Sathya Tadinada

Period 3

2 April 2021

How to Escape Education’s Death Valley: Compare/Contrast

In Ken Robinson’s second TED talk, he discusses more about the importance of creativity

in modern-day education. While there were definitely some similarities between Robinson’s first

and second speech, he also addresses new ideas and critiques he has about how society and the

government have tried “interfering” with the education system in order to try their best to help it.

One of the first differences that Robinson made in the second TED talk is how lack of

interest in children while learning will lead to a long-term disadvantage of those kids. According

to him, about 60% of kids dropout of high school, and 80% of those come from an indigineous

population. He further discusses how there is lots of potential in the economy if the kids were to

not drop out. In 10 years, there could be a $1 trillion increase in the global economy if half of

those kids chose not to drop out. This is a very large figure and the fact that this potential can

theoretically be achieved, it is a rather serious matter. Mentioning the economy and high school

dropouts differs from the first talk, where he talked a lot more about the human necessity for

creativity in education.

Robinson gives several reasons as to why kids are high school dropouts, with one of the

most common reasons being the fact that they are either very disinterested in the education

curriculum or they fail to see how any of it is relevant to them. Either way, this conformity of

knowledge is one of the biggest reasons why the kids don’t graduate high school. Every human

being is unique and different, and so it requires a very varied and different learning objective to
keep all the kids focused and interested on the subject matter. The United States spends more

money on education than any other country but all that money is going in the wrong direction.

At this point, Robinson has some similarities between the two speeches. In both, he

discusses how teaching and the people who are part of that “industry” are very critical to the

success of the whole field of education. He states, “No school is better than the teachers… the

teachers are the lifeblood of education.” This is similar to his first talk, in the way that he

specifically mentions how even though some people might not appreciate the art that is teaching,

it is a necessary skill for people to have due to its potential to change humanity.

Another similarity he makes is how kids are natural learners and are inherently creative.

In the first talk, he describes how kids are not afraid to make mistakes and that they need to be

creative in order to adapt to their world. In this speech, Robinson talks about how “education

should help to awaken the power of creativity.” I agree with this statement, if kids are always

taught information in the same, repetitive manner, they will never learn how to think outside the

box or how to be creative in life, which is a huge detriment to society.

In this TED talk, as opposed to the first one, he mentions other countries that are the

world leaders of education. Finland, along with the entire Scandivanian region, is doing very

well in regards to teaching kids and educating them. They prioritize having individualized

teaching and learning, and this is one of the main reasons why the dropout rate in that country is

very low compared to the United States. One of the US’s biggest downfalls is that they fail to

recognize the fact that some people simply operate better in certain scenarios as opposed to

others. By realizing and using this fact in their education, they will be able to improve the

education of the kids and reduce dropout rates, which in turn improves all aspects of the United

States in the future.