On January 6th, 2007, Sir Ken Robinson gave a riveting speech on the status of creativity inside of schools. His main argument is that schools do not create an environment that nurtures creativity. He alleges that schools, in fact, undermine creativity. Using a barrage of humor and jokes, Mr. Robinson paints a picture that exemplifies how schools attack creativity and the professional fields that coincide with creativity inside of academics. “I believe now that creativity is as important as literacy. And it should be treated with the same status,” Mr. Robinson states. In this speech, Mr. Robinson’s goal is to educate his audience about how school undermines creativity and the professional pursuit of a career in a liberal arts field. Sir Ken Robinson also uses craftily curated anecdotes to support his main point. This point is dear to the heart of Sir Ken Robinson. He is an educator that has worked in many different educational roles throughout his whole life. Similarly, Sir Ken Robinson is also a father to children, who he hopes will live in a more creativity-positive world.
This speech is one that is important to TED, the platform for which this speech was performed. This speech is the most watched TED speech of all time- and for good reason. This speech provides as the ultimate template for what all TED talks can be. Even though the original audience of this speech was small, it has been viewed by an online community more than 12 million + times. It was one of the very first TED talks; performed when TED was just a small convention held in Monterey, California once a year. Even though the audience was not full of educators, Sir Ken Robinson adapted his speech so even the least education-minded individual could contextualize the problem at hand.
Mr. Robinson was not introduced. Instead, he walked on stage and started with a barrage of comedy. His jokes are what reeled me in at the beginning and kept me occupied throughout the whole speech. Ken Robinson gets to the point immediately and delivers his “thesis” of the speech within the first 2 minutes of a 20 minute speech. Initially his jokes were very vague and as the speech progressed, they became more and more anecdotal as the audience became more familiar with Mr. Robinson and the purpose of his speech. The humor humanized Mr. Robinson to his prospective audience and increased his likeability factor.
One of the vehicles Mr. Robinson uses to drive his points home is personal anecdotes. Mr. Robinson is an educator that has a lot of experience in the educational field. He describes many scenarios of established creativity that he has experienced while at home with his children and at work with other children. Mr. Robinson’s speech is very loosely organized, but that is what made it such a hit His level of impromptu speaking and preparedness with the subject material is what made his speech so riveting. He, himself, said, “If you are not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never do anything original.” He was very smooth with wherever he took his speech. His speech was overall very easy to follow. From the beginning to the conclusion everything was memorable and worth listening and re-listening to. One criticism that I had is that not all of his anecdotes relate towards the main point. Some anecdotes are used with the purpose to grab and keep a hold of audience attention and participation. I feel that this is although necessary because of the length of the speech and the size of the audience.
One of the main devices that drove the points home for this speech was Mr. Robinson’s passion for the speech and the subject matter. Mr. Robinson is, as mentioned beforehand, very experienced in his field. This experience is what makes Mr. Robinson so enthusiastic about speaking about this topic. You can tell that the audience also felt his energy. Through the laughter that they gave the speaker, the audience was very engaged and as energized as Mr. Robinson was.
One of Mr. Robinson’s talents, as exemplified by his speech, was his ability to humanize himself to connect with his audience. He demonstrated this talent in many different ways. One way was through his poise and confidence. Mr. Robinson very graceful with every word he said, and every word he said had an apparent meaning. He was very natural and extemporaneous in the way he produced his speech. Throughout his speech, he varied the tone and pace of the speech to imply moments of destitution and moments of liveliness. He also used pauses to add to moments of suspense.
Overall, I really enjoyed listening to this speaker. This speech is by far one of the best speeches I have ever heard- and that is on TED standards. I was very convinced by Sir Ken Robinson and what he had to say about the nature of creativity in our schools. I will definitely reference this speaker in the future.
