TED Talk Analysis

This TED Talk was given by Geoffrey Canada and focuses on how we can improve our education system. It was delivered in May 2013 at a TED Talk Conference and was delivered in order to inform the audience about the issues with the current education system and to persuade the audience that the design of the education system is currently flawed and that major changes are needed to correct the problem. One of the missions of the Carnegie Center is to help underprivileged children and adults improve their literacy and critical thinking abilities, so I thought that this TED Talk had a relevant link to my service learning organization. He was a very effective speaker.  He incorporated humor well in his talk and also immediately established the relevancy of his topic by appealing to the audience’s emotions. He appealed to their emotions by talking about how the system effectively guarantees children with poor financial background to fail. 

Geoffrey Canada has worked to improve the Harlem Education district for years and has seen firsthand the issues stemming from the current system. He urges the government to review its education system and see what it can do to serve the students more effectively.

He expected the audience to have a reasonable amount of knowledge about the current education system. He uses extended similes and metaphors for the education system (such as comparing the system to a farm that plants its crops at the wrong time) to help the audience understand the logic that he is using. He berates the government for employing the same basic school system as was in place nearly 50 years ago, saying, “If it did not work then, why would it work now?”. Using these similes helps members of the audience who may not know as much about the system understand the faults he sees in the system. 

He was also very animated in terms of nonverbal communication, displaying energy and urgency in his gesticulations and near-constant pacing to show the urgency of the matter. He says we have “run out of time” to delay changing the system and that we are approaching an “education cliff” due to the current system. He proposes that we change the calendar that schools tend to use (August-May) to a year-round schedule. To compensate, Winter and Thanksgiving breaks would be longer and there would be a small break in June that serves as a summer break. He says the three-month break currently used for summer break leads to dramatic regression in students’ abilities. He also encourages the government to actually use the results of their educational studies to improve the system as a whole. 

Overall, he was a very effective and persuasive speaker, appealing to the audience with emotion and logic while providing humorous anecdotes to maintain their attention level.