a child while
a bookstore the owner
smoking a pipe and hunched into an
armchair that’s undoubtedly older than
him turns to face his newest customer he
says with a half once near that the
video arcade is down the street here we
just sell small rectangular objects
they’re called books they require a
little effort on your part
they make no Bibbit beeps on your way
please
the child frustrated at the insult
replies with an exasperated voice I know
books I have a hundred and eighty six of
them at home than man hand waves the
reply away with a sneer ba comic books
this is my personal transcript of the
1984 movie the neverending story it’s
weird how wrong these lines feel right a
movie based on a book that encourages
children to read for the sake of
engaging them with literature introduces
its proxy librarian character with him
telling the children eagerly watching at
home and in theaters the comic books are
lesser and videogames are noisy when
faced with this the hero of the story
Sebastian ops to list his favorite
novels Tarzan and Lord of the Rings
Treasure Island and 20,000 Leagues Under
the Sea
all of these stories were 30 years old
or older at the time of the movie’s
release most likely works that the
author of the screenplay
or even the author of the novel the
movies based on read as youngsters this
transcript I’ve provided was often in
the eyes of our society then and even
unfortunately now the only way we could
see education outside of textbooks as
gateways to something we would often
consider better TV rots your brains
except when it’s teaching children to
read through programs like the Reading
Rainbow video games cause violence
except when its installed in schools to
educate preschoolers this fixation is
something that I’ve personally nicknamed
the one way of learning
this examination of worldly education
got me thinking see I can’t understand
most of the time lectures the ironic
thing is if I was sitting in some of the
seats you are right now I would have a
very difficult time understanding
everything I’m telling you right now and
I noticed that I actually have a much
easier time understanding the
transcripts of those same talks and
basically an individual who doesn’t
understand a topic in one format usually
if not always has an easier time
understanding that same topic when
presented or transformed into another
format so my personal theory is this
much like transforming a format from
lecture to transcript isn’t it possible
that transforming a medium from say
novel to film might make some subjects
easier to understand and by extension by
utilizing different mediums in
educational circles beyond just
textbooks and the occasional educational
game and documentary film might we not
be able to engage students who are
otherwise struggling in various
different courses in degrees now my
favorite book of all time is the last
unicorn by Peter s beagle which is a
transformative work about giving new
meaning to old symbols in a modern age
it’s helped me in ways that I can’t
quite describe without going into some
rather dark and personal moments of my
life I also can’t remember a single line
from it not a single line of dialogue
not a single paragraph of some of the
most transformative storytelling I’ve
ever had the pleasure of reading I can
however tell you all about the generic
video game I was playing while listening
to a generic educational podcast about
the nature of news media because it
engages with the way that I understand
and perceive the world around me even if
it doesn’t necessarily dictate how much
I like a book or a video again this
applies to all of us
you may be a voracious reader that rips
apart a best-seller in a single weekend
but that doesn’t mean that teaching you
history through textbooks is ideal our
choice of medium doesn’t dictate the
best way to educate us and I think that
to a degree schools and teachers know
about this because I have talked to
activists and I have talked to teachers
and I have heard from them an
understanding of the power of these
mediums in a and a frustration at the
lack of access to these tools almost as
much as I hear from students but there
was one common denominator between all
of these
not a single person I had the chance to
talk to worked in secondary education
now we’ll get to why that’s important in
a bit but first let’s create a
hypothetical situation where we allow
every single educational medium Under
the Sun into classrooms suddenly the
landscape of our public education would
get radically altered we could
theoretically teach geology and math
visually or sociology and languages
through video games people with dyslexia
and other comparable learning
disabilities could have their needs
almost immediately met and as well
students from unique cultural
backgrounds could regularly appeal to
teachers to open the catalog of a given
subject to works from their own unique
cultural perspective even speaking
hypothetically just allowing students to
approach a subject matter on their own
terms will have benefits that are simply
incalculable but that’s not how it is
right now math is taught through
textbooks as well as every other subject
imaginable people with dyslexia about 10
to 20% of the world by some estimates
are at a clear and stark disadvantage a
unique qualified few students are set to
succeed and it seems that we as a
society are not even able to perceive
the invisible hurdles that
a lot of students go through I’d like to
tell you a little bit about my personal
experience with school I have ADHD which
stands for attention deficit hyperactive
disorder as you can imagine I did not do
very well by eighth grade I was falling
behind in most everything because the
textbooks with illustrations that had
been photocopied so much that they were
almost unrecognizable were often very
worrying to me and it wouldn’t be long
before my mind would start to wander in
classrooms to somewhere else had it not
been for teachers that were hell-bent in
hand holding me through a variety of
courses I have no doubt that I would not
have been able to attend college later
on but I was able to and I noticed that
in secondary school the environment of
student life had changed and with the
dynamic of being a student
whereas in grade school teachers and
school faculty were asked to adapt to
you you were now asked to adapt to
teachers and I noticed that with this
change it became more dangerous to be a
student for example when I was allowed
to eat when I was allowed to go to the
bathroom if I was allowed to go to the
bathroom and if my grade would get
lowered for attending a funeral during
school hours all fell into the hands of
individual teachers with complete
control over classrooms this is if you
can’t tell unhealthy for students and an
unhealthy way to approach teaching in
general of course this dynamic would
largely get altered if we asked of
course this dynamic would largely get
altered if we introduced multiple
mediums of Education because then
educators and teachers would be asked to
adapt to multiple curriculums and thus
adapt to students but in the environment
we have now with the prevalence of the
one way of learning and must be
understood that we have a unique toxic
culture within academia
almost doesn’t exist outside of it
obviously the teachers that abuse this
system are I’m minut part of overall
school faculty but I have yet to meet a
student who has attended a college or
university in the last five years who
hasn’t had an experience with such a
teacher the problem may not lie with
every teacher but it is big enough to
affect almost every student in my third
year of college my depression got the
better of me and I had to drop out
instead I went into the very lucrative
career of comics but by age 22 I had
edited over 50 projects across video
games across prose works across
animation and of course across comics
some of them were even nominated for
awards
I am despite my age relatively
accomplished but I’d like to ask you
people who are currently attending this
TED talk with me how many of you could
have utilized these mediums in the same
way that I was allowed to not just as
creators looking for a new way to get
inspired but as students looking to get
into astrophysics who blamed their own
brain for not understanding algebra
students who wanted to get into one
college or another and fell just one
course short of a passing grade one
subject matter they needed to understand
better and still blame themselves for
unfortunately I know I can name a few
people in my own life who fit that
description and I know that a few more
of them are with me here today now the
great thing is we are already taking
small steps to address these very vast
problems after all most of us grew up
with educational games in our elementary
schools I don’t think that the
prevalence of the one way of learning as
a result of hatred at the hands of our
educational system as much as ignorance
or misunderstanding or under
funding but I also feel that the
collective situation we have found
ourselves in does hurt students and I
think it’s our job to help them along
workers within education are obviously
key to fixing this but it’s not just
them you can help as well
advocating for these mediums at academic
conferences at libraries at bar events
and at any public space that shares
stories and culture can greatly help the
reach of these mediums as well
contacting or calling your federal and
local representatives can help as many
of them work in educational boards
themselves and as most would like to
keep their job in the foreseeable future
they would like to hear from you about
your needs about your students needs and
about your children’s needs but most
importantly parents if your child is 10
and still reading picture books or
listening to music you don’t understand
or even like let them because it engages
them with the world around them it may
not get their grades up but it will help
teach them memory motor skills
vocabulary and an understanding of the
arts building blocks for most degrees
courses and classes and if they approach
you later on with a subject matter that
they swear up and down that they’ve
tried to understand but can’t consider
that maybe switching mediums or formats might just do the job
a bookstore the owner
smoking a pipe and hunched into an
armchair that’s undoubtedly older than
him turns to face his newest customer he
says with a half once near that the
video arcade is down the street here we
just sell small rectangular objects
they’re called books they require a
little effort on your part
they make no Bibbit beeps on your way
please
the child frustrated at the insult
replies with an exasperated voice I know
books I have a hundred and eighty six of
them at home than man hand waves the
reply away with a sneer ba comic books
this is my personal transcript of the
1984 movie the neverending story it’s
weird how wrong these lines feel right a
movie based on a book that encourages
children to read for the sake of
engaging them with literature introduces
its proxy librarian character with him
telling the children eagerly watching at
home and in theaters the comic books are
lesser and videogames are noisy when
faced with this the hero of the story
Sebastian ops to list his favorite
novels Tarzan and Lord of the Rings
Treasure Island and 20,000 Leagues Under
the Sea
all of these stories were 30 years old
or older at the time of the movie’s
release most likely works that the
author of the screenplay
or even the author of the novel the
movies based on read as youngsters this
transcript I’ve provided was often in
the eyes of our society then and even
unfortunately now the only way we could
see education outside of textbooks as
gateways to something we would often
consider better TV rots your brains
except when it’s teaching children to
read through programs like the Reading
Rainbow video games cause violence
except when its installed in schools to
educate preschoolers this fixation is
something that I’ve personally nicknamed
the one way of learning
this examination of worldly education
got me thinking see I can’t understand
most of the time lectures the ironic
thing is if I was sitting in some of the
seats you are right now I would have a
very difficult time understanding
everything I’m telling you right now and
I noticed that I actually have a much
easier time understanding the
transcripts of those same talks and
basically an individual who doesn’t
understand a topic in one format usually
if not always has an easier time
understanding that same topic when
presented or transformed into another
format so my personal theory is this
much like transforming a format from
lecture to transcript isn’t it possible
that transforming a medium from say
novel to film might make some subjects
easier to understand and by extension by
utilizing different mediums in
educational circles beyond just
textbooks and the occasional educational
game and documentary film might we not
be able to engage students who are
otherwise struggling in various
different courses in degrees now my
favorite book of all time is the last
unicorn by Peter s beagle which is a
transformative work about giving new
meaning to old symbols in a modern age
it’s helped me in ways that I can’t
quite describe without going into some
rather dark and personal moments of my
life I also can’t remember a single line
from it not a single line of dialogue
not a single paragraph of some of the
most transformative storytelling I’ve
ever had the pleasure of reading I can
however tell you all about the generic
video game I was playing while listening
to a generic educational podcast about
the nature of news media because it
engages with the way that I understand
and perceive the world around me even if
it doesn’t necessarily dictate how much
I like a book or a video again this
applies to all of us
you may be a voracious reader that rips
apart a best-seller in a single weekend
but that doesn’t mean that teaching you
history through textbooks is ideal our
choice of medium doesn’t dictate the
best way to educate us and I think that
to a degree schools and teachers know
about this because I have talked to
activists and I have talked to teachers
and I have heard from them an
understanding of the power of these
mediums in a and a frustration at the
lack of access to these tools almost as
much as I hear from students but there
was one common denominator between all
of these
not a single person I had the chance to
talk to worked in secondary education
now we’ll get to why that’s important in
a bit but first let’s create a
hypothetical situation where we allow
every single educational medium Under
the Sun into classrooms suddenly the
landscape of our public education would
get radically altered we could
theoretically teach geology and math
visually or sociology and languages
through video games people with dyslexia
and other comparable learning
disabilities could have their needs
almost immediately met and as well
students from unique cultural
backgrounds could regularly appeal to
teachers to open the catalog of a given
subject to works from their own unique
cultural perspective even speaking
hypothetically just allowing students to
approach a subject matter on their own
terms will have benefits that are simply
incalculable but that’s not how it is
right now math is taught through
textbooks as well as every other subject
imaginable people with dyslexia about 10
to 20% of the world by some estimates
are at a clear and stark disadvantage a
unique qualified few students are set to
succeed and it seems that we as a
society are not even able to perceive
the invisible hurdles that
a lot of students go through I’d like to
tell you a little bit about my personal
experience with school I have ADHD which
stands for attention deficit hyperactive
disorder as you can imagine I did not do
very well by eighth grade I was falling
behind in most everything because the
textbooks with illustrations that had
been photocopied so much that they were
almost unrecognizable were often very
worrying to me and it wouldn’t be long
before my mind would start to wander in
classrooms to somewhere else had it not
been for teachers that were hell-bent in
hand holding me through a variety of
courses I have no doubt that I would not
have been able to attend college later
on but I was able to and I noticed that
in secondary school the environment of
student life had changed and with the
dynamic of being a student
whereas in grade school teachers and
school faculty were asked to adapt to
you you were now asked to adapt to
teachers and I noticed that with this
change it became more dangerous to be a
student for example when I was allowed
to eat when I was allowed to go to the
bathroom if I was allowed to go to the
bathroom and if my grade would get
lowered for attending a funeral during
school hours all fell into the hands of
individual teachers with complete
control over classrooms this is if you
can’t tell unhealthy for students and an
unhealthy way to approach teaching in
general of course this dynamic would
largely get altered if we asked of
course this dynamic would largely get
altered if we introduced multiple
mediums of Education because then
educators and teachers would be asked to
adapt to multiple curriculums and thus
adapt to students but in the environment
we have now with the prevalence of the
one way of learning and must be
understood that we have a unique toxic
culture within academia
almost doesn’t exist outside of it
obviously the teachers that abuse this
system are I’m minut part of overall
school faculty but I have yet to meet a
student who has attended a college or
university in the last five years who
hasn’t had an experience with such a
teacher the problem may not lie with
every teacher but it is big enough to
affect almost every student in my third
year of college my depression got the
better of me and I had to drop out
instead I went into the very lucrative
career of comics but by age 22 I had
edited over 50 projects across video
games across prose works across
animation and of course across comics
some of them were even nominated for
awards
I am despite my age relatively
accomplished but I’d like to ask you
people who are currently attending this
TED talk with me how many of you could
have utilized these mediums in the same
way that I was allowed to not just as
creators looking for a new way to get
inspired but as students looking to get
into astrophysics who blamed their own
brain for not understanding algebra
students who wanted to get into one
college or another and fell just one
course short of a passing grade one
subject matter they needed to understand
better and still blame themselves for
unfortunately I know I can name a few
people in my own life who fit that
description and I know that a few more
of them are with me here today now the
great thing is we are already taking
small steps to address these very vast
problems after all most of us grew up
with educational games in our elementary
schools I don’t think that the
prevalence of the one way of learning as
a result of hatred at the hands of our
educational system as much as ignorance
or misunderstanding or under
funding but I also feel that the
collective situation we have found
ourselves in does hurt students and I
think it’s our job to help them along
workers within education are obviously
key to fixing this but it’s not just
them you can help as well
advocating for these mediums at academic
conferences at libraries at bar events
and at any public space that shares
stories and culture can greatly help the
reach of these mediums as well
contacting or calling your federal and
local representatives can help as many
of them work in educational boards
themselves and as most would like to
keep their job in the foreseeable future
they would like to hear from you about
your needs about your students needs and
about your children’s needs but most
importantly parents if your child is 10
and still reading picture books or
listening to music you don’t understand
or even like let them because it engages
them with the world around them it may
not get their grades up but it will help
teach them memory motor skills
vocabulary and an understanding of the
arts building blocks for most degrees
courses and classes and if they approach
you later on with a subject matter that
they swear up and down that they’ve
tried to understand but can’t consider
that maybe switching mediums or formats might just do the job
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