Sir Ken Robinson

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:34

My castaway this week is the educationalist Sir Ken Robinson. Creativity, how to nurture it, develop it, and marshal its power is his preoccupation. He believes that too many people have no sense of their true talents and passions, and his internationally renowned talks to teachers, business and government leaders argue that, contrary to popular myth, creativity and innovation can be developed in a deliberate and systematic way. What we need, he thinks, is a learning revolution.

Presenter1:03

His own erudition began in a crowded house on Merseyside in the fifties, full of visitors, noise, and laughter. His front door was just a hundred yards from Everton Football Club, but his boyhood dreams of playing for the Blues were devastated when he contracted polio. The first of seven siblings to pass the Eleven Plus and win a scholarship to one of Liverpool's best schools, his education would fundamentally shape the rest of his life. He says

Presenter1:26

If a teacher hadn't seen something in me that I hadn't seen in myself, my life might have gone in a very different direction. So, Ken Robinson, you've also said that if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original. Why do you think it's so important to be original?

Sir Ken Robinson1:42

Well, creativity to me is what sets us apart on the earth as a species that creates music and art and literature and design and technology and I mean other animals may well have imaginations, but they don't pick their desert island discs, you know, they they don't listen to radiohead. And for me it it's this power of imagination that really is the wellspring of everything that makes us human.

Presenter2:06

We tend to put creativity in really in in a silo of the arts. That's what creativity is. It's music and dance and painting. And everything else is learning and, if you like, the sort of the proper stuff of education.

Sir Ken Robinson2:18

Where do you put creativity? Everywhere. You're quite right. There are all sorts of misconceptions about creativity. One is that it's about special things, and actually.

Sir Ken Robinson2:26

Of course you can be very creative in music and dance and theatre and literature, but this isn't just about the arts. You can be creative in sciences, in mathematics. Really in any field where human intelligence is active, there's an opportunity for creative thinking and achievement.

Presenter2:39

People have sat in lecture theatres around the world and enjoyed your intelligence and creativity when you talk about creativity itself. It's interesting that people who don't have access to these rather high Falutin organizations watch online. Seventeen million people have watched one of your TED talks entitled Do Schools Kill Creativity. What was the essential message in that particular talk?

Sir Ken Robinson2:51

Dien

Sir Ken Robinson3:00

It was that our current systems of education tend to stifle these powers of creativity. Not in a way that's deliberate, but it tends to be systematic. There's an increasing pressure of standardization on schools. One of the points I argue is that we're all born with tremendous confidence in our creative capacities. I mean, young children are tremendously imaginative and buoyant, but by the time kids leave school, they often have lost that confidence. And most adults, if you ask them if they're creative, will tell you they're not.

Presenter3:27

It couldn't be the case, could it, that it just means that we reach a point of maturity where we realise actually we're not very good at the things that we were told when we were three and four and five we were good at. Oh, that's a nice painting. Yes, you bang on the Glock and Spiel. That sounds lovely. Actually, we reach a stage where people are. Well, it never really does, does it? But we reach a stage where people are more honest with us and we're more honest with ourselves.

Sir Ken Robinson3:41

Yeah.

Sir Ken Robinson3:48

Creative abilities in any field have to be developed and evolved. They don't just happen because you get older. So when, for example, an adult says they can't draw, they're probably right, they probably can't. It's like if an adult says to you they can't read and write, well they they can't. It's not they're incapable of it, they just haven't learnt what's involved.

Sir Ken Robinson4:04

So the fact we're born with these capacities doesn't mean they naturally evolve all of their own. You have to work at them. I was always very shy as a kid, and I still am rather really. I mean you you go into a different mode when you have to talk in front of large groups of people. But I always found I could do it when I had to. So a consequence I keep being asked to do it now, so you get better at it.

Presenter4:21

Tell me about your first piece of music this morning, then, Sir Ken Robinson. What are we going to hear?

Sir Ken Robinson4:25

We're going to hear The Beatles, Love Me Do.

Sir Ken Robinson4:28

I'm from Liverpool and I was born in 1950.

Sir Ken Robinson4:32

So the Beatles have a particular resonance for people of my generation and I can remember at the age of thirteen me and everybody else being electrified when we heard this music and it woke us all up.

Speaker 34:42

Love the video

Speaker 34:45

You know I love you.

Speaker 34:48

I'll always be true.

Speaker 34:51

Go

Speaker 24:59

Oh, love me.

Speaker 35:03

Love, love with you.

Speaker 35:06

No, I love you.

Speaker 35:10

I'll always be true

Presenter5:17

Love me do That was the Beatles and Love Me Do. One of the things you talk about, Ken Robinson, is how to escape education's death valley. That is a very damning phrase. And what you talk about does seem very appealing on the surface, but I wonder how on earth people do that when it comes to the actual nuts and bolts of things.

Sir Ken Robinson5:36

We didn't have these systems of mass public education until the late nineteenth century. They're quite new things, and they were developed largely to meet the needs of the Industrial Revolution. They have certain features of industrialism in them. They are like factories still.

Sir Ken Robinson5:49

We educate kids by batches. Uh the day is divided up into segments. So what I'm arguing for really is a more humane and personalized form of education.

Presenter5:58

Terrifically difficult to do, however, in any great detail when you've got thirty, thirty three kids i in a class. I mean, how much personalization is actually possible?

Sir Ken Robinson6:08

Well, you know, great teachers always did it. I always ask people as if they've got children. I make them a bet.

Sir Ken Robinson6:13

You know, that if you've got two or more children, I bet you they are completely different from each other.

Presenter6:18

Completely.

Sir Ken Robinson6:18

You'd never confuse them, would you? Wh which one are you? Remind me. And uh part of my argument here, you see, is that teaching is an art form. It's it's not a delivery system. It's about getting to know your students, knowing new material and finding good ways to energize them and engage their imaginations. And great teachers always did that. So it's not not an impossible thing to do at all, but you do need good conditions for it to happen.

Presenter6:39

So can you give me specifics then about what sort of things should be done, ought to be done, must be done, that are not being done?

Sir Ken Robinson6:45

We need a broad curriculum. And I say this because there's an increasing emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Sir Ken Robinson6:53

But they're not enough. You know, for a broad education you need the arts, you need the humanities, you need physical education. There's a big problem these days of what people are describing as attention deficit disorder.

Sir Ken Robinson7:04

And I'm very sceptical about this. Uh not that there's any such thing.

Sir Ken Robinson7:08

But that it's as widespread as people believe it is. I think if you sit kids down, day after day, doing passive activities, don't be surprised if they fidget.

Sir Ken Robinson7:17

The worst experience I had at school was we had this thing after lunch called rest, where we had to go and lie down on a camp bed for forty minutes. I mean to me it was a just a form of torture. You know, I felt I was being softened up for some kind of interrogation. So if you make education a very passive thing physically, then you create problems right there. So you need education systems which not only help students to understand the world around them, they need to understand the world inside them, they need to understand their own talents and interests. And above all, you want systems of assessment which are motivating and positive.

Presenter7:50

Time for some more music. Ken Robinson. Tell me about this, your second piece, to day.

Sir Ken Robinson7:54

It's The Dance of the Nights by Prokofiev.

Sir Ken Robinson7:57

I mean, dance is right at the end of the food chain in education.

Sir Ken Robinson8:01

If you say to people, Why don't we encourage kids to dance every day? They look at you as if you've gone mad and and I say, Yes, but we all have bodies, you know, you you may have noticed this and so I I was always a very strong advocate of it. And I got involved in dance in some formal ways through

Sir Ken Robinson8:14

A wonderful man who used to run the Gulbenkin Foundation rank called Peter Brinson, and this piece of music kind of conjures all that world up for me, and there's something very haunting, I think, about the opening melody of this.

Presenter9:30

That was Prokofiev's Dance of the Nights from Romeo and Juliet, played there by the orchestra at the Royal Opera House, conducted by Barry Wordsworth and Mark Armler. You were born then, Ken Robinson, in Liverpool, as you say in nineteen fifty itself, close to Goodison Park. You were the fifth of seven kids. Tell me about this busy household full of laughter and interaction and, I imagine, chaos.

Sir Ken Robinson9:52

Yeah, a good deal of chaos actually, yes. There were seven kids, and my mum and dad, there were nine of us in the house. But my memories of it all are being, I should say, full of laughter and and full of energy. So this was just after the war, and work was very scarce. There was no money. You know, my my dad did all kinds of work. He worked on the docks. He was a steel erector for a while, but then there were whole periods of unemployment. It was a very bad time in Liverpool. So I'm sure their experience was quite different.

Presenter10:16

And you contracted polio when you were how old four or five?

Sir Ken Robinson10:18

Four five.

Presenter10:19

4. Do you know how you got it?

Sir Ken Robinson10:19

Yeah.

Sir Ken Robinson10:20

You know, I don't. I was the only one to get it. I think the best we can make of it was I I uh growing up I had a lisp, and I went to a speech therapist in Liverpool.

Sir Ken Robinson10:30

and I remember getting a bursting headache, and my mum came and got me, and she was really disturbed, because the child I didn't cry much, and the doctor came, said I had flu.

Sir Ken Robinson10:40

And the next morning when I woke up, I couldn't move. I was paralyzed.

Sir Ken Robinson10:45

So I was put in hospital. I was in hospital for about eight months, and came out. I had two calipers, uh crutches, and a wheelchair, long curly hair. I was tremendously cute.

Presenter10:56

Here you sit, you know, looking rather sort of suave and seemingly very interested, and you said you were very, very shy. Do you feel like you've

Sir Ken Robinson10:59

Terribly small, I think.

Presenter11:04

sort of created yourself in a way.

Sir Ken Robinson11:06

Yes. Well, we all do, don't we? Life is not linear, as somebody once put it, you know, biography is not destiny. Because being alive is a process of improvisation. The decisions you take, the ones you don't, the opportunities you respond to, the ones you move away from. So yes, I mean nothing would have seemed less probable, I would say, when I was lying in a hospital bed in Liverpool in 1954, that I would be living in Los Angeles doing what I do now. But I own an awful lot of it to my parents. They were great, you know, they they knew that I wouldn't make a living doing manual work, and so they pushed me hard on my own education. I mean, I wasn't a natural scholar. My brother was in a rock band when I was studying for my O levels, practising in the next bedroom, you know, so it wasn't

Sir Ken Robinson11:44

Like it was an easy thing to do. But my father, when I was nine, had a serious industrial accident. Uh what had happened was uh a a large beam of wood uh had dropped thirty feet from this job they were doing, installing a boiler in a factory, and had broken his neck, and he was uh quadriplegic then for the rest of his life. So at the age of forty-five, with seven kids, he was paralyzed permanently.

Presenter12:10

Do you remember him coming home after his stay in the middle of the

Sir Ken Robinson12:14

I think almost a year. They said if the break in his neck had been the thickness of a cigarette paper higher, he'd have been killed instantly. The reason he didn't die there and then was because he didn't lose consciousness. He was a tremendously strong-minded man, and he lived for eighteen years. I mean, when I got polio and it was four, you don't know any different. I mean, it's not like I had a life that was taken away from me. But if you're forty-five and you've got a dependent family, I mean, it's a dreadful thing to have to cope with.

Presenter12:39

Where he thought, actually, it's probably better. I'm not around like this. I'm sure he did.

Sir Ken Robinson12:43

I'm sure he did. I mean, he he didn't confide that into me, but I'm sure he did. I don't know how you couldn't, really. But the thing is, you know, he was so funny and strong-minded, very, very shrewd, you know, kind of piercing guy to talk to. And we just wanted to be with him. It wasn't like people didn't say, well, go and sit with your dad for half an hour, you know, keep him company. I mean, you couldn't get in the room because he was holding court all the time. And it was sheer willpower, I think, that kept him alive. And my mother was brilliant because she knew he was still the head of the family. And, you know, they loved each other. That's why there were seven kids. It wasn't some religious thing. They just, you know, they were into each other. And there was no cable television at the time.

Presenter13:18

Time for some music, Ken Robinson. Tell me about your third of the morning.

Sir Ken Robinson13:21

My mum and dad met in the thirties. They married in 1939. And they were both big fans of Hollywood musicals. So this particular track is the Lullaby of Broadway. And I think at one point we had about 250 people at some hall that we'd hired for a family do. We always had very big parties. And by then the Lullaby of Broadway had become a signature theme of the evening. I should always remember these vast gatherings of people hoofing along to the Lullaby of Broadway.

Presenter13:48

Come on along and listen to the lullaby of Broadway. The hippo-ay and valley who, the lullaby of Broadway, the rumble of the subway train, the rattle of the taxis, the daffodils who went her tain and Angelo's and Maxine's when a Broadway baby says good night, it's early in the morning. Manhattan babies don't sleep tight until the dawn. Good night. That was the lullaby of Broadway, performed by Winifred Shaw from the original Busby Barkley musical, with music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Al Dubin.

Presenter14:29

So, Ken Robinson, I mentioned in the introduction that you had this boyhood dream of of playing for your local football club. You must have been a very young boy when you had that dream. Was it your dad's dream, or was it actually yours?

Sir Ken Robinson14:40

No, no, it's really my dad's. I mean, I I was four, I I didn't know anything. But we used to go playing football in the park and he said I was very fast and fit and strong and he assumed that I was going to be the soccer player.'Cause, you know, we grew up right next to the ground.

Presenter14:42

May I

Sir Ken Robinson14:53

As it turns out, I didn't get in the team, but my brother Neil did. He did play for Everton.

Presenter14:57

And you helped your brother with his paper round in your wheelchair.

Sir Ken Robinson14:59

Yeah.

Sir Ken Robinson15:02

Ina've always talked about this my brother just a little bit older than me.

Sir Ken Robinson15:06

I mean, his argument was this got me out of the house. Of course, it also meant he had somewhere to put this heavy bag of of p papers. So we were going out in the morning at six o'clock in the freezing cold. I'd come back with hypothermia. But I have a great memory of it, yes. I mean, we just always got on really well.

Presenter15:19

And where were you going to school then?

Sir Ken Robinson15:21

When I came out of hospital I went into what's now called special education. At the time they were less good at euphemisms. It was the Margaret Bevan School for the physically handicapped. And one day this guy came into the classroom, he was chatting to me. A couple of days later I was asked to go and see the headteacher and this man was sitting there and I found out later on his name was Charles Stratford. He was the inspector for special education for Merseyside. And he'd been to the school on a regular inspection, saw me, thought I had something that wasn't being ready developed and recommended the school gave me an assessment, which they did. I did various tests and they moved me up a couple of classes and put me in the classroom with this woman called Miss York who coached me essentially for the 11 plus. And the upshot was that I was the first person from the school to pass it, ever.

Sir Ken Robinson16:07

And I went from there into the public school system. I went into this grammar school, which I absolutely love.

Presenter16:12

It's paradoxical, isn't it? That the very traditional highly traditional you know, nineteen sixties British education system served you very, very well. You you used the word there yourself, coached. You were coached to pass the eleven plus. And yet everything that you seem to say in your work is the opposite of that sort of streaming kids, coaching them to pass exams, but it served you very, very well.

Sir Ken Robinson16:19

Pretty well.

Sir Ken Robinson16:23

Yeah.

Sir Ken Robinson16:33

Oh, absolutely. And coaching and mentoring is the important part of teaching. It's one of my arguments against this current obsession with standardization. And great teachers have always been people who inspire you. So yes, I mean, I loved it. It served me really well. And all I'm really saying is I'm saying two things really. One is, I want all kids to have access to the kind of personal attention that I got. Without it, I wouldn't be here.

Sir Ken Robinson16:56

And secondly, although I love that type of education, not everybody does. I've lost count of the numbers of people it didn't work for who went off to other sorts of schools and still carry that with them.

Presenter17:07

Let's have some music, Ken Robinson. Your fourth of the morning.

Sir Ken Robinson17:11

Well, I'm I'm very fond of the human voice and therefore of choral music. And I think it was Thomas Beecham who once said of the English he said uh he was talking about the proms and why they were so popular that the English don't understand music, but they love the noise it makes.

Sir Ken Robinson17:26

It's a beautiful way to put it. I made my debut at the Albert Hall singing in Handel's Messiah. But before anybody gets carried away, it was for a group called the Portsmouth Sinfonia, where a group of art students decided they wanted to study music. So they formed a group. And the only drawback was they couldn't actually play the instruments. But this didn't hold them back, and they practised and practised. It still wasn't good, but they thought the best thing now was to have a performance. And it was, of course, dreadful, but very, very funny.

Presenter18:22

Right, there we are. That was Handel's Messiah performed by the Portsmouth Symphonia, with you, Sir Ken Robinson, in the choir. Here's an interesting thing. Part educationalist, part stand-up comedian, when I've been watching you deliver these eminent lectures, you clearly hold the interest of the audience in the palm of your hand, but your timing is immaculate and you are very, very funny. When did you first stand up in front of an audience and see that you could make them laugh and feel warm towards you?

Sir Ken Robinson18:51

Well the very first time I got in front of thank you for saying all that by the way, but the very first time I got in front of an audience was when I was about thirteen.

Sir Ken Robinson19:00

When my brother Keith and Ian and my cousin Billy put together an act for a family wedding, they dressed up in women's clothes and wigs and performed to records that had been speeded up to sound like Pinky and Perky.

Presenter19:16

I wish I'd gone to one of your waves.

Sir Ken Robinson19:17

Which is fantastic. It was my cousin Brenda and they'd put this whole act together and they they needed somebody to introduce it and Keith suggested me. I nearly passed out. The idea of getting up in front of the family and saying anything just terrorized me. But I I always had a maxim really in my life, I always have done, of not walking away from things that I find frightening.

Sir Ken Robinson19:37

So I did do it. And it was only a short announcement, but I said something that got them all laughing and I thought, oh, that's okay. I think if you're going to get in front of a group of people, you need to engage them and that you need to interest them. And I find things funny anyway. I mean, I come from a family and Liverpool's a very funny place, like Glasgow. People are very sharp witted, you know, and so I grew up with all that. And

Sir Ken Robinson19:55

You know, I used to go to Everton football ground and and the lines that were being shouted out at the players I mean, when my brother Neil was playing for Everton,

Sir Ken Robinson20:02

He miskicked the ball once. And the Uberton fans are are are very critical, you know, in a supportive way. You know, they shout advice, you know, from the terraces to you.

Sir Ken Robinson20:12

You know, so it's like, oh, bad shot, Robinson, they might say, you know, or words to this effect. So you find if you're in front of an audience, I find that happening and and I I enjoy it. The time goes very quickly at that point. Whereas if you do things you don't care for, you know, five minutes feels like an hour, you know, the clock doesn't seem to move at all.

Speaker 220:14

Yeah.

Presenter20:26

One of the things that I've heard you say in one of your lectures is that um you talk a bit about your own educational experience and you you you studied English and drama in Leeds and you've said that that uh you know once you had your degree, you know, you had your pick of the jobs. Uh the thing was you didn't want a job.

Sir Ken Robinson20:42

I wasn't sure. You see, when I left college I wasn't quite sure what to do. I had a qualification to teach. I I I'd applied for a job in Sweden teaching English. Right. But also I'd applied to do a Ph D in London. And it sounded just difficult and interesting. And to me it was just a personal Everest. I thought I'd have a shot at it.

Presenter21:00

Let's have some music. You're fifth. Tell me about this.

Sir Ken Robinson21:02

Well, the next one is a record by Joan Arma Trading called Down to Zero. I loved it uh in the seventies, and it coincided with me meeting Terry, who's been my wife and partner ever since. You know, we've been together now for

Sir Ken Robinson21:15

I think it's 37 years. And some years later I advised on the establishment of Paul McCartney School called the Liberal Institute, it is now the Liberal Institute for Performing Arts. And I gave a talk there and this person appeared at the end and came up and said hello. I just want to say how much I enjoyed your work and your talk. It's really important to me. And it was Joan Arma Trading. And I couldn't believe it that she was complimenting me. I wanted to get on my knees and thank her.

Presenter21:44

What the feeling?

Presenter21:46

When you're really

Presenter21:50

You start finally thinking you're number one

Presenter21:53

Down to zero if they were leaving

Presenter21:59

For another one

Presenter22:03

Now you want your feet by my own round

Presenter22:08

Down to the ground, down to the ground.

Presenter22:14

Down to the ground, down to the ground. That was Joan Armour Trading and down to zero. You mentioned there your wife, Terry. You met in 1977. How did you meet?

Sir Ken Robinson22:24

I was running a course for teachers in Liverpool on drama in schools. It was nineteen seventy seven, and it happened that that week we were booked into Liverpool, and my dad, who had been ill for a while, had been taken into hospital.

Sir Ken Robinson22:37

And it turned out to be the week he died, and I showed up on the Sunday for this course in Liverpool. Normally we had sixty people, and I was speaking to the drama advisor, Knowsley, who had arranged the programme.

Sir Ken Robinson22:49

And I said, How we doing? for numbers. He said, They're not great actually. We're hoping we might get fifteen. I said, I don't think we can root we can't do it.

Sir Ken Robinson22:58

Anyway, I showed up the next morning, he said, At least come, you know. So I showed up the next morning and I said to Paul, How many people are here? He said, Well, we've only got five at the moment.

Sir Ken Robinson23:06

I said, Paul, we can't do it. You know, it's got to be minimum of twenty. So I was pacing up and down having a cigarette. You know, I used to smoke.

Sir Ken Robinson23:12

And and the door opened, and uh this woman came out. I said to Paul, I said, Who's that?

Sir Ken Robinson23:17

Is that Terry Watts? I said is she on the course.

Sir Ken Robinson23:22

And he said, she is. I said, look if we get ten.

Sir Ken Robinson23:27

There might be a way of making this work. So, Terry was the reason the course happened, actually, altogether. We just kept in touch. In fact, we renewed our vows. It was our silver wedding anniversary. We went to Vegas to the Elvis Chapel and got married again. It was great. Did you dress up? We did, yeah. We got our teddy boy outfits. There were about 25 of us. They were all dressed in pink and leopard skin, the girls, and we dressed up as teddy boys. That was fantastic.

Presenter23:51

Now, you see, I should say what's next and you should say it's love me, tender, vi vi Elvis, but it's not actually tell me what's next. What are we going to hear?

Sir Ken Robinson23:57

Uh our next one is uh is Creek Alley by the Mammas and the Papas.

Sir Ken Robinson24:02

You know, we now live in California and uh peop people often say to me, you know, why why'd you live in California? We were living in the Midlands at the time, just outside Stratford Avon, and we had a call from the Getty Centre. It was the third of January.

Sir Ken Robinson24:15

In England, raining.

Sir Ken Robinson24:17

And they said, Would you like to come and live in Los Angeles? And well, what would you do? I mean, we left immediately.

Sir Ken Robinson24:22

But we felt going to California was just the right thing for us to do. And this song captures some of that spirit for us.

Speaker 224:31

John and Mitchie were getting kind of itchy just to leave the folk music behind

Speaker 324:38

Sol and diddy

Presenter24:38

Landed air working for a

Speaker 324:41

Panet tried to get a vision

Speaker 224:46

Boston said

Speaker 224:48

And after every no birthday passed the hat, the queen and Maguire's just a getting higher in LA, you know where that's at.

Speaker 224:58

And no one's getting fat except Mama Cat

Presenter25:02

That was the Mammas and the Papas and Creek Alley. So you live in California now. That's your full-time home, Ken. And previous to that, you'd been Professor of Education at Warwick University. And you'd also in the late nineteen nineties you'd been asked by Tony Blair's government to come up with a strategy for making schools more creative.

Sir Ken Robinson25:12

Yeah.

Sir Ken Robinson25:20

Yeah.

Presenter25:21

How were your proposals received?

Sir Ken Robinson25:23

By the government not very well, interestingly. And the reason it came about was that Tony Blair kept making speeches about the importance of creativity and how we should promote it through the school system. And I thought well this is absolutely right, because we're serious about literacy and we have a literacy strategy.

Presenter25:37

And you do equate the importance of creativity with the importance of something like literacy.

Sir Ken Robinson25:40

About literacy. Yes, of course. Yeah, absolutely. The whole argument was this wasn't just about the arts, though it included the arts, that this is about the whole of education, not just a bit of it. And it was time to look radically at how we run the curriculum and how we think of the culture of schools. And it had a fantastic response from the profession. The government tripped over it because they were, I think, overly focused on attainment targets in literacy and numeracy. And I think to the end they didn't understand the real import of the report, which is you don't do literacy first and then do creativity. If you want people to read and write well, you engage their imaginations and you teach them creatively. And I've been arguing that right from the beginning, that these are not polar opposites. I wrote a piece in response to our current Education Secretary, Michael Gove.

Sir Ken Robinson26:26

Who was suggesting that you can't be creative in music until you've learnt all your scales. Well, it's simply not true. I mean, it sounds plausible, it's just nonsense. We played the Beatles earlier on. When they kicked off, they knew two chords. In fact, I remember Paul McCartney saying that there was this guy in Liverpool who knew a third chord, and they got on the bus and met him, and he taught him the third chord, and they went home and started the Beatles. I mean, by the end of it, they knew an awful lot more than that. But real creativity, you need control of the materials, but that grows as your passion for the work increases.

Presenter26:54

Yes, but Michael Gove, currently in charge of education and trying to make changes that he feels equally passionately about, as you do about the changes you would like to see made, says that if you give individual responsibility to schools within communities, then they can individualise what it is their pupils specifically need given their backgrounds and incomes of the families, but the basis of that has to be a hard core of steel, which is all the things that children should have to enable them to cope with the world and the education beyond.

Sir Ken Robinson27:23

I have no difficulty with there being a national curriculum myself. It's about whether this is a good one or not and whether we've got the right stuff in it. The current government proposals have drawn criticism from the government's own advisers. But having a curriculum and a broad agreement I think is fine. I completely agree that the real action happens on the ground and schools should have a lot of discretion and creativity. I have a great faith in teachers and schools and parents and what they want. And I can see that, you know, I'm arguing for things that people need to get their head around. Yeah.

Presenter27:52

Let's have some music. What's next?

Sir Ken Robinson27:54

You know, one of the challenges I'm sure everybody faces who come on to this desert island is really trying to pick eight tracks. Within two weeks I'd got it down to about a hundred and forty. But there are all sorts of people I wanted to have. I captured all of it in a single shot here with the Travelling Wilburys, and this particular track, End of the Line.

Sir Ken Robinson28:11

has a particular resonance for all of us because you don't go into education to make a lot of money and Terry has gone without a lot of things that I know most people would like to have had. But there's a lovely line in about Travelling Wilderness about what comes next and maybe a diamond ring. Well I finally got her a diamond ring and I played the record when she got it.

Speaker 328:28

You can sit around and wait for the phone to ring.

Speaker 328:33

Waiting for someone to tell you everything.

Speaker 328:39

Sit around and wonder what tomorrow

Speaker 328:44

Maybe it's a bad

Speaker 228:47

Uh

Speaker 328:47

Yeah.

Speaker 228:47

With a Torah

Speaker 228:50

Even if they say you're wrong, well it's alright.

Presenter28:58

That was the Travelling Wilbury's and end of the line. So Ken Robinson, people listening today, what advice would you give them as parents about how they can best serve the creativity in their children?

Sir Ken Robinson29:10

Well a couple of things really. One is to pay attention to individual differences between their children. We have two, James and Kate, and we've always tried to encourage the things that are distinctive to them and not treat them the same. The other thing i I think is well that you don't over programme them. I I do worry for kids these days that their parents have become kind of social secretaries very often. There's no sooner finished taking a dance class than they're off doing something else and

Sir Ken Robinson29:35

I mean a lot of my argument is that you find your talents by trying things out. But you do need time to yourself, time to reflect. And something that was true of us when we were kids was that when you came home from school it was at least over for the day. Whereas now, you know, when kids come back, there is such an assault from every source of digital device, you know, from screens, texting, people pitching for their attention and obsessing about style and image. And so, yeah, part of what I argue is that you need to spend a bit of time away from all that, you know, shut it down and get to know yourself better.

Presenter30:05

Are there things now that you think, well, at my age and stage, actually I'd really like to give that a go?

Sir Ken Robinson30:11

I've got two more books I'm going to write. I keep promising myself I'm going to learn to play a musical instrument, and I haven't done that yet.

Sir Ken Robinson30:17

One of the things that I argued is that it's never too late. I really do believe that. I did an event.

Sir Ken Robinson30:22

and the the guest of honour was the Dalai Lama.

Sir Ken Robinson30:26

And the opening session was called World Peace Through Personal Peace.

Sir Ken Robinson30:29

So we had an hour to sort that out. We were just killing time for the final twenty minutes, really.

Sir Ken Robinson30:35

But one of the things that he said is that to be born at all is a miracle. So what are you going to do with your life?

Sir Ken Robinson30:41

Ah, that's right.

Sir Ken Robinson30:43

There's an old proverb, you know, that you should never regret growing old. It's a privilege denied to many.

Sir Ken Robinson30:49

And I think that's true, and it amazes me how many people kind of while away their time as if this is eternity. And it's actually rather short. Real happiness comes from finding things that fulfil you and that you feel that you are meant to be doing. Terry's always said, you know, throughout our life together that she could tell when I came through the door what I'd been doing all day. If I'd been in committee meetings and doing paperwork, I looked about a hundred and eight.

Sir Ken Robinson31:13

Roughly been working with people I've lost twenty years. And it's that. Being around and connecting with people is the thing that feeds me most.

Presenter31:20

Well, you won't be on this desert island. You'll be all on your own. You're just going to sort of shrivel up and give up, are you, on this desert island? How do you think you'll survive?

Sir Ken Robinson31:22

on your own, you're gonna you're just gonna s sort of shrivel up and give up, are you on this?

Sir Ken Robinson31:29

I find it very difficult.

Presenter31:30

Which

Sir Ken Robinson31:30

Yes. I mean, I like my own company, but I'm not great at solitude. I mean, I used to spend time at home, you know, as a kid, in my own room, but I knew the family were in the next room.

Sir Ken Robinson31:39

I I would find it hard to be away from people.

Presenter31:42

Your final piece this morning, then. What are we going to hear?

Sir Ken Robinson31:45

Well, throughout my life since I was a student, and it it's turned out to be true of Terry Two and now James and Kate, you know, there's some artists who stay with you and one of those for us is Leonard Cohen. And this particular one is called Night Comes On, and I couldn't listen to it for years.

Sir Ken Robinson32:01

He says, I went down to the place where I knew she lay sleeping, under the marble and the snow. He said, Mother, I'm frightened. The thunder and the lightning, I'll never get through this alone. So it's about his mother.

Sir Ken Robinson32:11

And I remember when I first heard this having a a real trepidation, because I thought, you know, some day my mother won't be there.

Sir Ken Robinson32:18

When I was at Warwick, I was driving down the M six.

Sir Ken Robinson32:21

racing to get back as I had this meeting at the University the next day.

Sir Ken Robinson32:25

and she lived in Liverpool, way off to the right. And I was saying, Should I go and see her? and I thought I haven't really got time, I've got this meeting to morrow.

Sir Ken Robinson32:34

And they played this record, and I thought, you know, there'll be a day when she's not there. I won't have this choice.

Sir Ken Robinson32:39

So I turned right and I did this sort of two hundred mile dieto to have dinner with her, and I'm just so glad I did. Uh and of course now she's not there, and so I couldn't play this record for a long time.

Sir Ken Robinson32:49

But now I can. I just think it's a beautiful record and it reminds me of her.

Speaker 232:54

I went down to the place where I knew she lay waiting, Under the marble and the snow I said, Mother, I'm frightened, The thunder and the lightning I'll never come through this alone.

Speaker 233:13

She said I'll be with you, My shawl wrapped around you, My hand on your head when you go

Speaker 233:23

When the night came on, it was very calm.

Presenter33:28

That was Leonard Cohen with Night Comes On. So I'm going to give you now, Ken Robinson, the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible, and you get to take another book too. What will you take?

Sir Ken Robinson33:37

My wife Terry is a writer, and she had her first novel published two years ago, it's called India's Summer, and if I can't have Terry on the island, I'll have her book.

Presenter33:46

and a luxury too.

Sir Ken Robinson33:47

I'm sure people have different conceptions of what this island is like. I'm imagining it's quite a large place with all kinds of undergrowth and mountainous territories to get around and getting around is not my strong suit, so I thought I'd take a quad bike with a solar panel so it doesn't let me down.

Presenter33:52

Right.

Presenter33:55

And

Presenter34:02

Right, it's yours. And one track to save.

Sir Ken Robinson34:06

I'd probably take the end of the line, because it brings together so many different strands of music, and it's something that James and Kate and Terry and I all share, and it it's part of our joint journey.

Presenter34:15

It's yours. Sir Ken Robinson, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island disc. My pleasure.

Sir Ken Robinson34:20

Yeah.

Presenter34:20

Okay.

Presenter34:35

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter34:38

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk/radio4.