Could a prescription to dance better serve today’s youth?

I’m writing a new book called Epiphany, based on interviews with people about how they discovered their talent. It was prompted by a conversation I had with the wonderful choreographer Gillian Lynne, who did Cats and The Phantom of the Opera.

At lunch one day I asked Gillian how she became a dancer. She told me that she was really hopeless at school. She couldn’t concentrate; she was always fidgeting. The school wrote to her parents, “We think Gillian has a learning disorder.” I think now they’d say she had ADHD. But this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn’t been invented yet.

Gillian’s mother took her to a specialist, and Gillian sat on her hands for twenty minutes while her mother talked about all the problems Gillian was having at school: she was disturbing people, and her homework was always late, and so on. In the end, the doctor said, “Gillian, I’ve listened to all these things that your mother’s told me. I need to speak to her privately. Wait here—we’ll be back. We won’t be very long.”

As they went out of the room, he turned on the radio sitting on his desk. Outside the room, he said to her mother, “Just stand and watch her.” The minute they left, she was on her feet, moving to the music. They watched for a few minutes, and he said, “You know, Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn’t sick. She’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.”

I asked, “What happened?” and Gillian said, “She did. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. We walked into this room, and it was full of people like me. People who had to move to think.” Who had to move to think. She eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School and became a soloist at the Royal Ballet. She later founded her own company, and met Andrew Lloyd Webber. She’s been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history, she’s given pleasure to millions, and she’s probably a multimillionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

I don’t mean to say we are all dancers. But in a way, we are all Gillians. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children. And the only way we’ll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are, and seeing our children for the hope they are. Our task is to educate whole beings, so they can face this future. We may not see this future, but they will. And our job is to help them make

something of it.

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Sir Ken Robinson is an international leader in creativity, innovation, and educational reform and author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative.

This article is based on a talk he gave at the 2006 TED conference.