in 2008 vice president former Vice
President Joe Biden was asked to speak
in front of a group of business leaders
about the concept of value and
specifically business values and in that
talk he said to them you know what don’t
show me your value statements show me
your budget and I’ll show you what you
value I think about that a lot when it
comes to creativity in schools and
whether or not we designed specifically
for creativity specifically I think
about every school in this country that
has a mission statement virtually every
one does and when I see those mission
statements and those vision statements
in those value statements in those
schools I tend to think the same thing
don’t show me your values show me your
student schedules and I’ll show you what
your school values when we think about
this I tend to think back to a student I
had about 10 years ago who came to me
upset about she was in the process of
writing an essay for college and she
came to me in the hallway she was in
tears and just destroyed and and just
about ready to collapse because she just
couldn’t get her essay right and I
thought to myself no problem let’s sit
down we’ll have an hour
well knock this out I’ll work with you
so she says great I’ll email you I’ll
give you sometimes about a week later I
don’t hear from her and so I find her in
the hallway again and I’m like what’s
going on she says to me I can’t find a
single hour to work on this essay and
I’m thinking 17 year-old this is
probably hyperbole let’s take a look at
your schedule she shows me her schedule
and it looks something like this
she’s got everything mapped day to day
she’s got barely a half an hour a day to
do anything that’s her own she’s so
scheduled that she can’t possibly find
an hour to work with her teacher on an
essay and I thought to myself my god
what are we doing to our adolescents
that make them not only have schedules
that look like this but also feel the
type of pain this kid was feeling
so I started looking into adolescents
specifically the neuroscience of the
adolescent brain and how they deal with
things like this and as I looked into
what I found that when we look at
neuroscience we look at the adolescent
brain that adolescent brains tend to
work on about a two hour time difference
from adult brains meaning that when an
adult wakes up at 8 o’clock if that was
an adolescent it would feel to the
adolescent as if they were waking up at
6 so so I started thinking about this
from the adult standpoint and I was
thinking about this in terms of what a
job might look like if we had the
schedule of our kids well if we had the
schedule of our kids we’d wake up at 4
o’clock in the morning hours workday
would start at 5:30 we then go to work
and we’d have 7 different bosses telling
us what to do every hour every one of
those bosses would think they’re there
there you’re their only boss and they
give you work accordingly so you’d come
home you’d have dinner at five maybe
hour an hour and a half and then after
dinner you’d go back and do all the
paperwork you hadn’t gotten done that
day because you didn’t have enough time
to do it because your other six bosses
told you how to do something else and
you’d wake up the next morning at 4
o’clock and you do the whole thing over
again now those of us who are adults see
that and think about that imagine if you
did that not because you loved your job
but because you were hoping that in four
years from now you could get a better
job that you could maybe your resume
would be good enough to qualify for now
that next job that you’re going to get
in four years by the way the only reason
you think it’s good is because US News
and World Report ranked it really highly
so this is the type of world in which
our adolescents are living and yet all
of our schools talk about the idea of
building creativity what kind of
creativity can happen in a world where
you’re doing this kind of stuff if we
think about some of the most creative
moments in history Michelangelo this is
the Sistine Chapel for years he worked
on this
every day day and night he worked on
this over four years lying on his back
painting in this Chapel could you
imagine him at the end of this saying
you know would have made this a better
process if I had a half an hour a day to
work on this in between soccer practice
and a CT prep that’s not something that
you’d see so this is why I started
thinking about what we need to do to
create better schools I thought we need
to design spaces that are expressly
built around creativity because right
now our schools are data processing
plants the majority of schools in this
country exist as data processing plants
the kids show up we feed them data they
return that data to us and we move on
but in the last thirty years what we
found is that human beings aren’t really
good at data processing computers are
significantly better at the inner
processing this is a quick chart to show
you that in the next five years you’re
going to be able to likely buy a
thousand dollar computer that is the
equivalent of a human brain speed of
data processing in 30 years from now
you’re going to be able to buy a
thousand dollar computer that’s
equivalent to the brain power of the
entire human race and yet our schools
still exist as if we are building the
best data processors in the world so in
a world like this what should be the
goal of the school I think the school
needs to think about what it is that
makes human beings worthwhile on the
planet and I would argue it’s two things
I would say human beings exist here for
two reasons one of which is to create
relationships and to be emotional
supports for one another and the second
is to be creative to build things from
nothing to take ideas that are disparate
find connections and build things that
we’re not there before that are
beautiful and useful I think that’s what
makes us who we are and that’s what
makes us valuable and that makes us what
we need to be to have a value in the
world
so I started looking at creativity and
how how might we design a school that
it’s expressly built around creativity
and I came across this article in the
Harvard Business Review and in the
Harvard Business Review they were
actually talking to business leaders
about how to create creative solution
problem solvers in the business world
and they said in this process there’s
one factor that matters more than
anything in building creative
problem-solvers in your workforce and
that’s time the more time they have the
more likely they are to build a creative
solution however even if you don’t have
that much time you can still build
creative problem-solvers if those people
feel like they what they’re doing is
important has a mission and they’re
connected to that purpose then you might
still you’re not going to get it quite
as much as if you give them more time
but you can still get something out of
it
in that same article though they talked
about how do we kill creativity in our
businesses and they highlighted several
factors I’m gonna highlight three of
them here one of which is that the
people who are working there feel like
the work is unimportant if your workers
don’t feel like what they’re doing is
important they’re not going to be
creative second if your workers are
working on a fragmented schedule they
specifically cite the idea of doing a
bunch of things during the day for about
an hour at a time and having no
connection between any of them that will
kill creativity in your workplace and
lastly that the workers feel distracted
they don’t feel connected to a bigger
purpose and I looked at that those
things and I thought that was my high
school experience
I could imagine many of you in this
audience felt like I didn’t feel like it
was important my schedule was fragmented
I felt distracted that’s pretty much
defining most of the high school
experiences in America so I set out to
build a high school that tried to
confront these challenges and build
something that was designed specifically
to enhance creativity so for the last
three months I’ve been going around the
city the country talking to people as
much as I can about what does it mean to
be creative in schools ironically my
schedule now looks a lot like that
student of mine from the beginning it’s
packed with things and so I’m sort of
where she’s at I’m falling down and
trying a lot but in doing so I realize I
need to have my own time to process and
so what I like to do is I like to go for
runs I run about an hour a day and in
that in those runs it helps me process
things I’m thinking about all the
conversations I had a lot of the best
most creative ideas I have are along a
run aside from the fact I listen to a
lot of podcasts about bad movies and
things like that but when I’m not doing
that I’m thinking about school and about
three weeks ago when I was out on a run
I was about two blocks from home and I
saw this picture it’s actually was the
storefront it’s run in the corner of
edges on Ashland just north of my house
and and at first I thought this looks
like it looks like a new running store
looks like a Nike store you can tell the
font on the window there it looks like a
like the Nike font and as I ran closer I
realized it wasn’t a Nike store in fact
it wasn’t a workout store was actually a
leisure wear store and on the window it
said do less and as I saw that I
actually stopped these are my pictures
by the way he can tell by how good
they’re those pictures I stopped and I
said you know all I’m thinking about
here is educational I’m thinking about
it schools I’m thinking about creativity
and I saw these two words do less and I
thought maybe there’s something to be
had here maybe the key to unlocking
creativity in schools comes down to
these two words do less right now we
quantify schools by how much they do
rigor in schools is defined by how many
things we force adolescents to do every
day we used to have the three hours I’d
argue now we have the 3 p’s first one is
prescribed curriculum AP IB all the
other still yet silly acronyms would use
in education all these prescribed
curriculums it’s the thing I hear most
from parents do you do ap do you do IB
sometimes I think of a different acronym
that has another couple words in it that
I’d like to use when it comes to those
things but I don’t use it
but that is designed to think that’s
designed to equal rigor prescribed
curriculum the second thing that we like
to do is we like to look next P is
planning for college we spend a huge
amount of time in our high schools today
talking about something that will happen
after they leave so much so that I was
in some schools recently where every
room was named after a college that’s
like naming every business every room in
your office after retirement communities
why are we focusing in on what happens
next can we enjoy and appreciate and
learn from the moment
not according to rigorous schools today
and lastly and most importantly is
pressure third P you take our prescribed
curriculum you plan for college we’re
gonna put the pressure on you and you
send those results this is where our
schools are today specifically we look
at the AP u.s. history curriculum these
are all the topics you cover in AP US
history in a hundred hours of time these
are all the things you’re going to cover
hundred hours if you work 40 hours a
week that’s two and a half weeks of work
you need to memorize everything on this
list internalize it and spit it back out
to the person in front of the room and
this qualifies as rigorous you know what
kind of person succeeds in a system that
requires you to memorize all this stuff
in two and a half weeks worth of time
and regurgitate it back compliant people
people who aren’t creative or who can
who are creative and can turn that part
of their brain off to do exactly what’s
required on time and on spec and don’t
add anything new to the mix not
coincidentally the type of people who
succeed in this system by the way also
tend to look an awful lot like the
teachers in these buildings because if
you’re successful in this system you
often come back to this system to teach
in that system and know it so itself
perpetuates
you know who doesn’t work in the system
you know who sucks at it people who are
creative who can’t turn that part of
their brain off who want to ask
questions who want to say stop I want to
know a little bit more about this can we
talk about it the answer is typically
now we got something to do tomorrow the
kid who comes into this situation and
says I want to know more and maybe the
answer I give you might not be exactly
what you want but it’s because I’m
thinking about a different question
that’s built on this those are the kids
we label as slow as difficult as
behavior problems these are the kids who
we penalize in systems that are designed
around data processing our schools today
are defined in rigor in terms of how
quickly they can put kids on a hamster
wheel and make them spin the faster we
can spin on that wheel the better our
schools get ranked and so as I came into
this situation I thought of another
important world leader who said very
famously I don’t want to stop this wheel
I want to break this wheel I believe our
schools need to refocus themselves I
believe our schools need to think a
little bit less about the rigid
curriculum and more about the
responsiveness to their children I think
we need to build schools today that are
not built on rigid curriculum but
instead on responsive systems that
listen to every child and decide what is
this kid going to be and how can I help
them get there we need to think
institutionally about the type of
systems that create this situation and
and give as much as we can to make them
happen we need to build schools that
give students the autonomy and Trust to
design their learning paths but also
have an adult with them to help them
marry what they know they need to have
in the future with who they are now and
find a way to bring it together a lot of
schools
talk about autonomy a lot of schools
talk about trust but look at their
systems look at their schedules how much
trust are they actually giving to
children adolescents are amazing
if we trust them and we need to build
schools who systemically reward their
teachers not for the quickness with
which they go through that curriculum
but with their ability to listen to to
connect with to empathize with to think
about the needs of the kids who walk in
their door and then design not based on
what aap wants but what those children
need and what they can do for them to
make them better people I think it comes
back to this sign we’ve gotten so caught
up in how much we do in schools I think
we might need to do a little bit less I
think we might need to step back a
little bit take our foot off the gas a
little bit and think about who are these
people who are walking into our building
and how do we adjust our system to fit
those people the problems in education
are myriad and systemic and 18 minutes
is not enough to talk about all the
problems that exist in education 1,800
minutes is not enough time to talk about
all the problems that exist in education
but I think we can start at the very
least by making a pledge to every child
that walks through our door and I was
thinking it goes a little something like
this to every child who walks through
this door we as the adults entrusted
with helping inspiring its and helping
inspire the next generation of creative
citizens promise that we will listen to
you more we will learn about you more we
will empathize with you more and maybe
just maybe we’ll do a little bit less I
think it’s a start thank you
[Applause]
President Joe Biden was asked to speak
in front of a group of business leaders
about the concept of value and
specifically business values and in that
talk he said to them you know what don’t
show me your value statements show me
your budget and I’ll show you what you
value I think about that a lot when it
comes to creativity in schools and
whether or not we designed specifically
for creativity specifically I think
about every school in this country that
has a mission statement virtually every
one does and when I see those mission
statements and those vision statements
in those value statements in those
schools I tend to think the same thing
don’t show me your values show me your
student schedules and I’ll show you what
your school values when we think about
this I tend to think back to a student I
had about 10 years ago who came to me
upset about she was in the process of
writing an essay for college and she
came to me in the hallway she was in
tears and just destroyed and and just
about ready to collapse because she just
couldn’t get her essay right and I
thought to myself no problem let’s sit
down we’ll have an hour
well knock this out I’ll work with you
so she says great I’ll email you I’ll
give you sometimes about a week later I
don’t hear from her and so I find her in
the hallway again and I’m like what’s
going on she says to me I can’t find a
single hour to work on this essay and
I’m thinking 17 year-old this is
probably hyperbole let’s take a look at
your schedule she shows me her schedule
and it looks something like this
she’s got everything mapped day to day
she’s got barely a half an hour a day to
do anything that’s her own she’s so
scheduled that she can’t possibly find
an hour to work with her teacher on an
essay and I thought to myself my god
what are we doing to our adolescents
that make them not only have schedules
that look like this but also feel the
type of pain this kid was feeling
so I started looking into adolescents
specifically the neuroscience of the
adolescent brain and how they deal with
things like this and as I looked into
what I found that when we look at
neuroscience we look at the adolescent
brain that adolescent brains tend to
work on about a two hour time difference
from adult brains meaning that when an
adult wakes up at 8 o’clock if that was
an adolescent it would feel to the
adolescent as if they were waking up at
6 so so I started thinking about this
from the adult standpoint and I was
thinking about this in terms of what a
job might look like if we had the
schedule of our kids well if we had the
schedule of our kids we’d wake up at 4
o’clock in the morning hours workday
would start at 5:30 we then go to work
and we’d have 7 different bosses telling
us what to do every hour every one of
those bosses would think they’re there
there you’re their only boss and they
give you work accordingly so you’d come
home you’d have dinner at five maybe
hour an hour and a half and then after
dinner you’d go back and do all the
paperwork you hadn’t gotten done that
day because you didn’t have enough time
to do it because your other six bosses
told you how to do something else and
you’d wake up the next morning at 4
o’clock and you do the whole thing over
again now those of us who are adults see
that and think about that imagine if you
did that not because you loved your job
but because you were hoping that in four
years from now you could get a better
job that you could maybe your resume
would be good enough to qualify for now
that next job that you’re going to get
in four years by the way the only reason
you think it’s good is because US News
and World Report ranked it really highly
so this is the type of world in which
our adolescents are living and yet all
of our schools talk about the idea of
building creativity what kind of
creativity can happen in a world where
you’re doing this kind of stuff if we
think about some of the most creative
moments in history Michelangelo this is
the Sistine Chapel for years he worked
on this
every day day and night he worked on
this over four years lying on his back
painting in this Chapel could you
imagine him at the end of this saying
you know would have made this a better
process if I had a half an hour a day to
work on this in between soccer practice
and a CT prep that’s not something that
you’d see so this is why I started
thinking about what we need to do to
create better schools I thought we need
to design spaces that are expressly
built around creativity because right
now our schools are data processing
plants the majority of schools in this
country exist as data processing plants
the kids show up we feed them data they
return that data to us and we move on
but in the last thirty years what we
found is that human beings aren’t really
good at data processing computers are
significantly better at the inner
processing this is a quick chart to show
you that in the next five years you’re
going to be able to likely buy a
thousand dollar computer that is the
equivalent of a human brain speed of
data processing in 30 years from now
you’re going to be able to buy a
thousand dollar computer that’s
equivalent to the brain power of the
entire human race and yet our schools
still exist as if we are building the
best data processors in the world so in
a world like this what should be the
goal of the school I think the school
needs to think about what it is that
makes human beings worthwhile on the
planet and I would argue it’s two things
I would say human beings exist here for
two reasons one of which is to create
relationships and to be emotional
supports for one another and the second
is to be creative to build things from
nothing to take ideas that are disparate
find connections and build things that
we’re not there before that are
beautiful and useful I think that’s what
makes us who we are and that’s what
makes us valuable and that makes us what
we need to be to have a value in the
world
so I started looking at creativity and
how how might we design a school that
it’s expressly built around creativity
and I came across this article in the
Harvard Business Review and in the
Harvard Business Review they were
actually talking to business leaders
about how to create creative solution
problem solvers in the business world
and they said in this process there’s
one factor that matters more than
anything in building creative
problem-solvers in your workforce and
that’s time the more time they have the
more likely they are to build a creative
solution however even if you don’t have
that much time you can still build
creative problem-solvers if those people
feel like they what they’re doing is
important has a mission and they’re
connected to that purpose then you might
still you’re not going to get it quite
as much as if you give them more time
but you can still get something out of
it
in that same article though they talked
about how do we kill creativity in our
businesses and they highlighted several
factors I’m gonna highlight three of
them here one of which is that the
people who are working there feel like
the work is unimportant if your workers
don’t feel like what they’re doing is
important they’re not going to be
creative second if your workers are
working on a fragmented schedule they
specifically cite the idea of doing a
bunch of things during the day for about
an hour at a time and having no
connection between any of them that will
kill creativity in your workplace and
lastly that the workers feel distracted
they don’t feel connected to a bigger
purpose and I looked at that those
things and I thought that was my high
school experience
I could imagine many of you in this
audience felt like I didn’t feel like it
was important my schedule was fragmented
I felt distracted that’s pretty much
defining most of the high school
experiences in America so I set out to
build a high school that tried to
confront these challenges and build
something that was designed specifically
to enhance creativity so for the last
three months I’ve been going around the
city the country talking to people as
much as I can about what does it mean to
be creative in schools ironically my
schedule now looks a lot like that
student of mine from the beginning it’s
packed with things and so I’m sort of
where she’s at I’m falling down and
trying a lot but in doing so I realize I
need to have my own time to process and
so what I like to do is I like to go for
runs I run about an hour a day and in
that in those runs it helps me process
things I’m thinking about all the
conversations I had a lot of the best
most creative ideas I have are along a
run aside from the fact I listen to a
lot of podcasts about bad movies and
things like that but when I’m not doing
that I’m thinking about school and about
three weeks ago when I was out on a run
I was about two blocks from home and I
saw this picture it’s actually was the
storefront it’s run in the corner of
edges on Ashland just north of my house
and and at first I thought this looks
like it looks like a new running store
looks like a Nike store you can tell the
font on the window there it looks like a
like the Nike font and as I ran closer I
realized it wasn’t a Nike store in fact
it wasn’t a workout store was actually a
leisure wear store and on the window it
said do less and as I saw that I
actually stopped these are my pictures
by the way he can tell by how good
they’re those pictures I stopped and I
said you know all I’m thinking about
here is educational I’m thinking about
it schools I’m thinking about creativity
and I saw these two words do less and I
thought maybe there’s something to be
had here maybe the key to unlocking
creativity in schools comes down to
these two words do less right now we
quantify schools by how much they do
rigor in schools is defined by how many
things we force adolescents to do every
day we used to have the three hours I’d
argue now we have the 3 p’s first one is
prescribed curriculum AP IB all the
other still yet silly acronyms would use
in education all these prescribed
curriculums it’s the thing I hear most
from parents do you do ap do you do IB
sometimes I think of a different acronym
that has another couple words in it that
I’d like to use when it comes to those
things but I don’t use it
but that is designed to think that’s
designed to equal rigor prescribed
curriculum the second thing that we like
to do is we like to look next P is
planning for college we spend a huge
amount of time in our high schools today
talking about something that will happen
after they leave so much so that I was
in some schools recently where every
room was named after a college that’s
like naming every business every room in
your office after retirement communities
why are we focusing in on what happens
next can we enjoy and appreciate and
learn from the moment
not according to rigorous schools today
and lastly and most importantly is
pressure third P you take our prescribed
curriculum you plan for college we’re
gonna put the pressure on you and you
send those results this is where our
schools are today specifically we look
at the AP u.s. history curriculum these
are all the topics you cover in AP US
history in a hundred hours of time these
are all the things you’re going to cover
hundred hours if you work 40 hours a
week that’s two and a half weeks of work
you need to memorize everything on this
list internalize it and spit it back out
to the person in front of the room and
this qualifies as rigorous you know what
kind of person succeeds in a system that
requires you to memorize all this stuff
in two and a half weeks worth of time
and regurgitate it back compliant people
people who aren’t creative or who can
who are creative and can turn that part
of their brain off to do exactly what’s
required on time and on spec and don’t
add anything new to the mix not
coincidentally the type of people who
succeed in this system by the way also
tend to look an awful lot like the
teachers in these buildings because if
you’re successful in this system you
often come back to this system to teach
in that system and know it so itself
perpetuates
you know who doesn’t work in the system
you know who sucks at it people who are
creative who can’t turn that part of
their brain off who want to ask
questions who want to say stop I want to
know a little bit more about this can we
talk about it the answer is typically
now we got something to do tomorrow the
kid who comes into this situation and
says I want to know more and maybe the
answer I give you might not be exactly
what you want but it’s because I’m
thinking about a different question
that’s built on this those are the kids
we label as slow as difficult as
behavior problems these are the kids who
we penalize in systems that are designed
around data processing our schools today
are defined in rigor in terms of how
quickly they can put kids on a hamster
wheel and make them spin the faster we
can spin on that wheel the better our
schools get ranked and so as I came into
this situation I thought of another
important world leader who said very
famously I don’t want to stop this wheel
I want to break this wheel I believe our
schools need to refocus themselves I
believe our schools need to think a
little bit less about the rigid
curriculum and more about the
responsiveness to their children I think
we need to build schools today that are
not built on rigid curriculum but
instead on responsive systems that
listen to every child and decide what is
this kid going to be and how can I help
them get there we need to think
institutionally about the type of
systems that create this situation and
and give as much as we can to make them
happen we need to build schools that
give students the autonomy and Trust to
design their learning paths but also
have an adult with them to help them
marry what they know they need to have
in the future with who they are now and
find a way to bring it together a lot of
schools
talk about autonomy a lot of schools
talk about trust but look at their
systems look at their schedules how much
trust are they actually giving to
children adolescents are amazing
if we trust them and we need to build
schools who systemically reward their
teachers not for the quickness with
which they go through that curriculum
but with their ability to listen to to
connect with to empathize with to think
about the needs of the kids who walk in
their door and then design not based on
what aap wants but what those children
need and what they can do for them to
make them better people I think it comes
back to this sign we’ve gotten so caught
up in how much we do in schools I think
we might need to do a little bit less I
think we might need to step back a
little bit take our foot off the gas a
little bit and think about who are these
people who are walking into our building
and how do we adjust our system to fit
those people the problems in education
are myriad and systemic and 18 minutes
is not enough to talk about all the
problems that exist in education 1,800
minutes is not enough time to talk about
all the problems that exist in education
but I think we can start at the very
least by making a pledge to every child
that walks through our door and I was
thinking it goes a little something like
this to every child who walks through
this door we as the adults entrusted
with helping inspiring its and helping
inspire the next generation of creative
citizens promise that we will listen to
you more we will learn about you more we
will empathize with you more and maybe
just maybe we’ll do a little bit less I
think it’s a start thank you
[Applause]
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