“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.” -Stanley Kubrick

I had the pleasure of working for the George Land and Beth Jarman organization, Leadership 2000, and many of the ideas and concepts like this one have stuck with me ... at the office, we would have a phrase when we might be working on something, even a trivial issue, that had multiple outcomes ... our shot out would be, 'What are ALL the ways we can do this ..?!.'. Such great fun and fantastic memories with marvelous world-class clients and Associate Partners.

Rest in Peace George, I met you in 2006 and your presence stood out to me. Such a wise and wonderful man.

When I was about 6 years old I was taken for a test such as those spoken of in this talk. They are not written tests of course. These tests have to do with hand-eye coordination, visual acuity, pattern recognition, etc. The tests I took were not presented as "tests" to me, my mom took me to a place where "a nice man is going to show you some interesting things and let you play with things and draw some pictures". I was a natural born artist, I was bored with school and spent more time drawing and daydreaming than paying attention in class. My teacher suggested the child psychologist my mom took me to visit that day. I didn't know what was up for several years. My grandfather, who was always my most fervent champion for becoming an artist, finally asked if I remembered that day with the nice man. I said YES! it had been really fun, and the man was like no one I had ever met before -- other than my grandfather. He told me that it was a sort of IQ test, and that the results in the report from this "nice man" said I was a savant in art and very intelligent over all. It said I was as advanced as most adults in my pattern recognition ability , and in drawing and painting. I went on to be a successful professional artist after graduating from high school. I never had the slightest inclination to go to higher education, being an autodidact, and polymath. I was a special effects artist in Hollywood for some 20 years. I also worked as a designer and model maker in the theme park industry. I later did quite well with freelance fine art sculpture and design, finally doing bronze and other metal statues and statuettes. I have always been fascinated by socio-political subjects and taught myself many skills in that area. I now am mainly involved in Forensic History studies. \\][//

my kids grade 4 and grade 8 this ...are doing homeschooling and ive never seen them reason so progressively ,think indepently and incharge of their reasoning capacity and their level of imagination is out of this world .I am proud of the decision i took

I'm 29, and seriously lack creativity. I'm going to try and do this to become more creative: meet more creative people and share ideas; read more (fiction and non-fiction); try and find time to just think and come up with creative ideas.

I would love to see the results for populations of children who have been unschooled, or autonomously home educated. I'd like to think that the results would be different. John Taylor Gatto implied that the reason schools had a dumbing down effect was that they didn't allow a child to follow their own thoughts and do what they needed to do in the moment, due to curricula, timetables, and the Victorian idea of concentration and discipline which makes everything hard work, no matter how enjoyable. Maybe that is the effect at work here too.

I was there that night. I must say this was one of my favorite talks--brilliant, insightful, and eye-opening.

I feel the fear of failure whenever I had a job that required periodic "tests" of skills and knowledge. Suddenly, I would be unable to remember anything needed for a good score. I am college educated and felt this deeply. Crazy.

Google "George Land NASA creativity test". He used a simple test of divergent thinking (imagination). Small children have tons of imagination. The more they are taught to conform, the less they use imagination. Adults are particularly weak imaginers unless they practice engaging in imagining possibilities (also known as possibility thinking).

Thank you George Land for sharing and your incredible INSIGHT into improving Creativity....

school’s too good of a business model now, surprised this video that contains facts hasn’t been removed.

I believe I too was given this test as a child. Also I really feel I have gone back to a, "90%" at one major point in my life but of course I can't say how I am today. Now back then I tapped into that imagination and went from a class grade of an F and a professor saying I was not meant for that class. I took the class again with a different professor that's teaching style lit up our imaginations.. I passed the class with over an A, it was embarrassing to award me the extra credits I earned. I also was exempted from my final to fill out a questioner on how I had such a huge change in my grades and what helped. It's amazing how you can "tap" into your inner child as they are calling it, just with that sort of approach even in teaching.

If someone finds the actual tests the kids were given, could you please post it? Would be a huge help.

This study is amazing. Innovation is created for a low percent of human beings. Interesting the theory of the two kind of thinking. Great video.

Love George, his latest book will be released in February.

Where can i find the original study he did? i need it for a project. Studying psychology in 3rd semester. Pls help!

शिक्षक निरर्थक हैं और पूरी शिक्षा व्यवस्था प्रवर्तन है ।

A bit peculiar the speaker didn't make mention of Dr Edward de Bono! because the speaker's point that we make decisions at the idea generation stage is exactly what De Bono's CORT tools protect against...Everyone should educate themselves on Dr de Bono's methods!

does anyone know where to get the original study?

This talk is fantastic!

This is why we created Zedu Plus, where we invite kids to learn by finding their resources and where they can understand and create through personalized projects based on their level of knowledge.

Im so glad i never sent my kids to school ❤ home educating and unschooling is the way forward

So where was the part of the research that intuitively should follow? Where are results of this test done on adults that never attended school? Are their result still so "extraordinarily" great?

thankyou for your inspiring words!

i had this theory for a while now and he perfectly backed it up with his research

We refer to Dr. Land's growth curve insights in all our leadership training since 1990!

for anyone looking for the origin of the study, what I've found online leads back to the 1992 book "Breakpoint and Beyond: Mastering the Future Today" by Land. I haven't been able to look inside as there are no "full text online" copies, but that study seems to be in there somewhere. If anyone wants to purchase it or finds a free online version then let me know if it is in fact in there. This is a really interesting study, but yeah, like others have said, seems to be kind of vague and unsubstantiated

Dr Land is an inspiration. The sad thing is that many leaders in education and industry have been successful using a limited amount of their potential and are stifling their creativity due to fear of failure. We need leaders who are brave enough to challenge their own limitations and not block the passions of those around them. Any examples then please share: @coralchatter

someone did that very exercise with a spoon well, maybe it was a fork but, the result was the spork ...the greatest culinary, utensil innovation known to man!

Okey... Sounds good, but why nobody can't find the original research?

The nature of the test conducted needs to be specified for us to derive any true value from this study. I cannot seem to find the test conducted on the children anywhere on the internet. We cannot genuinely grasp the aspects of which the children were superior in without the details of the test. All this seems fabricated and non-productive in our understanding of the growth of the human mind as far as I can tell. I think all these results were concocted from thin air, to fit a rather attractive narrative to those against the structure of our current education, or those who want to believe that they used to be something greater than themselves, that they once had these immaculate creative thinking abilities. The test was conducted in 1968 yet I find countless articles written today about the prominence of this test and jumping to conclusions. Please help me find the test, I want to know this is true, and want to know exactly what areas do children excel at so greatly compared to adults.

What was the practice to become more creative ?

In the unlikely event that I ever have children of my own, I will certainly not be sending them to traditional 'schools'. Traditional schooling ruined me. I won't do that to my kids.

Here's an idea: How about re-inventing the umbrella? Damn things don't work when it's windy, which is usually the case when it rains nowadays. grrr!

The Great Designer - very great

INCREDIBLE!!!

❤ love this one!

well speach Bravo !!!

thanks 👍👍👍

the person in charge of uploading this Ted talks also failed in video resolution

I wanted to do the creativity test with my children, Anybody knows what was about? I could not find the test itself.

Correlation is not causation.... The test shows age on creativity, not schooling in creativity. For an accurate result, it needs to test unschooled children as a control group...

How come I wasn't aware that TED was in my town?

Has anyone had luck locating the original pdf / data for this work? I am hoping to use it in my research

So what is the score needed for a Genius Score?

in that case i wonder if children never go to school?____over all they'll do better? any solutions?

Ok I'm here madam

I'm still paused at him saying it's a problem that third world countries can produce just as well as Americans. Like, hello! Maybe the problem is the system created that relies on class systems and wealth inequality. If it's a problem that others can produce as well as we can, my we are the problem.

TEDx Talks, if you stop making videos dont delete them

Manufacture people... You are a product, get it.

I tried to find more information, but did find none. Actually I don't believe this study. What possible test can be done by 4 year olds as well by adults?

👁️👏❤️🙏

"We" can start by re-thinking how we organize communities and finally do away with the archaic idea of the State. If you want to talk about human potential, eliminating this gang would be a great start.

Does it mean if we didn't go to school, we would still have 98% genious?

I do find this confusing. I am very creative and good at problem solving as are many of my friends. Creativity and ideas are great but without implementation not worth much. If everyone just sat around and dreamed all day, who would implement their dreams? We need people that are good at both. I have friends and colleagues that are great at organization and implementation and I am grateful they are good at and enjoy that.

hmmmmm

5 year olds are why Windows 10 happened.

This appears to be inspiring stuff but WHERE IS THIS FAMOUS ( "reliably predictive") NASA TEST? - I hope I don't sound like a narrow minded convergent thinking scientist about this!

I thought Ted Talks were put on by intelligent people, and watched mostly *by* intelligent people. Now I'm not so sure. Where is the study? Who peer reviewed it? Was an additional study performed to see if the results obtained in the first study were indeed caused by the education system? Correlation doesn't equal causation. This supposed NASA study has never been produced. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Let's not start with the claimed conclusions of some vague study. Let's start with confirming that any such study ever happened. And by the way, George Land was an author, speaker, consultant, and general systems scientist - not a child psychologist. And his entire list of accomplishments in his lifetime bio at World Business Academy makes zero mention of a study of over one thousand children. Nor does it mention NASA.

Op school mogen kinderen niet creatief zijn , dan krijgen ze de nodige stempels.

Stone Age...haha

I'd like to thank the 98% convergent thinkers in th comment section for proving this talks thesis correct LOL

This is nothing new. Children have many ideas, as they grow up they realize their ideas were silly so they drop them .They never reach the point where they have any good ideas because they give up to soon . The solution to a problem is to listen to the 2 % who have good ideas, not to start convincing the 98% who are conformists to magically start thinking with genius like ideas. This is a" Get in touch with your inner genius" wish. It's food for thought though and people should try to start coming up with alternative solutions to their problems.

So he adds divergent propaganda of the darwinian cult. HAHAHA