 Why education has become a problem in the world is people become who they are in the world because of what they have gathered This is a very unfortunate situation Right now whether it is material things or knowledge, whatever information they have gathered it makes them who they are Now who you are and what you have gathered are two different things This is the distinction we are trying to bring into child's life in our schools Whatever you may gather it doesn't matter What you gather is just information and things Information is a thing by itself. It should not determine who you are Who you are is determined by a different process what you gather by a different process So when I keep repeating to everybody some lot of these people feel ashamed my guru is uneducated They try to say no he only says that he's really educated What I'm saying is whatever I have gathered Does not determine who I am Because the biggest problem in the world is this from the day you are born All kinds of people are trying to teach you something that's not worked in their life. I Think everything say one of the the major problems is that We didn't have systems of mass education As we know them now pretty much until the middle of the 19th century, you know, they were invented Made up part of industrialization. Yes, it was part of the industrial revolution and it was associated with the big move from the countryside into the cities to provide a workforce for the Industrial economy it's very straightforward from that point of view. It was a massive piece of social engineering. It's why The system is shaped the way it was we needed a majority of people to do blue-collar work Which is why we had a broad base of elementary education and a relatively small group of people to do clerical administrative work in suits, which is why we had a small university sector and the system is created that way in Britain, you know when I was at school At the age of 11 while we all took an exam. I'm sure Ian would remember it. It's called 11 plus And it determined at the age of 11 which type of school you went to at which sort of high school the grammar school Or a secondary modern school. It was really an IQ test But people thought it was a blood test You know that told them how smart they were and actually it was just a capacity to do that type of test and like a driving test you could get better at it and I mean a lot of people were trained to do it and they got through it but the consequence of it is that we created this kind of System where There were a small group of winners and they did very well by it but the vast majority didn't and part of the problem as I see it is that The system of education is burdened with certain ideological Assumptions one of them is a whole set of ideas might intelligence so the whole ideal of Western education is to get people to university and therefore and that's because the university is abrogated the system to their own purposes and Therefore we have in the system this deep Deeply mistaken assumption that the that intelligence is the same thing as academic ability An academic ability is very important But it's a very specific capacity the capacity to be certain types of deductive reasoning certain types of critical discourse But the upshot is that if you're not very good at that your thought not to be very smart Because the truth is if you create a very narrow conception of ability you create a very big conception of disability and inability I We're doing personal stories for a second. I'm from Liverpool in England and I'd mention one thing I went to school across the city center from the liberal issue, which is where Paul McCartney Was at school. I didn't know him then I'm sure some of you people do know him quite well, but I his I wrote a book a few years ago called the element how finding your passion changes everything and I interviewed lots of people for for the book One of whom was Paul McCartney And I tell you this because I think it's very important. You don't leave here today Unaware of the fact that I hang out With with Paul McCartney Anyway Paul as I call him was Was um, I Asked him I interviewed him for the book and I said did you enjoy music at school and He said no he hated it. I Said did your music teacher think you had any talent? He said no not really he does doesn't he and then One of the other people in the same music program in the same school was George Harrison You know the lead guitarist of the popular music group the Beatles And and I said did any did your music teacher think you george had any talent? He said no not really Um, I said well look would this be a reasonable comment that there was this one music teacher In Liverpool in the late 1950s who had half the Beatles in his class And he missed it. He said yes. Well, it's a bit of an oversight, isn't it? so Anybody stand out in your class this year mr. Wilcox not really Nobody leaps forward frankly What I mean is it if you create this narrow view of ability Then you automatic suit all this other stuff. I mean in You sank or may remember this but in the 50s there was a big polio epidemic, you know that ran right through America and Europe and Um, and I got it, you know as one of the I'm one of seven kids I was the only one of the family to get it and the only one in the street to get it You know despite my vigorous attempts to cross infect into our neighborhood You know, I thought you're you're coming down with me, you know, but Anyway, I was in hospital and I I ended up going to Into special ed for from that's five to 11 and That's what they used to do. So so I was in the school which had lots of kids with polio Lots of kids with cerebral palsy partially sighted blind deaf kids I was sitting next to one kid in school who had a really bad case of cerebral palsy And it's a terrible thing to deal with, you know, because if You know if you don't have it if you can just to move your arms around you just have to relax muscles and attract them You don't think about it, but if you've got cerebral palsy Or affected by it you're fighting your body all the time So you're doing this type of stuff and and if you try to speak and it's affected your face It's you sound as if you're talking nonsense and of course you may talk be talking absolute sense It's just you can't get the sounds out Anyway, so the guy sitting next to me in one my finally at the school Couldn't grip a pencil in his fingers But he could grip it in his toes And he had beautiful writing better than mine actually Was this handwriting? We don't know We don't know But um, but the point is we are surrounded by people like this. I was saying I mean my classroom At school was like the bar room seemed from Star Wars. You know, there were kind of People in various degrees of decrepitude, you know being brought in But nobody was interested in what people's disabilities seemed to be What we're interested in was what they were good at and if they were smart or interesting or what And the fact is that many of the things That they had difficulty with Weren't What really defined them But because there's this narrow view of ability if you have trouble writing or speaking It's assumed that you have some associated mental incapacity Which is why you get this big conception of disability Surround again, but if you reframe the conception of ability, suddenly you discover all these talents and Possibilities that are inherent all the time Now I mentioned it because it's a dramatic example of the special ed is to me of what happens all the time in general education Um, all kinds of kids are told they've got problems who don't have them They're created by the system and it's the problem of the system that we need to to address that if you Reframe ability all of these devotees that people seem to be suffering from suddenly disappear If you find the things they're good at if you do as sad guru is suggesting if you create An environment which is holistic which is addressing your spiritual development your physical development Which recognize that human life is not linear. It's organic and it will take many different courses Then you have a completely different setting additions under which people will flourish And it's the fact that the conditions themselves which are industrial in character Create problems for kids which they then begin to reel against so we now have a system based on competition Narrow view of ability and one in which people are being medicated to stay with the program They're being pathologized for losing interest in what is essentially very boring stuff We sit them down all day long and wonder why they fidget Um, and there are different ways of doing it better ways. I mean for me, it's it's plain as day really You know education is not one of those things like an incurable disease and we can't figure out what to do We know what to do in education. It's about taking this thing to scale But taking it to scale doesn't mean replicating it because as you say, there's no perfect school Actually, there are no tools toast two schools alike, but like there are no two individuals alike But there are principles you can apply everywhere And getting those principles in place to me is the big challenge now