INSTRUCTIONS TO WORK ON THE VIDEO :

There have been three themes running through the conference, which are relevant to what I want to talk about. One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity in all of the presentations that we've had and in all of the people here; just the variety of it and the range of it. The second is that it's put us in a place where we have no idea what's going to happen in terms of the future. No idea how this may play out. 

I have an interest in education. Actually, what I find is, everybody has an interest in education. Don't you? I find this very interesting. If you're at a dinner party, and you say you work in education -- actually, you're not often at dinner parties, frankly. 

if you work in education, you're not asked. 

And you're never asked back, curiously. That's strange to me. But if you are, and you say to somebody, you know, they say, "What do you do?" and you say you work in education, you can see the blood run from their face. They're like, "Oh my God. Why me?" 

"My one night out all week."

But if you ask about their education, they pin you to the wall, because it's one of those things that goes deep with people, am I right? Like religion and money and other things. So I have a big interest in education, and I think we all do. We have a huge vested interest in it, partly because it's education that's meant to take us into this future that we can't grasp. If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise that's been on parade for the past four days, what the world will look like in five years' time. And yet, we're meant to be educating them for it. So the unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary. 

And the third part of this is that we've all agreed, nonetheless, on the really extraordinary capacities that children have -- their capacities for innovation. I mean, Sirena last night was a marvel, wasn't she? Just seeing what she could do. And she's exceptional, but I think she's not, so to speak, exceptional in the whole of childhood. What you have there is a person of extraordinary dedication who found a talent. And my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents, and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly. 

So I want to talk about education, and I want to talk about creativity. My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status. 

I heard a great story recently -- I love telling it -- of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson. She was six, and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this girl hardly ever paid attention, and in this drawing lesson, she did. The teacher was fascinated. She went over to her, and she said, "What are you drawing?" And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." And the girl said, "They will in a minute." 

When my son was four in England -- actually, he was four everywhere, to be honest. 

f we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was four that year. He was in the Nativity play. Do you remember the story? 

No, it was big, it was a big story. Mel Gibson did the sequel, you may have seen it.

"Nativity II." But James got the part of Joseph, which we were thrilled about. We considered this to be one of the lead parts. We had the place crammed full of agents in T-shirts: "James Robinson IS Joseph!" (Laughter) He didn't have to speak, but you know the bit where the three kings come in? They come in bearing gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. This really happened. We were sitting there, and I think they just went out of sequence, because we talked to the little boy afterward and said, "You OK with that?" They said, "Yeah, why? Was that wrong?" They just switched. The three boys came in, four-year-olds with tea towels on their heads. 

They put these boxes down, and the first boy said, "I bring you gold." And the second boy said, "I bring you myrrh." And the third boy said, "Frank sent this." 

What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong. I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original -- if you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. 

They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this. We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. 

Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it. So why is this? 

 lived in Stratford-on-Avon until about five years ago. In fact, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles. So you can imagine what a seamless transition this was. 

Actually, we lived in a place called Snitterfield, just outside Stratford, which is where Shakespeare's father was born. Are you struck by a new thought? I was. You don't think of Shakespeare having a father, do you? Do you? Because you don't think of Shakespeare being a child, do you? Shakespeare being seven? I never thought of it. I mean, he was seven at some point. He was in somebody's English class, wasn't he? 

How annoying would that be? 

Anyway, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles, and I just want to say a word about the transition. Actually, my son didn't want to come. I've got two kids; he's 21 now, my daughter's 16. He didn't want to come to Los Angeles. He loved it, but he had a girlfriend in England. This was the love of his life, Sarah. He'd known her for a month. 

Mind you, they'd had their fourth anniversary, because it's a long time when you're 16. He was really upset on the plane. He 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. 

But something strikes you when you move to America and travel around the world: every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. Every one. Doesn't matter where you go. You'd think it would be otherwise, but it isn't. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities. At the bottom are the arts.

Everywhere on earth. And in pretty much every system, too, there's a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think math is very important, but so is dance. Children dance all the time if they're allowed to, we all do. We all have bodies, don't we? Did I miss a meeting? 

Truthfully, what happens is, as children grow up, we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads. And slightly to one side.

If you were to visit education as an alien and say "What's it for, public education?" I think you'd have to conclude, if you look at the output, who really succeeds by this, who does everything they should, who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners -- I think you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors. Isn't it? They're the people who come out the top. And I used to be one, so there. 

And I like university professors, but, you know, we shouldn't hold them up as the high-water mark of all human achievement. They're just a form of life. Another form of life. But they're rather curious. And I say this out of affection for them: there's something curious about professors. 

In my experience -- not all of them, but typically -- they live in their heads. They live up there and slightly to one side. They're disembodied, you know, in a kind of literal way. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads. 

Don't they? It's a way of getting their head to meetings. 

If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, by the way, get yourself along to a residential conference of senior academics and pop into the discotheque on the final night. 

And there, you will see it. Grown men and women writhing uncontrollably, off the beat. 

Our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there's a reason. Around the world, there were no public systems of education, really, before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. 

Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? "Don't do music, you're not going to be a musician; don't do art, you won't be an artist." Benign advice -- now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in a revolution. 

And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities design the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can't afford to go on that way. 

In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, more people worldwide will be graduating through education than since the beginning of history. More people. And it's the combination of all the things we've talked about: technology and its transformational effect on work, and demography and the huge explosion in population. 

Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job, it's because you didn't want one. And I didn't want one, frankly. 

But now kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other. It's a process of academic inflation. And it indicates the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet. We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence. 

We know three things about intelligence. One, it's diverse. We think about the world in all the ways that we experience it. We think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically. We think in abstract terms, we think in movement. Secondly, intelligence is dynamic. If you look at the interactions of a human brain, as we heard yesterday from a number of presentations, intelligence is wonderfully interactive. 

The brain isn't divided into compartments. In fact, creativity -- which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value -- more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things. 

Questions:

• True or false? According to ken, education can be a controversial discussion topic.

• What do children have natural capacities for?

• What is Ken’s argument about creativity?

• According to ken, why are children prepared to take chances in situations?

• What is the connection Ken makes between mistakes and creativity?

• True or false? Children become more creative as they grow up.

• In most countries, where are the arts placed in the hierarchy of school subjects?

• True or false? Drama and dance are not considered as valuable at school as traditional academic subjects.

• According to Ken, what is the purpose of public education?

• What two ideas is the school subject hierarchy based on?
• True or false? Nowadays a university Bachelor’s degree is as valuable as it was in the past.
• Name two things we know about intelligence.

Answers:

• True
• Innovation and for being talented
• In education we should place equal importance on creativity and literacy.
• Because they aren’t afraid of making mistakes.
• If you don’t make mistakes you’ll never think of anything original and so creative.
• Children lose creativity when they become adults
• In bottom place below mathematics, sciences and humanities.
• True
• The purpose is to produce university professors
• We teach subjects at school that will be useful for work and that intelligence is based on academic ability.
• Now a Bachelor’s degree isn’t enough, you need a masters or even a PHD. This leads to academic inflation.
• Intelligence is diverse and dynamic.

 

In the video Ken mentionsWilliam Shakespeare. William Shakespeare is probably the most famous writer and very famous for his plays. One of the most famous being Romeo and Juliet.

 

Here is an extract from the play : the balcony seen. Some line from Romeo are missing. Can you put them in the correct place? Use the context to help you and ignore all the old english words (you don't need them for the exercice)

 

By the way : thou thee and thy are you (subject) you (object) and your

 

 

JULIET

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

ROMEO

[Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

JULIET

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

ROMEO

1

JULIET

What man art thou that thus bescreen'd in night
So stumblest on my counsel?

ROMEO

2

JULIET

My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words
Of that tongue's utterance, yet I know the sound:
Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?

ROMEO

3)

JULIET

How camest thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?
The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,
And the place death, considering who thou art,
If any of my kinsmen find thee here.

ROMEO

With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls;
For stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do that dares love attempt;
Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.

JULIET

If they do see thee, they will murder thee.

ROMEO

4

JULIET

I would not for the world they saw thee here.

ROMEO

5

JULIET

By whose direction found'st thou out this place?

ROMEO

By love, who first did prompt me to inquire;
He lent me counsel and I lent him eyes.
I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far
As that vast shore wash'd with the farthest sea,
I would adventure for such merchandise.

 

 

a) I have night's cloak to hide me from their sight;
And but thou love me, let them find me here:
My life were better ended by their hate,
Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.

 

b) Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike.

 

c) I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.

 

d) Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet,
And I am proof against their enmity.

 

e) By a name
I know not how to tell thee who I am:
My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
Because it is an enemy to thee;
Had I it written, I would tear the word.

Answers

 

1 c

2 e

3 b

4 d

5 a

 

Traduire les phrases suivantes en anglais, issues du texte, puis retrouver ces phrases dans le texte en anglais dans les paragraphes 10, 13 et 25 

1. Chaque system educatif dans le monde a une hierachie de matieres. Considerés plus importants sont les mathematiques, les langues etrangeres et les humanités et les arts viennent en dernier. 

2. Ce que nous trouvons chez tous les enfants est que ils tentent tous a repondre a une question car ils n'ont pas peur d'avoir tort. Ils n'ont pas peur de faire des erreurs. 

3. Maintenant les jeunes avec des licences retournent chez leurs parents et ils continuent a jouer les jeux videos car ils ont besoin d'un master tandis que le poste precedant exigait une licence seulement. 

Modals

Ability

We use 'can' and 'could' to talk about a skill or ability.

For example:

• She can speaksix languages.
• My grandfather could playgolf very well.
• I can't drive.

Obligation and Advice

We can use verbs such as 'must' or 'should' to say when something is necessary or unnecessary, or to give advice.

For example:

• Children must dotheir homework.
• We have to weara uniform at work.
• You should stop

Permission

We can use verbs such as 'can', 'could' and 'may' to ask for and give permission. We also use modal verbs to say something is not allowed.

For example:

• Could I leaveearly today, please?
• You may not usethe car tonight.
• Can we swimin the lake?

Practice 1:

Put in ‘can’ / ‘can’t’ / ‘could’ / ‘couldn’t’. If none is possible, use ‘be able to’ in the correct tense:

1. _________________ you swim when you were 10?

2. We _________________ get to the meeting on time yesterday because the train was delayed by one hour.

3. He _________________ arrive at the party on time, even after missing the train, so he was very pleased.

4. He’s amazing, he _________________ speak 5 languages including Chinese.

5. I _________________ drive a car until I was 34, then I moved to the countryside so I had to learn.

6. I looked everywhere for my glasses but I _________________ find them anywhere.

7. I searched for your house for ages, luckily I _________________ find it in the end.

8. She’s 7 years old but she _________________ read yet – her parents are getting her extra lessons.

9. I read the book three times but I _________________ understand it.

10. James _________________ speak Japanese when he lived in Japan, but he’s forgotten most of it now.

11. I _________________ understand the chapter we had to read for homework. It was so difficult.

12. I _________________ lift this box – it’s too heavy! Would you help me?

13. Lucy _________________ make it to our meeting after all. She’s stuck in traffic at the moment.

14. John _________________ play tennis really well. He’s champion of his club.

15. Unfortunately, I really _________________ sing at all! No-one in my family is musical either.

16. When the car broke down I was really pleased because I _________________ solve the problem.

17. Julian _________________ play excellent golf when he was only ten.

18. My grandmother _________________ use a computer until last month. Since then, she’s been taking lessons at the library.

19. I _________________ open this window. I think it’s stuck!

20. Gill _________________ play the piano. She’s never studied it.

 

Practice 2:

Put in ‘mustn’t’ or ‘don’t / doesn’t have to’:

1. We have a lot of work tomorrow. You _______________ be late.

2. You _______________ tell anyone what I just told you. It’s a secret.

3. The museum is free. You _______________ pay to get in.

4. Children _______________ tell lies. It’s very naughty.

5. John’s a millionaire. He _______________ go to work.

6. I _______________ do my washing, because my mother does it for me.

7. We _______________ rush. We’ve got plenty of time.

8. You _______________ smoke inside the school.

9. You can borrow my new dress but you _______________ get it dirty.

10. We _______________ miss the train, it’s the last one tonight.

11. She _______________ do this work today, because she can do it tomorrow.

12. I _______________ clean the floor today because I cleaned it yesterday.

13. We _______________ forget to lock all the doors before we leave.

14. We _______________ stay in a hotel in London, we can stay with my brother.

15. I _______________ spend too much money today. I’ve only got a little left.

16. They _______________ get up early today, because it’s Sunday.

17. I _______________ eat too much cake, or I’ll get fat!

18. We _______________ be late for the exam.

19. You _______________ tidy up now. I’ll do it later.

20. He _______________ cook tonight because he’s going to a restaurant.

Answers:

Practice 1

1. Could you swim when you were 10?

2. We couldn’t get to the meeting on time yesterday because the train was delayed by one hour.

3. He was able to arrive at the party on time, even after missing the train, so he was very pleased.

4. He’s amazing, he can speak 5 languages including Chinese.

5. I couldn’t drive a car until I was 34, then I moved to the countryside so I had to learn.

6. I looked everywhere for my glasses but I couldn’t find them anywhere.

7. I searched for your house for ages, luckily I was able to find it in the end.

8. She’s 7 years old but she can’t read yet – her parents are getting her extra lessons.

9. I read the book three times but I couldn’t understand it.

10. James could speak Japanese when he lived in Japan, but he’s forgotten most of it now.

11. I couldn’t understand the chapter we had to read for homework. It was so difficult.

12. I can’t lift this box – it’s too heavy! Would you help me?

13. Lucy can’t make it to our meeting after all. She’s stuck in traffic at the moment.

14. John can play tennis really well. He’s champion of his club. 1

15. Unfortunately, I really can’t sing at all! No-one in my family is musical either.

16. When the car broke down I was really pleased because I was able to solve the problem.

17. Julian could play excellent golf when he was only ten.

18. My grandmother couldn’t use a computer until last month. Since then, she’s been taking lessons at the library.

19. I can’t open this window. I think it’s stuck!

20. Gill can’t play the piano. She’s never studied it.

 

Practice 2

1. We have a lot of work tomorrow. You mustn’t be late.

2. You mustn’t tell anyone what I just told you. It’s a secret.

3. The museum is free. You don’t have to pay to get in.

4. Children mustn’t tell lies. It’s very naughty.

5. John’s a millionaire. He doesn’t have to go to work.

6. I don’t have to do my washing, because my mother does it for me.

7. We don’t have to rush. We’ve got plenty of time.

8. You mustn’t smoke inside the school.

9. You can borrow my new dress but you mustn’t get it dirty.

10. We mustn’t miss the train, it’s the last one tonight.

11. She doesn’t have to do this work today, because she can do it tomorrow.

12. I don’t have to clean the floor today because I cleaned it yesterday. 1

3. We mustn’t forget to lock all the doors before we leave.

14. We don’t have to stay in a hotel in London, we can stay with my brother.

15. I mustn’t spend too much money today. I’ve only got a little left.

16. They don’t have to get up early today, because it’s Sunday.

17. I mustn’t eat too much cake, or I’ll get fat!

18. We mustn’t be late for the exam.

19. You don’t have to tidy up now. I’ll do it later.

20. He doesn’t have to cook tonight because he’s going to a restaurant.

To outline : souligner, mettre en évidence

Supplies : approvisionnements

Injury : une blessure

Sting : une piqûre

Spell : un sort

To be pregnant : tomber enceinte

Politely : gentiment

Record : un registre

To oversee : surveiller

Thin : maigre

To beg : supplier

Advice : conseil

Peseshet is a doctor and a teacher. The video describes a typical day of her life.

Now it is you turn. Write a text :

- Present yourself.

- Describe your profession.

- Tell what you did to get this job.

- Describe a typical day of your life : what usually happens when you are at work?

 

You can book a one to one class with a teacher who will correct your writing exercise.  One to one classes can be online, with a video call, anytime of the day. 

This gives you full flexibility for your timetable.

Please send us an email at afterschool at afterschoollyon.com.