Why Is the Most Popular TED Talk of All Time About Education?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

It's been six years since TED began making its informative talks available online, enabling the world to watch some of our most brilliant thinkers and activists share their ideas. There are so many good ones that watching them can be addicting. But what's the most viewed TED Talk of all time? According to the TED blog, creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson's 2006 talk on why our education system is killing student creativity and why we need to radically rethink our approach to schooling has a lock on the number one spot. As of this writing, Robinson's talk has 13,409,417 views across various online platforms.

Why is Robinson's talk so popular? Sure, it helps that he's a great speaker with smart ideas, but as he says in his talk, "I have an interest in education—actually, what I find is everybody has an interest in education," since "it's education that's meant to take us into this future that we can't grasp." Indeed, many of us know through personal experience that our highly standardized, impersonal, factory model of education is pretty effective at shutting down students' imagination and eagerness to learn. We all have a stake in ensuring that changes so that the next generation is better equipped to creatively solve the problems of the 21st century.

If you're not one of the millions who has watched Robinson's talk, take 20 minutes and find out for yourself why what he's saying resonates with so many people.