TEDxManhattanBeach - Mike Matthews - A Child's Right To Learn

Talk title: A Child's Right To Learn

Mike, now superintendent of schools for the Manhattan Beach Unified School District loved books as a kid. He especially cherished stories of heros - from football line-backers to heros in American history, and in articular Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson believed that democracy could not succeed without an educated public. Today, many people believe that public education is more than that: that it is the key civil rights issue of the twenty-first century. This perspective changes everything, because education civil rights is not just a job for educators, but an issue that our society must tackle as a whole. Under the No Child Left Behind legislation, educators are to deliver 100% success in teaching reading and math by 2012. Portraying the task as a twelve-year linear equation may underestimate the work we have before us. While there has never been a worse budgetary time in the history of our state, transformative ideas are on the table that can change the education landscape.

Mike Matthews has been an educator for 25 years. He began his career as a teacher. He became a school principal at the tender age of 29, and later became principal of Malibu High School, a school he build from the ground up. In 2006 he helped to start a private company called Extreme Learning, to offer after-school learning programs to California schools that didn't meet state academic standards, serving more than 4,000 students. Mike was chosen by the Manhattan Beach Unified School District (MBUSD) Board of Trustees as superintendent of schools for the Manhattan Beach School District in 2010. He holds a BA and MA from Stanford University and a doctorate in education from Pepperdine University.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxManhattanBeach, where x = independently organized TED event. At our TEDxManhattanBeach event, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.

[drzave]

Thanks Dr. Matthews for the inspiring speech! I'm going to tell my other teacher-friends to check it out!

[misspinkpunkykat]

Or at least the right to learn at their own pace in their own way. Not every child is ready for kindergarten at five; some may never be ready. Where in adult life are you expected to be in the same room with twenty-plus people the same age as you?

[Geertpieter]

After only reading the title of this vid i ask myself: Do children deserve the right to NOT learn? I think they do, although i also think it would not be in their own best interest....