TEDxLondon - Ewan McIntosh

Main ideas, concepts, and lessons

• Problem-solving skills in schools are being built on the wrong assumption

  • Many education systems promote problem-based learning, but the speaker argues they often focus on pseudo problems—problems created by teachers or assigned by the curriculum.
  • This approach can produce students who solve fake or irrelevant problems instead of becoming people who can find real problems in the world.

• The missing educational goal: “problem-finders”

  • The core claim is that society needs a generation of problem finders—young people who:
    • Identify problems that actually matter,
    • Work with peers to tackle them,
    • Develop the motivation and capability to start solving problems found in their communities and world.

• Evidence/observations from the speaker’s experiences

  • From work in media, venture capitalism, and digital companies:
    • The speaker saw ~3,000 ideas/pitches, with only ~30 succeeding, suggesting a very low success rate (~1%) even among highly creative people.
  • From teaching and advising perspectives:
    • The speaker observed that education systems repeatedly emphasize the wrong part of problem-based learning—focusing on receiving problems rather than finding them.

• Why pseudo-problems are harmful

  • Students’ and teachers’ expectations reinforce a model where:
    • Teachers provide problems,
    • Students respond with work designed to satisfy school tasks,
    • The result can be impressive but not meaningful—“ingenious answers to stupid problems that don’t matter.”

• Reframing learning: more learner-driven work

  • The speaker advocates:
    • Divergent thinking (generating many possible directions/ideas),
    • Plus some convergent thinking at the end to refine ideas into real outcomes.
  • The learning structure is described as design-thinking-like, with teachers reducing micromanagement so students do more of the intellectual work.

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Methodology / instructional approach (as described)

• Use a design-thinking-inspired learning flow

  • Teacher immersion phase (before students get a problem)

    • The teacher explores and narrows down possible areas of study.
    • The teacher selects a set of real problems students could investigate (instead of handing students one pre-made pseudo problem).

  • Student problem acquisition phase

    • Students take ownership of the problem (with emphasis on enabling students to find or choose problems).
    • Students generate ideas for solutions.

  • Prototyping phase

    • Students build or test solutions, such as:
      • Writing essays,
      • Making films,
      • Creating podcasts,
      • Publishing blogs.

  • Feedback phase

    • The teacher provides feedback near the end.
    • The speaker criticizes feedback being delayed until exams or being overly dependent on test outcomes.

• Shift responsibility

  • The speaker explicitly wants:
    • Children doing the hard work of learning, not teachers.
    • More divergent thinking in the curriculum, enabled by letting students perform the intellectual labor teachers typically do.

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Example used to illustrate the approach (TEDx with children)

• A practical implementation with young students

  • The speaker shared TED Talks with children in Sunderland (UK).
  • The children responded immediately: “We’re doing that.”

• Key implementation rule

  • Teachers were not allowed to “spoon-feed” problems.
  • The children created their own TEDx talks by deciding what to focus on.

• Outcomes / topics

  • Children proposed and investigated questions such as:
    • Do animals talk?
    • Do babies have a secret language?
    • Which cancer should be cured first?
    • Why do people need to get sick?

• What the speaker highlights

  • Visible enthusiasm and peer encouragement are presented as evidence of stronger engagement.

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Call to action / pledge

• Create a “problem-finding curriculum” at scale
  • The speaker proposes a pledge starting this week and before Christmas:
    • Engage 10,000 learners in a problem-finding curriculum.
  • Support is requested from:
    • Teachers,
    • School district leaders,
    • Politicians.

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Closing anecdote (what problem-finding does to people)

• A summer incident illustrates deep ownership
  • Inspired by the idea “You give us the problems, and we’ll solve them,” students:
    • Began creating and finding problems throughout the school year and into summer vacation.
  • When they received a computer to solve problems:
    • A child broke into the school during summer to reprogram the computer so it could solve the problems the child had found.
  • The speaker interprets this as proof that problem-finding changes people—toward ownership, agency, and persistence.

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Speakers / sources featured (explicitly mentioned)

• Ewan McIntosh (TEDx speaker)
• Simon Breakspear (mentioned; referenced as working on finding unsolved problems; also doing a PhD)
• Alan November (educator; described running a community problem-solving class)
• D school (source of the “design thinking kind of structure” reference; i.e., Stanford d.school)