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prosaic and safe thinkers will be tempted out of their box by Ken Robinson’s ideas, theories and speculations. What’s more, he writes as he speaks, in a way that, magnetically and compulsively, is simply irresistible.”

Professor Tim Brighouse

      “There are certain books that manage to be authoritative, entertaining and thought-provoking and are also well written and richly exemplified. Few authors are able to fashion this attractive mixture. Alvin Toffler and Charles Handy can craft it. I add Ken Robinson’s absorbing account of creativity to my personal list of gems. Creativity is one of those topics that excites some and enrages others. For Ken Robinson it is a universal talent that all people have, often without realizing it. Society in general and education in particular, can squash the imagination and rock self-confidence. I was sorry to reach the end of the text, as it had maintained its momentum throughout. The reading may finish, but the thinking goes on, just as you would expect from a book on this intriguing subject.”

Professor Ted Wragg

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      THIS IS THE THIRD EDITION of Out of Our Minds. I’m especially grateful to Annie Knight at Wiley for suggesting a new edition. The plain fact is that without her gentle encouragement I would probably not have thought of doing it – and I’m very pleased I did. I’m grateful too to the whole production team at Wiley, and particularly to Tessa Allen, for their care and expertise in bringing this edition to the world in such a beautiful form. Thanks are due as always to my literary agent, Peter Miller, the Literary Lion, for his passionate and constant support of my work. I must also thank Brendan Barns, founder of the London Business Forum and my first speaking agent, who was responsible, with my wife and partner Terry, for making me write the original edition of this book against an improbable deadline and with a steely determination to make sure I did. At this distance, I can say I’m grateful to them both for holding their ground while I ground away at it over the long, hot summer of 2000. I wasn’t so grateful at the time! My deepest thanks are due as always to Terry, who I celebrate at the front of the book and in everything we do together. She’s an inspiration to me and to so many others.

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      SIR KEN ROBINSON, PHD is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources. He works with governments, education systems, international agencies, global corporations and some of the world’s leading cultural organizations to unlock the creative energy of people and organizations. He has led national and international projects on creative and cultural education in the UK, Europe, Asia and the United States. The embodiment of the prestigious TED Conference and its commitment to spreading new ideas, his 2006 talk, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” has been viewed online over 46 million times and seen by an estimated 400 million people in 160 countries.

      For 12 years he was professor of arts education at the University of Warwick in the UK and is now professor emeritus. He led a national commission on creativity, education and the economy for the UK Government. All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (The Robinson Report) was published to wide acclaim. He was the central figure in developing a strategy for creative and economic development as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, working with the ministers for training, education enterprise and culture. He was one of four international advisors to the Singapore Government for its strategy to become the creative hub of Southeast Asia, and the guiding force in Oklahoma’s statewide strategy to cultivate creativity and innovation in culture, commerce and education.

      He was named as one of Time/Fortune/CNN’s “Principal Voices”. He was acclaimed by Fast Company magazine as one of “the world’s elite thinkers on creativity and innovation” and was ranked in the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top business thinkers. He has received honorary degrees from ten universities in Europe and the United States. He has been honored with the Athena Award of the Rhode Island School of Design; the Peabody Medal for contributions to the arts and culture in the United States; the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the Royal Society of Arts for outstanding contributions to cultural relations between the United Kingdom and the United States; the Gordon Parks Award for Outstanding Contributions to Creativity and Education; City of New York YMCA, Arts and Letters Award for Outstanding Leadership; the LEGO Prize for Extraordinary Contributions on Behalf of Children and Young People; and the Sir Arthur C. Clarke Foundation Imagination Award. He speaks to audiences throughout the world on the creative challenges facing business and education in the new global economies. In 2003, he received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for his services to the arts.

      Sir Ken was born in Liverpool, UK. He is married to Thérèse (Lady) Robinson. They have two children, James and Kate.

      Also by Sir Ken Robinson: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything (Penguin/Viking, 2009) is a New York Times bestseller. It has been translated into 23 languages and has sold over a million copies worldwide. Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life (Viking, 2013) is also a New York Times bestseller. Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education (Viking, 2015) tackles the critical issue of how to transform the world’s troubled educational systems and is now available in 15 languages.

      PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

      I WROTE THE ORIGINAL EDITION of Out of Our Minds during 2000. A second, fully revised edition was published in 2011. What you have in your hands now is the third edition, which has been thoroughly revised again. Why another new edition?

      The main reason I wrote this book in the first place is that the pace and nature of change demand that we think differently about ourselves, about education and about how we run our businesses and institutions. On almost every front, the pace of change has become ever more frantic and the issues at the heart of this book have become more pressing. This new edition is my own attempt to keep pace with these changes.

      The second reason is that the arguments I put forward here have become more – not less – urgent, and this edition presents them more sharply. The more complex the world becomes, the more creative we need to be to meet its challenges. Yet many people wonder if they have any creative abilities at all. Out of Our Minds is about why creativity matters so much, why people think they are not creative, how we arrived at this point and what we can do about it. My aims in this book are to help individuals to understand the depth of their creative abilities and why they might have doubted them; to encourage organizations to believe in their powers of innovation and to create the conditions where they will flourish; and to promote a creative revolution in education.

      I said in the original introduction that I had called the book Out of Our Minds for three reasons. I still have three reasons and here they are. First, human intelligence is profoundly and uniquely creative. We live in a world that’s shaped by the ideas, beliefs and values of human imagination and culture. The human world is created out of our minds as much as from the natural environment. Thinking and feeling are not simply about seeing the world as it is, but having ideas about it, and interpreting experience to give it meaning. Different communities live differently according to the ideas they have and the meanings they experience. In a literal sense, we create the worlds we live in. We can also re-create them. The great revolutions in human history have often been brought about by new ideas: by new ways of seeing that have shattered old certainties.

      Second, realizing our creative potential is partly a question of finding our medium, of being in our element. Education should help us to achieve this, but too often it does not and too many people are instead displaced from their own true talents. They are out of their element and out of their minds in that sense.

      Finally, there is a kind of mania driving the present direction of educational policy. In place of a reasoned debate about the strategies that are needed to face these extraordinary changes, there is a tired mantra about raising traditional academic standards. These standards were designed for other times and for other purposes – as I will explain. We will not succeed in navigating the complex environment of the future by peering relentlessly into a rear-view mirror. Today, as when the first edition appeared in 2001, I’m convinced that to stay on this course we would be out of our minds in a more

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