Citizens, Institutions and Shifting Power
Lord Puttnam of Queensgate, C.B.E., speaks on “Citizens, Institutions and Shifting Power” at the Skoll World Forum 2009 closing plenary. He speaks about education and shows an emotional 7-minute video on the state of the education in the world and how we need to improve the way we teach our young and help them face the challenges of the modern world.
With: Lord Puttnam Of Queensgate
Just heard having spent 30 years as a movie producer I devoted the past thousands years working in one or others as a public policy. particularly in education. This is offered the opportunity to engage with people who everyday of their working lives are attempting to mold the building blocks, the quality of which determine the future of this planet.
Those building blocks are our children and the people I work with are called teachers. If the future looks It's also the case of everything and i really do mean everything what I've learned through my work in cinema, of the UNICEF and in the various spheres of government has only reinforced my view I had been a Catholic for a wider and better form to bet around climate change what was now needed the forcing on the future of education and after about a year.
We'll say what we want to say. scale and in complexity. It's no exaggeration to say that they are not going to go away, indeed they will get worse unless we can stop to find solutions and find them soon. That is only chance to improve the way we teach our young. 21st century and I think that we are betraying most of our children.
Public systems of our ordinary weapon have a condition of skilled the high schools after thirty kids, put them in a classroom, we gonna teach them the same material and you all expected to get it the same way...
Page 56 boy... Page56.
There is a great emphasis on School become steeps in history in the past and static knowledge and failed to capture the hear and now and the schools often failed. which are they going to be? Students who are starting school this year are likely to be retiring around 2065. Given that we cant predict with any certainty economic environment that needs to be the most flexible collaborative resilient creative generation the really have None to shuffle I guess but that race that she was referring to is being thrown very shock release and ways that he could never.
predicted by the economic crisis that has now taken hold across the globe and I think it is obvious to most of us that we are ultimately have to get out of this recession in a rather old-fashioned way All of you understand this. It is actually what you do. You must have effective workers always been done at the fringe of the market place because the public sector and the market is so have failed to deliver the necessary goods and services, particularly to those who do not have the economic means to pay for them.
You realize, years ago, the development is far too complex You may or may not operate the problem. But your bottomline was always been social transformation. And living everyone on this planet to take a role in building sustainable livelihood and justice artist. In other words you are primary purposed on individuals as citizens rather than as consumers.
I continue to believe that whatever we do, wherever we live, we must reassert the fact we are not just consumers. Yes, we may well all be consumers, I'm reading a lot of the time but everyone of us can claim to be a citizen all the time. And we also except and must persuade millions of other to except that citizenship entails responsibility that are every bit as important as the rights that come with it.
This becomes even 60 percent of adults said that they believed that most people could be trusted. Today, both Britain and the United States, that figure has fallen to 30 percent. This problem can, in my judgment, all too easily go critical when you add the issue of climate change to that of our economic breakdown.
As Joss Garman, the young co-founder of the British environmental movement "Plain Stupid" said in an opinion piece in the Observer newspaper just a couple of weeks ago, "This isn't the next fad. The naive popular narrative that every generation has their thing and that climate change is ours simply doesn't hold.
This isn't about being dissipated or rebellious without a cause. This isn't about dropping out, rejecting the norm, culture jamming, and hacking the system. This is not even about altruism. It's not just about defending the rights of lives of those who are less fortunate than us, and it certainly isn't about polar bears.
This is about us. For the millennial generation, the patronizing cliches fall apart, because this isn't about ideals as much as it's about hard science."
And as Professor James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently said, "In the nuclear standoff between the Soviet Union and theUnited States, a crisis could be precipitated only by the action of one of the parties. In contrast, the present threat to our planet, and to civilization, requires only inaction in the face of clear scientific evidence of the danger.
Now, I think that Joss Garman and James Hansen are onto something incredibly important. My own position, is that at the very minimum, we've no serious alternative but to rethink our lifestyles and to find ways to reduce our individual consumption of energy; to begin to embrace what we might call sustainable consumption.
And like most moral or ethical questions, it comes down to a relatively simple choice.
Each of us, as citizens, consumers, business leaders, have to decide at last to get honest. Not a little bit honest. Not honest abroad but dishonest at home. Not honest in willing the ends, but rather dishonest in providing the means. No. This time we have to be absolutely honest in facing up to the need for serious change in the way we live and in what we all decide to regard as important.
And we're entitled to expect exact xx same to be on the stage to make vital decisions on behalf. As the art vision can be put it in a about the mechanics of generating money environmental cost has to be effected into economic calculations as a genuine cost of opportunities Was they never told what [xxx] price of progress throughout the whole of the twentieth century.
Please believe me,as we grapple with the fall out from the [xxx] [xxx]what we now know to have resulted from twenty five years of financial folly, will be as nothing compared to the x x x from two hundred years of environmental folly. Should be be foolish enough to settle for the do nothing option, when our children and our children's children are likely to pay a truly crippling price.
A price that will make a mockery of the comforts and pleasures that most of us were brought up with and which we take entirely for granted. Those who follow us, will have the every justification whether to curse us for having been knowingly, irresponsibly [xxx] their future happiness. I will actually go a little further, should we fail to act on the warning signs, should we fail to get the grips for the symphony crisis, the winner needs to ask for whom the bell [xxx].It will be [xxxx
] for every man woman and child once on this beautiful planet.
carelessness and as other people clean up the mess that they have made. To me, this brilliantly describes our present situation with regards to the financial crisis that we have You understand what it means to our individual and collective futures. You understand the breadth and depth of change that needs to take place.
It is not going to be easy to navigate our way through the many and varied challenges I've described and the someday-up-in certainly won't be achieved without a fair degree of sacrifice. But with the freedom that's to be found through a far-greater sense of personal responsibility and a genuine commitment to one another, then I sincerely believe their remains enough good in this world to achieve at least some kind of a sustainable future and, for me, being among you today, you represent the living proof that there still a hell of a lot to fight for.
Thank you very much for listening to me.
Those building blocks are our children and the people I work with are called teachers. If the future looks It's also the case of everything and i really do mean everything what I've learned through my work in cinema, of the UNICEF and in the various spheres of government has only reinforced my view I had been a Catholic for a wider and better form to bet around climate change what was now needed the forcing on the future of education and after about a year.
We'll say what we want to say. scale and in complexity. It's no exaggeration to say that they are not going to go away, indeed they will get worse unless we can stop to find solutions and find them soon. That is only chance to improve the way we teach our young. 21st century and I think that we are betraying most of our children.
Public systems of our ordinary weapon have a condition of skilled the high schools after thirty kids, put them in a classroom, we gonna teach them the same material and you all expected to get it the same way...
Page 56 boy... Page56.
There is a great emphasis on School become steeps in history in the past and static knowledge and failed to capture the hear and now and the schools often failed. which are they going to be? Students who are starting school this year are likely to be retiring around 2065. Given that we cant predict with any certainty economic environment that needs to be the most flexible collaborative resilient creative generation the really have None to shuffle I guess but that race that she was referring to is being thrown very shock release and ways that he could never.
predicted by the economic crisis that has now taken hold across the globe and I think it is obvious to most of us that we are ultimately have to get out of this recession in a rather old-fashioned way All of you understand this. It is actually what you do. You must have effective workers always been done at the fringe of the market place because the public sector and the market is so have failed to deliver the necessary goods and services, particularly to those who do not have the economic means to pay for them.
You realize, years ago, the development is far too complex You may or may not operate the problem. But your bottomline was always been social transformation. And living everyone on this planet to take a role in building sustainable livelihood and justice artist. In other words you are primary purposed on individuals as citizens rather than as consumers.
I continue to believe that whatever we do, wherever we live, we must reassert the fact we are not just consumers. Yes, we may well all be consumers, I'm reading a lot of the time but everyone of us can claim to be a citizen all the time. And we also except and must persuade millions of other to except that citizenship entails responsibility that are every bit as important as the rights that come with it.
This becomes even 60 percent of adults said that they believed that most people could be trusted. Today, both Britain and the United States, that figure has fallen to 30 percent. This problem can, in my judgment, all too easily go critical when you add the issue of climate change to that of our economic breakdown.
As Joss Garman, the young co-founder of the British environmental movement "Plain Stupid" said in an opinion piece in the Observer newspaper just a couple of weeks ago, "This isn't the next fad. The naive popular narrative that every generation has their thing and that climate change is ours simply doesn't hold.
This isn't about being dissipated or rebellious without a cause. This isn't about dropping out, rejecting the norm, culture jamming, and hacking the system. This is not even about altruism. It's not just about defending the rights of lives of those who are less fortunate than us, and it certainly isn't about polar bears.
This is about us. For the millennial generation, the patronizing cliches fall apart, because this isn't about ideals as much as it's about hard science."
And as Professor James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently said, "In the nuclear standoff between the Soviet Union and theUnited States, a crisis could be precipitated only by the action of one of the parties. In contrast, the present threat to our planet, and to civilization, requires only inaction in the face of clear scientific evidence of the danger.
Now, I think that Joss Garman and James Hansen are onto something incredibly important. My own position, is that at the very minimum, we've no serious alternative but to rethink our lifestyles and to find ways to reduce our individual consumption of energy; to begin to embrace what we might call sustainable consumption.
And like most moral or ethical questions, it comes down to a relatively simple choice.
Each of us, as citizens, consumers, business leaders, have to decide at last to get honest. Not a little bit honest. Not honest abroad but dishonest at home. Not honest in willing the ends, but rather dishonest in providing the means. No. This time we have to be absolutely honest in facing up to the need for serious change in the way we live and in what we all decide to regard as important.
And we're entitled to expect exact xx same to be on the stage to make vital decisions on behalf. As the art vision can be put it in a about the mechanics of generating money environmental cost has to be effected into economic calculations as a genuine cost of opportunities Was they never told what [xxx] price of progress throughout the whole of the twentieth century.
Please believe me,as we grapple with the fall out from the [xxx] [xxx]what we now know to have resulted from twenty five years of financial folly, will be as nothing compared to the x x x from two hundred years of environmental folly. Should be be foolish enough to settle for the do nothing option, when our children and our children's children are likely to pay a truly crippling price.
A price that will make a mockery of the comforts and pleasures that most of us were brought up with and which we take entirely for granted. Those who follow us, will have the every justification whether to curse us for having been knowingly, irresponsibly [xxx] their future happiness. I will actually go a little further, should we fail to act on the warning signs, should we fail to get the grips for the symphony crisis, the winner needs to ask for whom the bell [xxx].It will be [xxxx
] for every man woman and child once on this beautiful planet.
carelessness and as other people clean up the mess that they have made. To me, this brilliantly describes our present situation with regards to the financial crisis that we have You understand what it means to our individual and collective futures. You understand the breadth and depth of change that needs to take place.
It is not going to be easy to navigate our way through the many and varied challenges I've described and the someday-up-in certainly won't be achieved without a fair degree of sacrifice. But with the freedom that's to be found through a far-greater sense of personal responsibility and a genuine commitment to one another, then I sincerely believe their remains enough good in this world to achieve at least some kind of a sustainable future and, for me, being among you today, you represent the living proof that there still a hell of a lot to fight for.
Thank you very much for listening to me.
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