(mumbling from crowd) that was terrrible

you've learned how to do that from a young age, you're supposed to say

good morning mister Godin, so let's try again

good morning boys and girls. (from crowd) good morning mr Godin

have you thought about what that's for

have you thought about how

for a hundred

hundred and fifty years

that was ingrained into the

process

of public education

and he thought at all

as people on the cutting edge

as people who are interested in making school work again

about a very

simple question

what

is school for?

i don't think we're answering that question

i don't even think we're asking

that question

everyone seems to think they know what school is for

but we're not going to make anything happen

until we can all agree

about how we got here

and where we're going

my goal today

is to put that question into your head

and help you think about it

first we have to understand

what school used to be for

there is a woman

named mary yvette boule

and she

came up with this notion, she was a mathematician in the late eighteen hundreds

that you can use string and nails and wood and make decorations those things with

where the string goes back and forth

and there is math

built into that

and that a teacher on the cutting edge a fifth graders might decide

to use that idea of modulo nine and remainders and string going back and forth

to teach

an important lesson about math, so this memo went home

to all the parents

at my kids public school and said

we need help with this

we need hammers

so i'm sort of unemployed i showed up at school that day with a

bag of hammers

a big bag of eighteen hammers, now i don't know

if you've ever heard

eighteen kids

hitting nails

with eighteen hammers

in a little room

for twenty minutes, but i have

i'm not gonna do it for you because it's really hard to listen to it

and what the teacher explained to the kids is

they must arrange the brads in this certain pattern

hammering hammering hammering and make sure they're in there nice and firm

as so these kids are hammering hammering hammering, twenty minutes of zero education just

twenty minutes of hammering

and then

the teacher walks over and she says to a boy

I told you

to make sure the brads were all the way in

and one

by one she pulled them out

and threw them on the floor every single one

and put the board down and that

is what she believed

school was for

school

was about teaching obedience

good morning boys and girls

starts the day

with respect

and obedience

now i have to move on to frederick j kelly

some of you brought your own number two pencil for the quiz that is going to be part of

today

the number two pencil is famous

because frederick j kelly made it famous

back around world war one

we had a problem which was that ther was this huge influx of students 'cause we'd

expanded the school date include high school

and there was this huge need to sort them all out

so he invented

the standardized test

an abomination

and he gave it up ten years later when the emergency was over

but because he gave it up because you called it out because he said the

standardized test is to crude

to be used

he was ostracized and lost his job

as the president

of a university because he dared to speak up

against

a system

that was working

so let's try a little experiment here, i'd like everyone to go ahead and raise your

right hand just as high as you possibly can

now please raise it a little higher

hmm

what's that about (laughter from crowd)

my instructions were pretty clear and yet you all held back how come? you held back because

you've been taught since you were three years old to hold a little bit back

because if you do everything if you put all out

than your parents or your teacher or your coach or your boss is gonna ask for

little bit more aren't they

and the reason they will is because we are products of the industrial age

the industrial age made us all rich

the industrial age brought productivity to the table

productivity allowed human beings working together with a boss and a

manager

to make more than they could ever make alone

productivity makes us a car for seven hundred dollars instead of seven hundred

thousand dollars

in nineteen twenty

but the thing about

productivity

and industrialism is this

the people who ran factories

had two huge problems

problem number one

they looked around i said we don't have enough workers

we don't have enough people who are willing to move off the farm

and come to this dark building for twelve hours a day

six days a week and do what they are told

if we can get more workers we could pay them less

and if we can pay them less

we'd make more money

we need more workers

and so

the k_k_k_

went to

industrialists and said you need to get those kids out of the factories those

people you're paying three dollars a day

because they're taking our jobs

and so a deal was made and the deal was universal public education whose sole

intent

was not to tran the scholars of tomorrow we have plenty of scholars

it was to train people to be willing

to work in the factory

it was to train people

to behave

to comply

to fit in

we process you for a whole year if you are defective we hold you back and process

you again

we sit you in straight rows just like they organize things

in that factory

we build a system

all about

interchangeable people

because factories are based on interchangeable parts

this piece is no good but another piece in there

and word charts those little boxes

are all designed to say, oh we can fit bob in there 'cause rachel didn't go

to work today

and so we built school, that's what school was for

and the second thing industrialists were are really worried about

was that we weren't going to buy all the stuff that could make

that in eighteen eighty eighteen ninety people owned two pairs of shoes one pair of

jeans that was it

you don't know anyone

who owns one pair of jeans anymore, ever

what they needed to train us to do

was buy stuff

they needed to train us to fit in

they needed to train us

to become consumers and so horace mann, who meant well

built the public school as we know it and they he needed more teachers right

because you have more schools so he built a school for teachers and you know what it's called

the normal school

he called it the normal school where they train people to teach in the common

school because he wanted you to be normal

any one of the class to be normal and he wanted people to fit in and then

we came up with this

the textbook

now if you want to teach somebody

how to become passionate about i don't know american history

why would you give them this (laughter from crowd)

do people walk into barnes and noble and say i'm really interested in that latest

gripping thing that's going to get me all engaged about the civil war do you have one of those

textbooks in stock

if you wanted to teach someone

how to be a baseball fan

would you start

by having them understand the history of baseball and who abner doubleday was and

what barnstorming was

and the influences of cricket

and capitalism and the negro leagues would you do that

would you say okay there's a test tomorrow i want you to memorize the top fifty

batters

in order

by batting average

and then rank and the people

based at how they do on the test

so the ones that do well get to memorize more baseball players is that how we

would create baseball fans here is the key distinction

what people do

quite naturally is if it's work

they try to figure out how to do less

and if it's art

we try to figure out how to do more

and when we put

kids in the factory we call school

the thing we built

to indoctrinate them into compliance

why are we surprised that the question is

will this be on the test

someone who is making art

doesn't say can i do one less canvas this month

they don't say

can i write one less song this month

they don't say

can i touch one less one fewer person this month

it's art they want to do more of it

but when it's work when it's your job when you're seven

of course you want to do

less of it

so one of the things that i've

done as an

application

is when i meet people

i take this out

this is a great bargain online

and it's filled with these blocks, you've probably seen blocks before

and i say take four blocks

and make them into something interesting

now it's an interesting question because you can use the letters or you can use the

shapes or you can spell the word or you can put a profanity there or you could spell a

word that means nothing you can make the shape into a bridge

and people

hate this because

there's no right answer and there's a million wrong answers

they hate this because there's no dummy's guide

to how to make something interesting

out of blocks when you're thirty years old

and now

we're at a crossroads

we're at a crossroads because as a culture we stay the only thing we care about

the only place we are willing to cross the street to go the only thing we are willing to buy the only person

we are willing to vote for

the only stuff we are willing to talk about

is interesting is art

is new

will touch us is valuable

and then we spend all of our money

and all of our time teaching people not to do that

and so we're now at this crossroads because technology is here too

and the technology says, you know what

for the first time in history

we do not need a human being

to stand next to us

to teach us to do square roots

for the first time in history