The vast majority of talks at TED.COM are mind-blowing. Here’s a sampling focused on education…
Bill Strickland is a Black American who made it through high school by doing art work, and went on to create amazingly beautiful schools in poor neighbourhood, based on the premise that, when there’s sunshine and flowers and respect, anyone can develop their potential. “The only thing wrong with poor people is that they don’t have any money”. In this simple 35-minute talk he tells his story.
Earlier on this site, we’d also mentioned Sir Ken Robinson. He’s funny and very inspiring.
Lastly, for now, here’s another talk on education, this time in developing countries. Ostensibly, Sugata Mitra talks about technology, but his real theme is about education in remote areas. His experiments yield information we’d already intuited, but he quantifies it for us: Like, if you leave kids to their own devise, they can educate themselves. Talk about child-centered education!