Roy Sharples and Gary Burt provide perspective on imagining if the world was rebooted, what would you do differently if you had no constraints?
Creativity Without Frontiers available at all relevant book retailers
Stay in touch with Unknown Origins
Music by Iain Mutch
Roy Sharples and Gary Burt provide perspective on imagining if the world was rebooted, what would you do differently if you had no constraints?
Creativity Without Frontiers available at all relevant book retailers
Stay in touch with Unknown Origins
Music by Iain Mutch
Are you an industry expert looking for insights? Or are you growing your career? You know, I created the unknown origins podcast series to have the most inspiring conversations with creative industry experts about entrepreneurship, pop culture, art, music, film and fashion. Today's topic is world rebooted, for which I am energized to be in conversation with erudite Gary Barth, who has spent years at the vanguard of public service, the people centered design based approach technology and business innovation, where he has mastered the art and science of empathetically evaluating broad societal and cultural trends, new directions with an industry verticals, shifts in consumer demand, and applying that learning to shape new opportunities, and to future products and services that positively benefit people and society. Imagine if the world was rebooted to its factory settings. What would you do to reset based on what you've learned through the history of time, but also what you know, today? And what would you do differently? If you had no constraints? Knowing that you could do what you want, with all the frontiers removed? How would you shape education, public policy, culture, economics, politics, society like that with the 2020 pandemic? In many ways, it's helped cleanse the world and forcing a lot of the the anachronisms and old systems that just aren't fit for purpose in modern life, such as education, business, government's fewer president, Gary have the land of the free and funding, what would you do?
Gary Burt:I guess the first one is, I'm not convinced by this. And what I mean by this is, I'm not convinced that the change that we see is locked at the moment, I think many of the changes that we've seen, and there have been a lot of a lot of positive changes, were at risk of having these reverbs. And unless we acknowledge the importance of what changes and commit to the changes that have been made. So for me, I think what I've seen during COVID is that we've recognized, as you said, a lot of our systems and behaviors are not only unhealthy and sustainable, but ultimately responsible for many of the problems that we're dealing with. Whether we look at this as a planet, a country, or an individual, a lot of the things that we took as normal, aren't working as well as they could COVID-19 is shown as a lot of problems. It's but it's also given us this really positive view is worth what is possible. So improve water quality, cleaner air, quieter cities that are a joy to walk around improved greenery, it provided an opportunity for people to reappraise their lives massively positive. And what is important in these, you know, lockdowns whilst they were not pleasant have really highlighted and shown us the importance of exercise the potential to work from home, at least for a lot of people, and reduce or avoid the commute. We've learned to live without our daily Starbucks hit and recognize that a home sandwich can taste great, but the fraction of the price of a bought one. But these are not fixed. And I think that as we look to learn and move on from COVID, the first thing we need to do is recognize one thing, we have a choice here, yes, there is potential for change, I really fear that this isn't locked. So what is important for today is to is to be very specific about the desire to want to change. So we've seen what's possible, we've seen systems are broken, the critical thing is here is to embrace the fact that we need to look at what we're doing, and start to make some really, really big changes here. And you know, these can be these can be minor changes, it can be big, but we said the one thing we don't want to do, and this would be a real lost opportunity is is just go back to what we've got to try to fix things to move to what they were before. That's a massively lost opportunity. What is it that we want? What is it that we want society to be? And, you know, for me, I looked at this and I could write Long, long words and essays on this. But I I think it's really simple. I think, you know, to make it as simple as possible. I think it's about having a human first society. Yeah. And what I mean by that is a sustainable human first, which is going it's recognizing the importance of all people. And this isn't some hippie idea. Let me explain. It means that look, the systems, the societies, the processes, the whole way of living that we have today, isn't working for a huge number. Have people. So let's forget the reasons why. But it really isn't working. So if I wanted to, you know, I'm the I'm the president, I'm the Prime Minister, what's the first thing I start to do is to start to be very clear about saying, if we want to fix some of these things, we don't need to do them in a piecemeal manner, it won't work, what we need to do is start to have this very fundamental conversation about as a society, as a group of people, as a country as a, as a, as a set of nations as a world. What is it that we want? So putting, you know, having a statement of human first means that we're starting with a respect for each other, and, and a respect for the environment? This has massive implications, though. But the benefits could be huge for what we're living. I mean, you mentioned education, this is this is core in so many ways to this, because it's probably the one area that if we got the reinvention of education, right, it would have the biggest payback in terms of future changes for everybody. So how does this start to play out? So, you know, how do we how do we start to move forward with this? Right? So starting with human First, if we're saying that this is about putting people first above everything, so let's forget the defect do their challenges of how we do this, we start with putting people first, that means above anything that we recognize the value, the importance and the respect of equality, it means a fair world, it means it has to be proportional. And that's not about some API deal of saying, we all need this to be the same amount. It isn't communism, it isn't socialism, what it's doing is taking a step above these political labels and saying, Let's start with some basics. society should seek equality. Now, equality doesn't mean everybody has to earn the same amount. It doesn't mean that some people, you know, everybody has the right to, to be paid for not working, it doesn't mean to say that, if you work hard, you can't become rich and have the benefits of doing that. What it's saying, though, is we need to have a common playing field, we need to recognize that there's a set of benefits, there's a set of outcomes that we want everybody to be able to access, it means that we want everybody to be able to have secure safe housing, we want everybody to be able to go to school, and not be penalized for going to school, or loaded with huge debts for going to school, we want to have access to health care. Now, none of these, I'm saying I'm mandating the way we need to do those. But what we're doing is we're trying to go back from arguing about is it system a or system B, to look at some very simple things that we can agree on as a group of people, a group of, you know, a group of individuals, a group of families, a group of cultures, so what we're doing is we're looking to say that if we want to look at the future, we have to agree, not on how we do things, but on the very fundamental core of what we want to achieve a human level. And this is, this is what we need to tie back to. So we tie back to we want to have, and what you do is you define a set of attributes that you aim to achieve. And these need to be reasonably atomic, they need to be as simple as they can be, you know, in the words of Einstein, as simple as they could be, but no simpler. They need to be, um, definitions that don't allow interpretation that are very clear that are very simple. Then the second part, once you've done that, and that could be the right to, and we can start to list those, you know, the right to live without pollution, the right to live without fear, the right to have housing, the right to go to school, the right to education, the right to be in control of what I do to my body. So once we can agree these, the next thing we need to do is to start to prioritize them, because there are going to be trade offs here, we need to then start to prioritize what is important, you know, is education more important than defense? Now, at the end of the day, we're going to have some level of balancing. But we need to make sure that what we don't do is we don't start to prioritize the needs of one individual group above another. Now, how would how you think how this will play out. So what the goal of what you're seeking is, is incredibly high level, but it's incredibly desirable as well. So what you're seeking to define is a society where everyone can ultimately be happy, be fulfilled, but also be able to maximize their potential. And this bit is really, really important. Because at the moment, I think as a know, as a country, when you know, and I don't just mean the UK, I probably mean in many many countries. We are massively underrated forming in terms of reaching the potential of everybody? is everybody doing the job that they would love to do? is everybody doing, working at the way that they feel best able to contribute to society? And you think, well, Gary, you're being a complete idealist I am. And that's the point that we should be seeking the ideal, we shouldn't be locking into processes that aren't working. So if you take if you take the idea of education, and we think about how education works. So in, you know, the US and the UK have quite similar systems, in the sense of there's a public system and a private system. So we know that the system that you pay for delivers better outcomes, you know, we can argue about that. It's a fact it does the stats on equivalent, that doesn't mean to say that people going through the state system don't are great results they do. But when we look at how those education systems place people, and how they, you know, where the top jobs are sourced from, regardless of results will see a bias. So so we're actually starting to say we need to have a system that's more equitable, that doesn't mean to say you can't pay, it just means that we need to not only not cap, the paid for system, we need to raise the state system. So the the, the outcomes from the state system are as good as the private system. And that's going to start apart from anything else with money, but also value. So you're you're valuing those outcomes, we then follow that through. So we go through the skills, and we look for the quality of education, we then come to look at university. Now, again, UK and the US have similar systems that you pay to go to university, you pay a big, big amount of money. So in the UK, that reasonably tripled, it's not as expensive as the US system for most places. And we do have caps. But this is this is loading families with these huge bills. So in the UK, the way it works is when students go to university, most students are able to get state funded loans that will later be repaid from taxes, once they reach above a certain amount. But when you add in the living loans or living costs onto those, you're you know, you can have students coming out with, you know, 50 50,000 pound bills, you know, in the US, it could be much higher, you know, the cost of a medical degree, is huge. So what you have is, not only are people coming out of university with this huge debt, but you also have this limitation on people going into the system, that unless you're comfortable with coming out with that huge debt. And let's be really honest about this, which means that in many cases, unless your family's going to help you out with those debts, for many people, those roots are not as open as they first appeal, they first appear. So what you're going to have is, is routes that instead of having the best person, the best person qualified on a whole range of reasons, a whole range of measurements to become the best doctor, we have the people who want to become doctors, but also are comfortable with taking on the debt and the ability to live through that period. I don't think that's desirable, because although we think we're getting the best doctors, we're not We are, we are selecting out a lot of people who could become doctors who won't or can't, because they either can't fund themselves through university, or they don't want to live with that level of debt. The second thing is, we're locking people into careers. So if you come out with a huge debt, and you've trained as a geologist, you're gonna be focused only on becoming a geologist to be able to repay that debt if you become a doctor. So what this does is this ties people into single live streams. Now we know that we know that not only that people change jobs, and that's going to increase, but also people don't always know at 19 and 18, what they want to do in the rest of their life. So what the downside at a human level of these huge debts is they actually lock in the, the future direction for people, this is not a great system. Now, I'm not saying that. Of course, not everybody could become a doctor. But ultimately, everyone should have the potential to become a doctor. No, it shouldn't be about the ability to fund yourself or education. And the reason why this is critical isn't just around doctors, and dentists and lawyers, although we know that, you know, when we start to focus on focus on large debt, it pulls people towards high paying salaries. And they start to get, you know, locked into careers that maybe they don't love, but it's going to be the best paid. But the other side is these become disincentives to creativity as well. Because if you're going to end up With a big debt, that that could take you towards a career that doesn't necessarily have the great power. So if you're gonna have a big debt and you're going to become a lawyer, the chances are, you're going to earn enough to pay that debt off the same as a doctor the same as a dentist. Same as every merchant banker. If you want to become an artist or a teacher, that becomes a lot more challenging. So what we do is we provide we're building a system that incentivizes people to chase money, rather than to chase necessarily what they love, or what they're good at, or what they really enjoy. And, you know, whilst we can't, and shouldn't aim to make all of the jobs the same. So an artist, you know, unless you're very, very good is typically an A teacher is going to get paid less than a doctor. But what we can do is we can make it so at least when they start those careers, at least when they come out of university. They're not saddled with the debt, which becomes economic and employment, handcuffs
Roy Sharples:for the future. Imagine a value system and a society that evaluates people on the value of the currency of their data, for example, or their their human, the contribution to humanity, and which eradicates hierarchy and class and creates a plane level field that truly is meritocratic, and it pushes individuals to unlock their artistry and personal drive for excellence. And it's really down to them as an individual, as to how far they want to kind of go within that meritocracy. And I know that does sound ultra utopian. And of course, utopian societies are likely impossible to achieve, because different cultures and people have different levels or barometers for their happiness and their ideals. And it can often lead to conflict and competition and war and ultimately war. However, the real world can develop towards progress and justice, because utopia provides an idealized model to point out the real worlds can have weaknesses, and that the challenge is reality. So I think many of the themes that you're speaking there are a lot of merit. And back to the point at the beginning around Look, this is a significant time and opportunity to really leapfrog the issues and systems that have dragged society canadain for way too long. Now is a time to kind of come out with this to win out the blueprint for the future.
Gary Burt:No, I completely agree. And this, you know, when we look back at leaders, whether in the UK, or America, France, Germany, the leaders that we that we resonate with the leaders that we most respect to the ones that were the most visionary, you know, if we look at which leaders have done the most to improve the state of the country, we don't talk about the ones who've necessarily had the biggest economic effect. We talk about the ones who put people first. Yes, you know, so in the UK, you know, you could you know, Churchill a great leader, what was he doing? He, he's, if he isn't the kindness view of seeing it, was he perfect? Absolutely not. But he's soul drive was to maintain freedom was to maintain the standard was to maintain freedom for the UK and the Commonwealth. It was about challenging evil. It's incredibly simple. You know, we then look at, you know, the leaders after this, and we saw, you know, why were they lauded? Well, because they said, if we look at, you know, not just prime ministers, but also leaders such as neuro Bevin, and, you know, as who established in the UK, the NHS, you know, recognize as a fantastic leader, you look at the US, you look at JFK. And what you see is, is, the whole point is the leaders who are respected are the ones who are putting their big, bold goals on the table and challenging the naysayers. Because it's, you know, if you look back through history, you think, well, the NHS is a great idea. It wasn't universally supported. There are a lot of people who go, No, we don't want to give everybody free health care. So the idea that this was completely backed by everybody, and we did it. And it just zoomed through. That wasn't the case. You had people challenging this. Yeah. So the idea that we can have a view of the future and everyone loves it, no. But what you need is the the leadership to be able to stand up for this and set the standard. And ironically, knowing that in many cases, you're not going to do it. But by setting that goal, you're going to move them further forward than they would have done originally. And I think this is the point and perhaps for me, this is the frustration at the moment, that when we fail to do that what we're doing is we're Locking our mindset into accepting the problems that we have. So If you wanted to, you know, so what would you do? I'd start to encourage this bold thinking about what is possible, not because all of it is possible, but because by doing that, we start to stretch the boundaries. And we start to challenge those assumptions that we're working in today. Because when you reframe the problem, what you start to do is uncover the solutions to those. I'll give you a really good example of this around education. So, in the UK, if you go to education, you'll end up with at the moment about a 27, you know, three years 9000 9000, the year 2027 28,000 pounds of the debt in Japan for three year course, in the US you could it, you know, anything from $10,000 a year upwards, huge numbers. And we said, well, well, it's surely the only way is that the people experiencing the education have to pay for it? Well, it isn't the only way. Because if we look at Europe, the cost of education is massively lower. Why? Because governments have decided it's a really good thing that everybody, as far as possible, has access to a higher level of education. That doesn't mean everybody has to go to university, there's a range of choices, there's a range of learning options, but it means that as a society, we value people being educated to a higher level, not just because of the jobs, but because we become more intelligent, more better people, we become a better society, we become we, we build our ability to learn for longer, so we become better at it. And apart from anything else, we have many more trained people. So you then compare, you then take that to the extreme, and you have Scandinavian countries where the the cost of education is free. So in the UK, you don't come out of university with a 20 odd thousand pound bill, or in the US, you don't come out with $150,000 bill, you don't come out with a bill and go, Okay, that's a brilliant system are socialist, that means our taxes have to rise? Well, let's reframe that, as a parent, either me, or my children are going to be paying, you know, thousands in education, now start to add on the interest on that, whether that's taking it saving up in advance. So the money I don't get to spend now, because I'm saving up all the money that they pay, because those those loans and student loans are not free. They're charged at a level of interest that, you know, a few years ago was cheap, but they haven't dropped in line with the cost of borrowing. So they're now relatively very expensive loans. So go, Wow, well, that's that's right. Well, think of this another way, instead of what we're talking about is just shifting the way that you pay. So instead of paying this huge bill that either you save for for 20 years, you know, 18 years, from your children being born, or 20 years after they finish their costs to pay those bills off, we simply put it into taxation. So we've got our taxation needs to rise. Yes, but you're not paying any more, because you're not paying these bills. And for many people, government borrowing is going to be cheaper than any bank, any economist will tell you that a government can borrow money cheap in the bank. So what you've got is, you have the ability to fund the systems, but you do it in a different way. And it does it in a way that balances this out. Now, the challenge comes in, of course, it takes a generation to work through this because, you know, while I didn't go to university, so why should I pay? Well, you should pay because it's good idea. It's great to have more doctors, it's great to have more geologists, it's great to have more artists go through university. And and when we start to hear these issues, these these dialogues about our well, being taxes rise, you just want to tax No, No, we don't. You're paying the same amount, you're just paying it in a different way. So, you know, we need to move this debate on from talking about these polarized views to what the outcome is. And this is why it's really important to start with the view of what is it you want to achieve? Yeah. A great, you know, it isn't great. I mean, the other point is, the goal here is not to have the goal here is not to be exclusive. It's not to stop people excelling. It's to allow as many people to excel as possible. And the benefit of that isn't that you can't have your your it isn't that you don't have your big house. The difference is that the person down the road is living in a house and not a shack or run home. This is the difference. It's meaning that you're having you're having the ability for everybody, regardless of their income regardless of their past regardless of what their parents are able to have. There's a ladder to improvement. And that that just simply doesn't exist, if there is a huge bill attached to that. And I think, I think perhaps if, you know, if you don't think there is if you don't, if you don't think a huge bill, a huge debt is a disincentive. And great because you're on the other side of that you're not having to worry about money. If If you brought up, it'd been brought up in an environment where, you know, debt, bailiff's insecurity, food poverty is normal, that's not something that you're going to run towards as a student, believe me, they really not. And, you know, I've been fortunate, I've been lucky, of course, I've worked hard. But I hopefully I'm not that isolated enough to see that this is, this is not a very real problem. So I think if we want to invent society, it has to start with education. And, you know, we don't have to do this overnight, we can evolve to this. But we do need to get to the point whereby, as a, as a country, as a society, we are saying that we will protect you, we will provide this ability for you to be the best you, it's not gonna happen, it's not going to be there forever. You know, we do expect you when you come out of university, when you you know, to work, you know, we're not, we're not, I'm not arguing that we should be allowing people to never work. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't allow people to be successful. I'm not arguing that we don't allow people to earn more money as they work harder and be able to benefit their lives, what I'm arguing about what might the point of my argument is about as far as possible, this should be open to everybody, not just a few. Now, those changes, the changes that we realize from this won't happen overnight. But over a generation, the benefits become huge. Because what you start to have is you start to have a better informed society, you have a better educated society, you have a society that has more freedom, more freedom to create more freedom to help. So I come out of I come out of university, and I've got my geology degree. Well, if I've got my 30,000 pounds of debt, the one thing I can't do is gonna be a carer because I've got to pay my debt back. Yeah. So you come out and you go, Well, I've done this, well, I want to change. Well, hang on. At that point, you're only 21, you've got 4050 years of working life. Okay, so come and change, what's the downside, some more money on education. So you have an appreciation of geology, and you can become a nurse, this, this isn't a negative, we focus on the cost of this, not on the benefits. So I think what we need to do is have the discussion that focuses on what the positives of this are going to be. And then how we do that.
Roy Sharples:When you look at leadership that have kind of driven unprecedented greatness throughout time, like Gandhi is a great example where he drove like a non violent approach to influence resistance, and to global movements that still stands to this day. And also Nelson Mandela, who can arranged against the apartheid regime by removing racism, attempting to remove racism and eradicating poverty and inequality in South Africa. he defied all odds, to become president, you know, in a very short space of time, as well, once you can go out of imprisonment. And I think it's trying to make politics much more attractive for leaders to gravitate towards because I think there's been a significant void, especially in America and the UK, in recent years, where that has not been happening. And what you're finding is a lot of the people that are natural leaders or, you know, great leaders gravitate towards the humanities, the arts, to science, to entrepreneurship, to technology, and other means, because maybe they've just lost confidence and trust within politics. And also, it may appear as a much less attractive career path that needs to be reinvented, being responsible, being accountable as people today because our outputs are the next generations inputs, and the children of this revolution that we're living in just now. They are the new canvas, on what those new values are, that should be shaped. And they will then impose, materialize that. And those will then become the the baton that we hand over to that generation. And so, as humans, you know, there is accountability and responsibility that needs to be passed on, to leave the world in a better place. And the next generation, at least what I'm seeing at the moment, in general, tend to have been much better nurtured by the parents who didn't, who obviously didn't want them to make the mistakes that they did. And their generation And so I'm finding that the young generation that's coming through just now and much more socially conscious, they're more self confident, they're achievement oriented. They're more ambitious and technologically sophisticated. And they're inquisitive, and make themselves really aware around how businesses, for example, investor money, and how politics, how political systems can work, how they contribute to society, as well as what the actually as well as what businesses actually make and sell. You know, and so, they're not willing to accept or this is a way, it's always gonna been, there really are driven to find an alternative that represents the kind of the present needs. So I think those points that you can raise that were really poignant
Gary Burt:and agree more, I think, a couple of things come to mind for what you've said. So I guess Personally, I have a huge amount of faith in young people, you know, the, the, the criticism of young people as not being like, the older generation goes back, as long as human history, you know, you've got quotations from, you know, Roman times, Greek times about the lack of respect for young people to the old people. It wasn't true, then it isn't true now. So, you know, I guess, to pick a couple of examples of this. When we we criticize, you know, we see politicians, the worst of the politicians, criticizing young people for caring about the environment, let's just take a step back and think about, so we have somebody who's young, whose speech was ahead of them, passionately caring about the world that they're going to live in. That is an amazingly brilliant behavior to be lauded. They, you know, we have politicians, you know, complaining about demonstrators who are demonstrating for clean water for access to housing for a negative pilots. Well done, you know, this isn't a reflection on young people failing, it's a reflection on politicians failing. Yeah, you know, the politicians here should be setting the goal. This isn't an I guess, you know, we're, we're gonna go out UK listeners and American listeners, this isn't a political view, it's not left or right. You know, having having a clean environment, having clean water isn't isn't a political question. You could argue it politically. Because it's not it's a human issue. How you get the environment, actually, how you maintain that because of the political question. Well, having clean water isn't a political perspective to human one. And this is why, you know, one of the criticisms I have about the left, right politics that we've seen in the UK is really similar to the US and that we've seen this polarization is that we've seen one side, often the left at the moment cede some of these points to the right. Well, there's, you know, the idea that people want to be successful in their money shouldn't be ceded to just the right it's not, it's not, you know, it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be owned by one party, it can be done by both. But the cost of being successful, doesn't have to mean the destruction of the environment. You know, economic success doesn't have to mean that you throw environmental protections under the water, under the you know, under the cosh, it doesn't mean to say that you lose worker protections, these were being dragged into the idea that we have these these days, these extremely opposite dichotomies, it's a or b, you cannot have economic growth. And yeah, the environment can be good, we have to allow pollution, or we can have, or we can have clean environment. But that means that we can't be successful, no one's going to get wrecked, but we'll have a, you know, clean rivers. This is absolute Bs, it really is. So, you know, the first thing is that, if we start to, again, start with the human, then go, Okay, so we want clean environments, we want clean water, we want accessible housing, that then moves to the discussion of how do we how do we source this? How do we fund this? So that can be privately funded, it can be government built, it can be done through cops, there's a whole range of options of how, but let's not lock the how, with the what and the why. Because, you know, that way, you know, if we look in the US, we've seen a lot of the environmental protections reached, they do not need to be reduced to have success. What we need to do is reward the right behaviors to achieve those. So rather than, you know, give tax credits to organizations that are polluting because they're producing economic growth, give the tax credits to the green organizations that are going to deliver the solutions and the growth because that's what's going to attract. That's what's going to attract The best people to solve those problems. You know, in the UK, we've had, you know, I guess flipping this, let's flip it to one real positive. One of the real positives about what COVID is brought to us is there's a lot of negatives, one of the positives, it's brought us perhaps the confidence that when we throw resources at a problem, when something really matters, like a vaccine, we can collaborate internationally, we can do we can work in a timescale that is a that is absolutely mind blowing and previously impossible. You know, I look at the news today. And we've got several vaccines that are about to finish clinical trials that have delivered in 10 months, what previously took a minimum of 10 years. And these have been done across multiple countries, this is what's possible, it's a pity that it's taken COVID. And it's taken a huge amount of debt for us to have those outcomes. But this should be a really positive lesson in what is possible when we start to have very clear goals of what the outcomes are, and very clear focus on prioritizing the resources to make those happen. So, you know, again, we come back to education, but it applies in so many other areas, a lot of the problems that we see a lot of the problems that we have, are absolutely solvable, what we need to do is be very clear about what is the goal we want to achieve, and then put the resources into the prioritizing that goal to happen. When we start to do that, you know, we start to smash down the barriers, and we start to challenge the mindsets, which, you know, to be honest, have held us back for years,
Roy Sharples:looking forward, what should then be some of the jobs of the future
Gary Burt:that should be created, that I'm saying? What are the jobs that will be created, let's look at the attributes of the people, we want to come out of education. So, you know, let's say, you know, one of the challenges we have in the UK that I have a real issue with is that we the way that you know about the US system, but I'll speak about the UK system. So typically, you go into you come out of a school at 11, a primary school, you come out at 11. And you will go to set what are called secondary schools or high schools, you know, there is some specialization in those. So some of them focus on languages some on last. So again, we're starting to see that first level of selection, that first level of narrowing of options. When you get to 14, you reduce that your choices for exams from perhaps 12 subjects that you're learning to possibly 10 that you're going to focus on. So typically, you'll have to take English, maths, or science, and language or humanities. And you know, you then have a choice depending on what the school offers. So at that point, you're then even at 14, going to specialize. So you might go well, I want to do geography, history, and French, and I'll take a general science. So by 16, what you've done, you've already closed so many of your opportunities, because you come to 16, you you do what's called a level. So between 17 and 18, you take, essentially, between two and four advanced level qualifications. So again, you're specializing further, so it started at 11, perhaps, it's certainly it's certainly narrowed at 14, it's narrowed at 16. Because this point you're going to have to choose make these big life choices, whether you want to go into humanities, whether you want to go into science, whether you want to go into maths, because when you get to 18 your entry into university is to a very specific degree in the UK, you that the concept of majors and minors is largely unknown. It's typically a single subject degree, you may have, you know, business with French, but what you don't, you're not going to have business with geology, you can't mix them up in that way. So what you've got is you've got an education system, that's that's taken people from as early as 11, but certainly 14 unreduced options. This is madness. That's not how the human mind works. You might have an interest in science at 14 that's really deep, for you might also start to love art and architecture at. And you know what, if you start to realize that at 17, you can't your options are so limited, what you essentially have to do is you have to rewind gratification qualification. So I think some of the practical things that we can do around education are start to say, we reduce the specialization, our goal should be and this is where to answer your question. What what is it that we want to do? We want to produce a range of learning. We want to provide flexibility, we want to embrace critical learning. We want to embrace people zigzagging in their learning, we want to embrace a wide palette. So instead of degrees B focused on, you know, coming out as an expert 21. Perhaps we need to rethink this and say, well, the goal should be as far as possible to keep this generalized people will have a choice, but that's not going to lock in their future careers. So this means that we need then need to rethink how we do university education. So instead of university education for a doctor, requiring, you know, three sciences, perhaps we say, well, we're going to allow, we're going to support much more the concept of foundation years. So we will look at what you've done over your career, that you've taken a subject that you've proven, you can learn that you've proven that you can deal with the pressure of what a medical degree will do. But we will help you from wherever you are 18 to get through this. And I think this is a really fundamental shift, because what you've got is you don't have a load of niche experts at 21, you should aim to have people that as far as possible, didn't specialize. And if they did want to change they can. So what stops people changing degrees? Well, it's increased cost. If I go two years down my geology degree and go, you know, what, I really hate the opportunity, I want to be a dancer, well, here's your choice, you can throw the two years away, you know, metaphorically throw those two years away, you want to become the dancer, okay? That's an additional three years. So instead of three years, you're paying five years of education to shift. And what typically, we don't recognize the years that you've done. So you know, you reset? Well, if you start to, if you start to remove the cost of this and say, the goal is that we want people, so you come out as a, you've done your creative arts degree, you come out, well, you did two years, learning as a geology, that's not lost. The fact that you aren't a geologist doesn't mean to say that that value is absolutely zero, you understand a whole range of things, you're able to engage in society better, because you understand this, you're able to comment with authority, you might be able to help out and help teach other people. And I think, again, it's a big mindset shift. So the biggest shift I would make is to focus on removing the specialization as early as we do. Secondly, I would focus on a much more blended approach to learning. So you know, we have a very, very teach to model certainly in the UK, that's come from a Victorian model that's evolved this, the way we teach is not the way we learn, the way we teach children today, in the UK, and the US, and in most country, most countries, echos back to a model that was designed and it was designed for Victorian times to provide one of two routes, and it was either designed to provide you with a professional qualification, if you could afford it. Or it was designed to provide you with the skills to be able to useful as a, as a productive unit, essentially a factory worker that's evolved. Yeah, that was the Victorian model. You know, if you came from a wealthy family, you could become a doctor, a lawyer, and go into professional practice, if you didn't, your education was purely there, to to give you the skills to go work as a human resource, you know, whether that was in a factory, or in an office or you know, a whole range of jobs, but it wasn't to be a creative, human. So what's the change that we're looking for? We started this by saying it was about human first. And that's exactly what we want with education, to recognize the value of the human, not only to choose but to contribute to create, you know, so your job, the job of school isn't to teach, it's to inspire. It's not to tell you what happened. It's to infuse you to want to embrace and learn that. And that, I think, you know, even more fundamentally, we need to have a really good look at their curriculum. And what is the purpose of teaching us? You know, there's I listened to an audio book the other day by a former Special Forces soldier. And so he's called Jay Morton, the books called soldier. And, you know, he's, he's, he's not, he's not old, but he did four years in the Parachute Regiment, and then 10 years in their Special Air Service, equivalent of seals or Green Berets, and really elite tier one operations. You know, when he talks about the fact that at school, he clearly wasn't labeled as particularly intelligent. He certainly wasn't labeled as creative. He wasn't labeled as hard working. That's a failure of the skill to inspire. But clearly to become a tier one operator to join one of the most elite units in the world. He is absolutely Creative. He is a brilliant thinker. He is an incredibly disciplined person. And I think the point of this is, we're not allowing people to discover that we're not embracing this diversity, this ability that everybody has this huge potential in them, what we're doing is we're telling them, for the most part, that there is a particular route through this. And if you don't do that, then you'll fail. And if you don't master these subjects, then you're not going to be successful. But we need to look really hard at what this what we need to teach. So yes, we do need to teach maths. That's, that's pretty important. But it needs to be applied and relevant to people we need to teach English. But does that mean that we need to teach people about Shakespeare that we need to teach them classic text? Or instead, do we start to teach them to learn about bias, to learn about what great writing is to learn how to be how to express themselves, we talk about history. And, you know, we teach people about in the UK standard curriculum, the national curriculum includes, you know, time on the Romans, and the Tudors, but we don't teach about the slave trade, we don't teach about oppression, we don't teach about South Africa, we and the positive outcomes that are possible, you know, we don't teach about some of the conflicts that we've been in. And that's, you know, that's not to say they were good or bad, it's to teach really important human values and human learnings from those things. So I think we do need to make some really big changes. But let's, let's play this forward 20 years, and see what those changes could deliver. So let's imagine, you know, Gary got of the world Prime Minister president, It'll take a while to do this. So first of all, we've eradicated student debt, we've started to raise the profile, and the pay of teachers. And we're funding this, and this is this is this is not going to be painless in terms of cost. But we're funding this of skills are attracting the very best people with the best, with enough resources to be successful. But we then building a curriculum that children want to learn, we're making it relevant, we're using technology, we're using the benefits of being able to show lectures from the very best tutors around the world and make those available. We're starting to, we're starting to provide access to technology. So it's not a divisive field, it's available to everybody, we're providing the ability for you to go into education to move around zigzag to recognize, just as a children, just as children enjoy sport at seven, they hate it by nine, they zigzag all over the place. If you're a parent, and you've got a kid, you know, the one thing you know is, they're gonna love a sport, they're going to be absolutely loving it, and then you buy them all the kit, and then they've lost interest, they don't enjoy any more, and you're lost with the cat. That's fantastic. Because that's how humans work. That's how we're supposed to learn. We shouldn't discourage that we should embrace it. So embrace the fact that we want to learn we want to zigzag we're going to experience things and embed that into the education system. So allow that freedom of movement allow that zigzagging? You know, there's an irony here isn't that one of the most successful innovators that we have the founder of one of the biggest computer companies, Steve Jobs with Apple, you know, credits his arts degree, his love of calligraphy, his love of drugs, and the actually, the the embracing of drugs and the freedom that that could bring him to understand what was possible to be able to create and drive the demand for operating systems that brought that to life. You know, this is this is a fantastic thing. You know, I'm not not saying we support drugs, but what I'm saying is we support the opening of minds, and we should be encouraging those experiences. So what we, let's play this through, we're starting to do this, we've got education system that's engaging, we're respecting teachers, we've, we don't have a problem with your truancy. Why? Because we're we're providing schools that are really great fun to go to, you know, let's flip this around and start to sort of challenge these things. Instead of instead of Mrs. miggins, the chemistry teacher having to do you know, sports class, or you know, someone to be honest, you know, I really failed. I'm going to be really retail but a failed teacher sending the kids running around the park, running down the field. What we do is we put sport scientists into skills, who can understand and help children understand their bodies soccer understand that. Understand that there is a way to teach this that helps you be successful. that perhaps says we want to root for our great athletes to be able to go back into education and share the experience to talk about what it was like to win an Olympic gold, to pay an athlete to imagine, imagine, we're gonna say that though, if you've won a medal, there is an option for you. Once you win, you know, you can train as a teacher, but there's an option for you that we will pay you to be in the school system. So you can keep sharing your story and inspire not as a one off, because the expensive school can afford the teaching fees. But because we're rewarding that as a behavior. So, you know, we're encouraging these blurring of lines, we're encouraging a completely different mindset, we're putting the very best skills back into the time when it's really important in education. You know, who did you see at school, I saw Mo Farah, talk about his life and talk about training card, you know, believe me, those stories are gonna do more good than anything else we could ever teach them, you know, start to talk about story start to build those experiences. But let's keep let's wind that story forward, we go into education, you can go to university to do what you want. Yes, you know, doctors are gonna learn more than painters, for the most part. And we know that doctors are going to earn more than teachers, and we need to close that gap. But you know, there is a differential in jobs, and that's going to remain, but people can go and do a job, and going learn about a profession knowing that if they want to change, that option is open to them. And as a society, we welcome them moving forward. Now, I'm not saying I've got friends who've done this, if you stayed at university for years and years, when it was free that when, obviously, they can't do it now extend it with big bills, but when there wasn't a cost, they spent a long time you knew that university. And one of those people now, that's some of the smartest people I know, they had no idea what they wanted to do. But these are now polymaths, they've got three or four degrees, they are the people that are really the smartest of the smart, because they didn't know what they wanted to do, because they zigzag around. So they have a degree in psychology and geology, and one in sports science, why? And what this is what you get that when you start to remove the barriers to education. So what you get what you come out with? Well, you come out with, and you come out with people who loved learning students who loved learning, you come out without groups that have selected to come out of education, because they felt that it wasn't for them. Why? Because we recognize education is important. And we're actually supporting the learning at a human level. So we're doing whatever we can to keep everybody engaged. And if we can't, we're working with them to see what other opportunities they have to learn, which could mean they're going to a job earlier. But we're going to support that education. We have, we have a group of people, we have a population that as they start to enter their 20s they're free to go to the career that they want. With with the the debt slaked the debt slight wipe clear. I think it's probably if anyone's that, you know, if you're older and you don't have that debt, imagine, imagine a personal level. So you're in your 40s. Right, and we go right, we're going to wipe your we're going to wipe your mortgage. Why? To give you more freedom in life? Yeah, this is what we would do. And we say if you want to travel, you want to go around great. That experience is fantastic, come back and make the world a better place. So we then start to have a, we have an education system that goes, Okay, I'm 32 I've worked as I've trained as a plumber, I want to be a doctor. And vice versa. You can you know, the fact that you didn't do science, when you were 14 should not be a boundary to this. Yeah. You know, we should be opening this up. You know, it's, you know, if we, if we have a demand for this, why would we not want to have more universities, training more doctors? Yes, there's a cost. But the outcome of this is more doctors who want to be doctors not there for the money. They're there because they want to change their lives to become doctors. You know, we have a group of people who understand about how to read media, that I've done many, many things. So they know what they love. And they've had chance to find those passions. They're able to debate they've had time learning with a whole range of different people. We've because they can choose where they want to go. They can move perhaps between universities, this there aren't, you know, the only downside to this is cost. And it's then a case of prioritizing that. And not seeing it as a bill but seeing it as an investment. So why is this important? Well, because the one can we don't have is a society that understand what it's going to be. So you said what jobs should we have? I have no idea. I have no idea what job is going to be in 10 years I can make a guess and I'll be wrong. But if I wanted to solve that problem, what I would want is intelligent self learners who are happy, who feel secure, who respect the environment, who respect each other, able to retrain and adapt. That's, you know, they're not fearful, we have a nation, that of, of people who have the freedom to be able to learn and adapt. So how do you build a society for the future, that's how you do it, you start really young, with the values that you want to embed, it will take a while to come through. But, you know, you look at the, the future of what that will deliver. You know, look at look at what we have to do this. We have people without housing, we have people without food, we have people with poor levels of education. These are the things that we want to change his Yeah, putting people through the core
Roy Sharples:Spain of humanity skill set isn't so much about specialism at all. It's about adopting skills around good judgment, good decision, making self expression, feeling safe, feeling secure, being emotionally and socially intelligent, critical thinking, problem solving. And then ultimately, the umbrella above that, all this falls under is the creative and innovative to the main set. And then all of that combined gives the each human the the ingredients to live a fulfilled enriched happy life, which then consents to like a happy fulfilled innovative society,
Gary Burt:education is the linchpin of this is our future. Yeah. Why, you know, the changes that the problems that we have in education become the problems for the future, they multiply. So instead of, you know, what we want, instead. So what we have at the moment is an education system that becomes a multiplier of problems, when it should be a multiplier of solutions. It's fundamentally broken. It's, you know, it really is nuts not to say that teachers aren't doing a great job. But, you know, I was thinking before about what you said, about leaders. So, let's, let's, let's think about the best leaders of all time.
Unknown:Every one of them
Gary Burt:did something for humanity.
Roy Sharples:Yeah, they did.
Gary Burt:That was a heater. It's not, it's not about building a great train system, having a great economy, the ones that we remember the values, the ones that we value, are the ones that for human people. You know, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, it's about putting humans. So, um, there's a real lesson here, you know, that politicians, you know, mentioned, you mentioned before about politicians, I mean, so many, let's be honest about this, so many are really failing. Because, you know, when you start to talk about a group of people, a subgroup in the center, a subset of people not so Group, a subset, you're excluding everybody who's not in that group, we want to help this group. Okay, that's a small group, why not everybody? You know, and I think this is a really big, really big shift. But, you know, when I say it is really despairing when I see politicians, defend policies, which just defy any level of logic, when I see a politician criticize a 16, or 17 year old girl, because she doesn't think we should have, we should, we should not reduce our emissions. So take a step back from that reducing the emissions is is one thing, but there's a higher level objective here, which is to have a clean environment. Yeah, you see a politician criticizing the fact that we want a clean environment. That's, that's about as broken as it can be. Yeah, you might not agree with some of the measures. And, you know, I've flown quite a lot in my time. So I'm not without, not without responsibility here. But again, we what we need to do is we need to separate the, the what we want to achieve from how we want to achieve it. So and this, you know, let's take a real, you know, a thorny issue. So, you know, flying to warm countries is great. So instead of, we know, we don't want to penalize this, we don't want to stop it. Because traveling is a great thing. We recognize that. So why are we not innovating in making planes massively more successful? Yeah. You know, at the moment, we subsidize fuel. Well, let's subsidize and put huge amounts of effort into engine technologies. massively more efficient engines? Yeah. And, you know, of course, it's possible, you know, you look back, I mean, the airplane itself is not much more than hundred, maybe 120 hundred and 30 years old. Yeah. Is it possible to make radically better engines? Yeah, no, of course it will. I doubt whether our left to be able to see it, but it is.
Roy Sharples:But the focus, you're right, it is on and on the fuel aspect of it, and also the seat and getting bums on seats and the utilization of that. But if you look at aviation in itself as a totality, it's actually probably got worse over time, because even simple things like this, right? Going from Amsterdam, to Mumbai, right, it's probably takes the same amount of time, maybe even more, given the congested routes that have no mushroom, and over time, it probably takes longer to get there. And whereas it should be significantly less than what it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and so forth. So focus more on that so that your people are able to travel more often more frequent. But not just for the sake of traveling. And I think this is your point you're making, the more truck traveling helps drive more education helps us adapt to more different cultures and styles. And it's more than retune, and for a more fulfilled kind of lifestyle. And it would over time as well. It would eradicate things like warfare and alienation and racism, and all those negative things that have plagued us for such I'll tell
Gary Burt:you, I'll tell you one thing, you know, jumping back to education, one thing which I would do, I would fund every 16 year old and every 18 year old to take time abroad will pay you. Yeah, the only thing is you can't go to first world countries. Yeah. So you need to go to somewhere that's that you wouldn't normally visit. So you know, we're going to pay you but you we're going to pay, you fly, we're going to pay you accommodation, and we're going to pay you living costs. The only thing is you have to go and contribute. Yeah. Now imagine, imagine that we have these, you know, huge numbers of 16 year olds that have been sent around the world with the job of your job is to learn, it's to embrace diversity, and it's to contribute, you can do what you want. Yeah. And what you'd see if that was funded, as you'd see, countries start to evolve, to be able to welcome and embrace those why because there's money attached to this. But, you know, you start to say, you know, at 16, you can spend a month in one of 50 or 100 countries, we will work with those countries to provide programs that give you an experience of those countries, it might be you're digging a ditch digging a well, you're helping out in a health care center. You know, the point is that you're going to experience something different. Yeah. So not every one of those will be successful. But imagine, you know, maybe, maybe you allow people to ask for it. It's open, if you want it 18 year old, you've done a degree, you've done a qualification and you've learnt your science. What about we would fund you for three months to go and help out and learn about the Amazon in the rainforest. You can go and work on a project there. And the point is we're we're doing we're trying to do this at an international level. Yeah. So you're not going to be with Brett, you're going to be with people from other countries that can't speak their language. This is this is how we start to solve the problems embrace diversity in difference. Yeah, we don't have you know, you know, we look at the cliches we have, you know, Brits go over and they'll spend some time in America Americans or spend some time in Europe. You know, learning Paris. No, that's that's not your, you want to learn about your GM rubber rocks. I can travel around, you know, fun that? Yeah, you know, I want to go you know, you're you're a Brit, right? What do you want to do? What do you want to use? You're 18. You're 18 you've got your government grant, what do you want to use it for? Okay, well, I want to buy an entire rail ticket so I can travel around. Okay, where's the contribution? I don't know. Okay. Think about how you can contribute what you're going to do. I want to I want to help at a ski resort. Okay, that's fine. Yeah. How about ski resort? You're going to learn you're going to do something different. You know, can you go to the Switzerland? No, he can't go to a space, give it to Bulgaria, go to Romania, go to Russia, go to a ski resort. That's, that's not a first world place. Going to learn don't contribute. What you will see, we started to fund this, what you'll see is, first of all, it would remove the privilege of what we see today of you know, rich parents being able to build these incredible CVS to walk through their careers. It would level that up but you know, You'd have a lot of people who would start to experience other cultures who would start to, you know, find things. Find things out about themselves and other people. Yeah. You know, I think it's about, you know, we look at education, that's what it should be. Education is not what's in the book. Yeah. You know, and I think we experienced some of that. Yeah, it is a new thing. If we want, you know, perhaps we say, Well, you know, you know, years ago, I did the Duke of Edinburgh scheme. So you can start, you know, you can go in your expedition, and you'll do your service and society. Maybe we should start to expand that. So when we get to 21, and we look at what success is success isn't, you know, a first in engineering from Cambridge, it's instead of a record of what you've achieved in a whole range of areas. Yeah, that you volunteered, that you've helped out?
Roy Sharples:Yeah. What did you come up toward? Yeah,
Gary Burt:it's contributed and May, you know, and that's how we start to value. Yeah. And I think the point, the whole point of this is that that's already there. But it's not equally accessible. And I think what the whole point of this is saying, we can't make, we can't make society equal overnight. That's, that's not the goal. What the goal is, is for as long as we can, and certainly till early 20s, we're just trying to level the playing field. Yeah, I raising it up for everybody. It's not, it's not about stopping people doing things. Because if you want to go to a private school, that's fine. If you want to have, you know, if you can be funded to go and work in, you know, a place for three months, because you don't need to worry about money, that's, that's fine as well. The difference is that we're going to make that available to other people as well. So we're not denying choice. If you want to go through the private system, that's fine. What we want to do is make the public system as good that perhaps, the private system isn't the only way that you can start to get into jobs. I think. And a final point, I think the other point is then to then to start to have a really serious debate, and really serious discussion about what diversity means in countries. And that means that employers, governments, education systems, really need to look at broadening what they do, you know, a lot of the rules that are in there today. They're not, they're not fair at all. And we need to go How do we start to make this open to everybody based on merit, not not based on privilege. And this isn't it is, it isn't a hippie thing at all. And it's not about damning those who have the ability to pay for this, it's not, it's about saying that what we want to do is have a fair playing field, so everybody can achieve what they want to achieve, you know, not that it's open to their 7% and go to the private school, that's, you can still do that. What we do, what we want to do, though, is have organizations recognize that, that the view of what they look at should be the hundred percent of what's available. And we started to have, we start to raise a discussion that we do start to look at the value of people as a whole, and what they bring to the organization. I think we started with, you know, this, this ultimately comes back to respecting humans, when you do that, if you can't respect humans without respecting diversity. So if you want to respect people, you have to respect the difference of people. And I think
Roy Sharples:when you start to do that, that's how you fix the problems. The human first, society is a society of creativity, it is evolving us into an age of creativity. And I think many of the themes that you've said throughout this gallery is creativity exists within every single person, not the elite few. And more often than not, they are just ordinary people who who are doing extraordinary things or are capable of doing extraordinary things. And it's not just relevant to the creative arts. It applies to every profession, every domain, and is found in all aspects of life. Nor is it something that you ever lose. With age. I don't buy into that at all. Because ultimately, you should be gaining more knowledge and insight over time, as you experience more of life through living, exploring, traveling, experiencing, learning and growing, and this provides us more reference points from the past, and our experiences and knowledge is gained through the past that we actually have a viable reference point to create something imaginative and novel. So that does not mean being less creative. By means it just simply means that staying true to our childlike wonder imagination. But combining that, with the experience and insight from to your point, golly, is going to a third world country and connecting with culture that and society there and infusing that within your, your your makeup as a human and contributing back and taken from and giving back in the right way. And forbidding the sin and the cynicism, of personal failure. Because if you allow that to happen, it will trump you in there's going to be multiple feelings as everyone can it goes through life, the key is not to let that consume you. Because if you do it, that's kryptonite for the soul, and it can crush your energy, and imagination and ultimately, creativity. So the other thing is what I would say as well, is to flush the stereotypes from our perceptions that you need to be in the creative arts and that you need to be able to paint a masterpiece like a dolly or Picasso, or hover an abnormality deficiency to be creative by seven your ear for example, like one golf or being deaf, like Beethoven to compose musical masterpieces. No creativity exists in multiple different forms in existence.
Gary Burt:I love the point about challenging the stereotypes. Yeah. Because we, you know, we have this fear that creativity is is if we go will point to the creative person, what's the creative job? It was so and we'll go to the artist or the sculptor? Yeah, we we don't look at the biochemist. We don't look at the the engineer, the bridge engineer. Yeah. We don't look at the Process Designer for logistics. Yeah, I think, again, this is this is a really big shift and actually starting to challenge some of the behaviors that I think is, is sadly a norm and a lot of education that we do fall into the stereotype behaviors and messages, you know, and when we say, I mean, you know, there's so much research showing that we embed biases, really early into education, you know, stereotypes around role stereotypes around skills, stereotypes around jobs. We need to recognize these and start to challenge and bat them down. Yeah, you know, so instead of a student, a child should not be able to go through and believe that they are not creative. Now, don't get me wrong. They might predict producing stuff, which, you know, I don't want to buy it. No, I'm not saying is gonna be great. No, is a sculptor is that piece of sculpture. Fantastic. No, it's, it's, it's abomination. Okay, it's really ugly. That's my view. I'm not. And what we do is we need to reframe this and to go do what you enjoy. Do you enjoy sculpting? Do you enjoy painting? Well do it? Yes. Understand how we make you harness that passion? Let's give you the tools. So you can do that, but not judge this. And one of the other things you said, which I loved was about embracing failure. So I do I do a three year degree. By the third year, I'm, I'm really not loving it. I'm want to finish the degree cuz I want the degree. Yeah, I now want to change, or that's a waste of money, waste of time, isn't it? That's, you know, that's failure. Oh, I've dropped out, I did, I've got dropped out of this course failure. Now, we need to flip this around. What you've done is you've done some you've learned in that discipline, you've benefited from learning about that you've understood that that's not something you enjoy. That's not something that fires you up. That's not something that drives passion within you. That's a great outcome, you know, so, you know, Ryoma, I'm a judo coach. So one of the phrases that we have in that one of the phrases that we will tell students again and again, so remember Judo, in a judo contest, there are two people, there is, for the most part, going to be one winner, let's forget drawers in certain competitions, there's going to be a winner and a loser. Roughly 50% of the time, the odds are you going to lose, now those jobs will change over time, you're going to lose. Now, if you have the mindset that winning is important. You are going to fail to stay at this you will not stay at the sport. So how do we keep students in in, in a sport where 50% of the time at least you're going to fail? Maybe 90% of the early days, maybe 100% you know, the first few times you Come on, you're gonna you're gonna lose every competition. How do we do this? We change the mindset. You don't win or lose. You win or learn. Yeah, that's
Roy Sharples:exactly
Gary Burt:and this is massive and This is one of the reasons I think why, you know, martial arts are very good, not just giving fitness, but also building really good positive mindsets, because you the whole point is about embracing adversity, embracing losing, and embracing the fact that the outcome didn't go what you in the way that you wanted. And learning from this. So you have a hard fight you give everything you know, and the score isn't yours. Well done. Good. You've learned, you're now better placed to go forward, but I lost. Absolutely. Did you give everything Yeah, and I still lost? Fantastic. So let's work on that. Let's understand what you need to do. So it always has to become a positive, it should be the same with education. So I don't you know, I hate physics. I don't want to do physics. Okay. Okay, why I don't enjoy it. That's the main reason, go forward. Okay, so let's look at what you do want to do. Yeah, we have people in jobs that they don't enjoy. And what would imagine what the happiness would be. So, you know, Gary, the Prime Minister again, yeah, I've gone to the universities and said, you know, it's going to cost a lot. But you know, if anything COVID has shown as we should COVID is shown as we can find money if something really matters. So maybe we find it for something that's not an emergency, but something that's a high priority education. So we say what we're going to do is, we're going to allow people to learn, to start to come back to university go back to education, and they're not going to be burdened with a cost. So anybody can go to start to learn anything. And there is a pathway, regardless of where you are in life, there is a pathway that you can get there. Now, you know, one of the things I tell my kids and tell young people that, you know, they think there's only one path there isn't there's there's a path that is easier than others. So if you go through the traditional path of 1416, oh, no GCSEs A Levels degree, that that's, that's one path. It's not the only path. So imagine that we started to say, right, what we're going to do over the next five years, within the length of a parliament of four years and the length of presidency, we're going to do two things, we're going to make education free, we're going to make education accessible, or what does that mean? Well, it means you can go and study on wherever you are. At your point in life, there is a route now that route, in some cases, it's going to be really long, you know, if you come out of school with no qualifications, you want to become an architect, that's good. There's a lot of learning to do that routes open. Well, I came out of school without English and maths, you're saying I can become an architect, I'm saying that route is open to me. Now, that means you are going to have to learn English, and you're going to have to go through some science. But that may take you 10 years of part time study. But that route is open to you. So imagine what that means it's a site level, anyone has the potential, that's not saying they will, but the route is open for anybody to become anything they want to do, if they're prepared to put the work in, and the country will support you to do that. That's, that's very different to where we are. Now, that's gonna have a big cost. But let's flip this around how many people are in jobs that they just don't enjoy? That they don't, the world is moving on. And we're not allowing people to adapt as fast as the world needs them to. So what we do is we say, look, we have no idea that
Unknown:worlds can occur.
Gary Burt:We know that technologies be kind of going to become more advanced, we know that AI is going to bring thinking and analysis and betting into a whole range of jobs. You know, and this isn't just going to be, you know, blue collar jobs, it's going to impact a lot of white collar naturally. A lot of top jobs as well. You know, we're going to see more analytics in in healthcare, we're gonna see more in science. So it's not only going to impact you know, a lot of lower lowering jobs, it's going to make a lot of other jobs. So embrace this and use this as an opportunity to invent
Roy Sharples:You have been listening to the unknown origins podcast, please follow subscribe, rate and review us. For more information go to unknown origins.com Thank you for listening.