carburetors. And we can't, because human beings are very different from motorcars, and they have feelings about what they do and motivations in doing it, or not. And, all the schools I know that are great have something in common -- they all have great teachers and they have a commitment to the personal development of each of the pupils in the school. And that's easily lost in a culture of standardizing.

So, I'm not against standardized testing, in their place. I think they can have useful diagnostic roles. I don't think they should be the dominant culture of our school system. And, I think it's incumbent on individual schools and teachers to make sure that they're not.

And the second bit of this is what do I think should be included or not. I just want to say a quick thing about this, which is that if you think about it, an assessment has two parts to it, one of which is a description and one of which is a comparison. For example, if you said of somebody that they had run a mile in four minutes, that's not an assessment. That's simply a statement of something they can do. But, if you said that they were the fastest athlete in Wisconsin, or the best miler in Wisconsin, that's an assessment because what you're then doing is comparing what they can do to what other people can do. There's some implied external standard.

So, an assessment is always two things. It has a description implied and a comparison.

I think the problem with most standardized tests or graded tests or lettered sort of assessments is that they're often very heavy on comparison and very light on description. So you get kids coming out of programs with an A- or a B or something, but it's not clear to anybody else what that really means. What does that mean they can do? And it's really what people can do, and what they're interested in, and what they're capable of that is of most importance in education.

As a good counter-case actually, my daughter just now is at community college here in Los Angeles. It's a fantastic college. It's Santa Monica College. It's much better, I think, than most of the other institutions that are catering to the same age groups. But, she's been doing a course these last couple of semesters in dressmaking and design. And it's a really interesting thing, you know, in our culture, doing practical things is disparaged in education. It's all about getting into a university and doing theoretical things. But the world turns on people being able to do things, not just think about doing things. And practical skills, like music and design, are intensely demanding.

So one thing she has to do is to make a dress. Well, it sounds easy, but try doing it. It's extremely taxing to do it. But what was interesting was that the assessment that came back was very detailed. It referred to very specific things that she was doing about seams and cloth and pockets and buttonholes and the lay of the nap in the cloth. It was broken down into probably 30 very specific comments on the details of what she'd done. And it was a really helpful process of assessment. But if she's had the thing and then just got a B for it, you'd think, "Well now, what do I do with that information?"

So, if assessment is textured and finely-grained, and is supportive and diagnostic, I'm all for it. If it's coarse and simplistic and judgmental and uninformative, then it seems to me always to be negative and have the wrong sort of effects in education.

READ MORE: TED and Reddit's Q&A with Sir Ken Robinson continues after the jump ...

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06 August 2009

TED and Reddit ask Sir Ken Robinson absolutely anything!

TED and Reddit are teaming up to give you the opportunity to ask creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson absolutely anything! Sir Ken, whose 2006 talk on rethinking education remains one of the most-watched in the TEDTalks series, has agreed to answer the TED and Reddit communities' questions on any topic. If you have a burning question you'd like Sir Ken to answer, please follow these steps:

1. Join Reddit (click "register" at top right)

2. Post your question in Reddit's comments

3. Take a moment to upvote the questions you like most

Sir Ken will answer the 10 most-upvoted comments as of Monday, August 10th, 7pm Eastern time. We'll post his responses here on the TED Blog the following day!

Watch Sir Ken's TEDTalk here:

About Sir Ken Robinson
Sir Ken is a creativity expert. He challenges the way we're educating our children, and champions a radical rethinking of our school systems to better cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. His latest book, The Element, looks at how we find our creative passion.

About TED and Reddit
TED and Reddit's relationship started not long after TEDTalks began appearing on Reddit's front page. TED is currently a featured channel on the newly-launched RedditTV. And this joint "Ask Anything" feature is only the first of many!

More: See what happened when TED asked Gever Tulley, Philip Zimbardo and Seth Godin absolutely anything.

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15 July 2009

Go behind the scenes of a TEDTalk

It's our third anniversary of posting TEDTalks free to the world! We started in June 2006 with our first six talks -- including Sir Ken Robinson, Al Gore, Majora Carter ... Three years and 486 talks later, we hope you'll enjoy this mini-documentary, "Behind the TEDTalk." It stars TED Curator Chris Anderson and the TED team, and a roster of speakers you love: Elizabeth Gilbert, Hans Rosling, Seth Godin and more, in a 6-minute look behind the scenes:

Download the "Behind the TEDTalk" documentary:

+ Zipped MP4
+ Unzipped MP4
+ Unzipped high-def (480p)

Our thanks to the m ss ng p eces team, and to the speakers, thinkers and doers whose interviews tell this story.

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08 January 2009

Sir Ken Robinson's new book, The Element

Sir Ken Robinson's new book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, is published today in the United States and on Feb. 12 everywhere. It's the book he mentions in his TEDTalk ...

He sends this message to the TED community:

"At TED 2006, I talked about creativity and education and the urgent need to make the best of all of our talents. I said I was writing a book about this called Epiphany. The book is published today - except it's not called Epiphany. it's called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. The Element is where natural talent meets personal passion. When people arrive at the Element, they feel most themselves and achieve at their highest levels. The Element draws on a wide range of personal stories, from Paul McCartney to Matt Groening; from Meg Ryan to writer Arianna Huffington to renowned physicist Richard Feynman and others, including business leaders and athletes. It looks at the critical conditions that enable us to find the Element in ourselves and in others, and the obstacles that get in the way. I believe passionately that understanding the processes of the Element is essential for transforming education, business and communities to meet the real challenges of the twenty-first century. I really hope you enjoy it -- and find your own too."

Find out more about The Element -- including upcoming book signings >>
Order The Element on Amazon.com >>

Update: Read Sir Ken's take on One Child Left Behind >>

Watch Sir Ken Robinson's 2006 TEDTalk:

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27 June 2008

TEDTalks turn 2!

Two years ago today, TED.com posted its first six TEDTalks. It was a radical notion to share these powerful talks and ideas with the world -- but it looks like it was the right notion. This week, TEDTalks notched its 50 millionth view, and we moved to a daily publishing schedule to keep up with the demand for more great talks, performances and conversations.

Celebrate with us by suggesting your favorite TEDTalks over the past two years. Count down the Top 10 TEDTalks in a special Theme page, where you can discuss the talks and suggest your own hidden gems from the archive.

Watch the first six TEDTalks, posted two years ago today:
Al Gore on 15 ways to avert a climate crisis
David Pogue says "Simplicity sells"
Majora Carter's tale of greening the ghetto
Ken Robinson asks, Do schools kill creativity?
Tony Robbins talks about why we do what we do
Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen

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26 June 2008

Counting down the Top 10 TEDTalks

With 50 million views since we debuted online two years ago, TED talks have become a powerful cultural force.

To celebrate this milestone, we're releasing a never-before-seen list: the Top 10 TED talks of all time, as of June 2008.

With speakers like neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor and global health expert Hans Rosling, the list proves one of the compelling ideas behind TEDTalks: that an unknown speaker with a powerful idea can reach -- and move -- a global audience. Links to all 10 talks are found below -- or browse through our Top 10 TED Talks Theme. Even if you've seen all the talks, the highlights video is darn fun.

Download the Top 10 TED Talks highlights video:
Video to iTunes (MP4)
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Hi-def video (480p)

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Download the Top 10 TED Talks highlights video:
Video to iTunes (MP4)
Video to desktop (Zipped MP4)
Hi-def video (480p)

Top 10 TED Talks of all time
1. Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
2. Jeff Han: Touchscreen demo foreshadows the iPhone
3. David Gallo: Underwater astonishments
4. Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo
5. Arthur Benjamin: Lightning calculation and other "Mathemagic"
6. Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
7. Hans Rosling: The best stats you've ever seen
8. Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better
9. Al Gore: 15 ways to avert a climate crisis
10. Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote

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20 June 2008

What's the best thing about being Sir Ken Robinson?

This week, Sir Ken Robinson was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal by the UK's RSA (the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce). At the ceremony, he gave a lecture on education and creativity -- followed by a lively Q&A where he made several new and bold suggestions. You can download audio of the lecture and Q&A; the RSA plans to post video as well. (After listening to Sir Ken's Q&A, blogger Tim Stahmer from Assorted Stuff makes the call: Sir Ken for Secretary of Education.)

And thanks to Ewan McIntosh's edu.blogs.com for this: Student reporters from the Radiowaves project caught up with Sir Ken Robinson at the London International Music Show last week and shot this video interview with him, followed by commentary by the young interviewers on what education and music mean to them >>

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16 February 2008

Embrace the zen of presentation

More presentation news: Garr Reynolds pulls examples from his favorite TEDTalks (Majora Carter, Hans Rosling, Sir Ken Robinson) for his new book, Presentation Zen -- to help his readers refine, simplify and focus their own presentations and talks.

What makes a great TED speaker? Passion, connection, a story to tell. As Reynolds points out, "If your idea is worth spreading, presentation matters."

Read a sample on his blog >>

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13 December 2007

Why we should teach philosophy to kids

Via the BPS Research Digest: A recent study on the long-term benefits of the Socratic method. In a study of 105 children, all around 10 years old, teachers spent an hour a week for 16 months teaching lessons based on philosophical inquiry.

The philosophy-based lessons encouraged a community approach to "inquiry" in the classroom, with children sharing their views on Socratic questions posed by the teacher.

The result? At the end of 16 months,

Compared with 72 control children, the philosophy children showed significant improvements on tests of their verbal, numerical and spatial abilities

And two years later, when the philosophy children were tested again, their higher scores persisted -- while the lower-scoring control group were, in some cases, declining further. Researchers Keith Topping and Steve Trickey point out that these gains persisted even though the kids had switched schools as well, from primary to secondary, showing that the influence of philosophical inquiry works across contexts and over time.

Or in the words of Socrates, "If this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed."

Socrates image from Wikimedia

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27 June 2006

Introducing TEDTalks

Today, for the first time ever, we're thrilled to present some of the most remarkable talks from TEDs past. We launch with six from this year's conference — Al Gore, Tony Robbins, David Pogue, Majora Carter, Hans Rosling and Ken Robinson — with more coming weekly. All the talks are downloadable as audio or video, searchable and free.

It's a big moment for us: Until now, the TED experience has been limited to 1,000 people each year. But we believe passionately that these talks deserve a much wider audience. Now — thanks to the maturation of online video and podcasting, and a visionary sponsorship from BMW — we can share them for the first time.

TEDTalks are designed to fit into your life: You can subscribe, to easily receive updates each week. There's an audio series (produced with WNYC/New York Public Radio) that commutes well, as well as the video series, offered on this blog and TED.com, and downloadable through iTunes. Plus, the talks are fully searchable, so you can always find exactly what you're looking for.

Our intention here isn't to draw attendees (TED2007 already has a long waiting list), but simply to share these profound talks — which have had such great impact on us — with the widest possible audience. They're ideas worth spreading. So whether you're a TED veteran or virgin, we encourage you to clear your schedule and watch at least three talks, back to back. They have a cumulative effect ... — Chris

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27 June 2006

Sir Ken Robinson on TEDTalks

Sir Ken Robinson is author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, and a leading expert on innovation and human resources. In this talk, he makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 20:02)

Get TED delivered:
Subscribe to the TEDTalks video podcast via RSS >>
Subscribe to the iTunes video podcast
Subscribe to the iTunes audio podcast
Get updates via Twitter >>
Join our Facebook fan page >>

Subscribe to the TED Blog >>

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02 March 2006

What to do until the TED DVD arrives...

I don't know about you, but my mind is simply abuzz with the sights, sounds, emotions, and ideas I encountered at TED 2006.  I can't wait for the TED DVD to arrive so that I can go back and listen to the words of Sir Ken Robinson, hear the music of Thomas Dolby, and soak in the... ahem, insights, of Charles Fleischer.

Until then, Google will have to do.

For example, Joshua Prince-Ramus did a marvellous job of showing us a design process which capitalized on very real contraints in order to create the stunning Seattle Public Library.  When was the last time you heard an architect say that focusing on capital and operational budgets provided a springboard to innovation?  Until I see his talk again on the TED DVD, this BusinessWeek interview with Prince-Ramus which I Googled is just enough to keep my brain from going hungry.

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01 March 2006

Sharing TED Moments ...

Every year, we leave Monterey buzzing about our "TED moments": those magical instances of creativity and connectivity that can happen only at TED. Some are collective experiences: a moment of profound inspiration on stage ripples through the audience, and you can almost see the lightbulbs illuminating over 500 heads. Others are deeply personal ... the kind of "A-ha!" moments that happen when you suddenly connect your own ideas with something far deeper or meet a person who transforms your thinking.

Many bloggers have already shared their TED moments: Bill Liao found his world view changed by Al Gore's wake-up call on climate change. Something clicked for John Maeda during Ken Robinson's talk on education. The normally unflappable Ethan Zuckerman found himself tongue-tied in the presence of Dan Dennett. Bruno Giussani mused over the unceremonious removal of Al Gore's namebadge. And Andrew Anker laughed at himself, with Tipper Gore's help.

For me, three TED Moments in particular stand out: all moments when our collective energy surged ...

• The groan of disappointment when Julia Sweeney reached the 18-minute mark in her brilliant one-woman show, "Letting Go of God," and declared, "I'm sorry. I have to stop."

• The sharp intake of breath (in a session bearing that name), as Jeff Han breezily manipulated images on his next generation computer interface, shown publicly for the first time at TED.

• The spontaneous applause following Hans Rosling's play-by-play explanation of globalization. His fast-paced narration began in 1963, when a distinct gulf separated developed and undeveloped nations. In the former, people enjoyed long lives and chose to have small families; in the latter, life expectancy was short and birth rates high. As the time-lapse graph ticked toward 2005, and nations realigned themselves, Rosling observed: "And now, we all have long lives and small families, and we have [pause] a completely new world."

But there are so many others! And of course, the beauty of TED is that we all take something different from it. We're so curious, then, to compare notes ... Tell us: What were your TED moments?

Leave comments here, or email me directly: june at ted dot com.

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25 February 2006

Day four: The day in quotes

"We are seeding the area with 'green-collar' jobs, people who have both an economic interest and a personal stake in their environment"— Majora Carter on her organization's efforts to 'green' the South Bronx

“If you're not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original” – Ken Robinson

"Creativity is now as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status". — Ken Robinson

"He was in someone's English class wasn't he? ... How annoying would that be?" —Ken Robinson imagining the challenge of educating William Shakespeare

"You see that the artist had no idea how to use colors, or maybe he was in a hurry" —Ursus Wehrli on “tidying up” Paul Klee’s 1930 colored chalkboard “Farbtafel”

"Live a "carbon neutral" life, it's easier than you think: reduce, and then offset the rest" – Al Gore

"On behalf of the elephants, thank you for listening" — Photographer Gregory Colbert

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