---
title: TEDTalk by Sir Ken Robinson
date: "2006-12-18T12:00:00Z"
lastmod: "2011-03-20T10:45:59Z"
categories:
  - education
  - my-best-links
wp_id: 161
description: I highlight my favorite insights from Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on education, focusing on how schools stifle creativity by prioritizing academic paths like university professorships and fail to prepare students for an unpredictable future.
keywords: [sir ken robinson, ted talk, education reform, creativity, pedagogy, public education]
---

Sir Ken Robinson's [TED Talk on education](http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=ken_robinson) is brilliant and funny. Some quotes that struck me:

> If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise that has been on parade the last 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.

> If you were to visit education as an alien and say "What's it for?", I think you'd have to conclude, if you look at the output, that the whole purpose of public education throughout the world, is to produce university professors. Isn't it? They're the people who come out on 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 watermark of all human achievement -- they're just a form of life.