CEO Satya Nadella on the Importance of Education

My great grandfather,
who was a marginal farmer,
had just passed away, leaving my great grandmother
a young widow with two sons and no source
of income.
To provide for her sons and their future,
she had to move to a town nearby,
and make some difficult choices.
She became a domestic servant, but still could
only afford to send one of her sons to school.
While the two boys were close in age, both
in grade school, one was seen as being more
responsible, while the other was a bit of
a troublemaker.
My great grandmother opted to send the more
responsible, diligent son, viewed as having
more potential, into the workforce.
He became a day laborer at a construction
site.
He would continue in that field for the rest
of his life, never given the opportunity to
gain new skills and gain higher level employment.
The other son was sent to the local school,
and that boy was my grandfather.
Despite being seen as the less responsible,
he continued through school and eventually
became a police officer.
Despite entering the workforce nearly a decade
after his brother, his starting salary was
exponentially higher.
It was my grandfather's education and the
eventual career that enabled my father to
pursue his own education, which eventually
allowed me to follow my own passions.
The opportunity my grandfather was given impacted
the trajectories of the generation to come.
This personal story reflects that often repeated
adage, "talent is everywhere but opportunity
is not."
Today's event is about education and technology.
More specifically, it is about empowering
the students of today to create the world
of tomorrow.
We live in an amazing time of technological
progress.
Every aspect of our lives, economies and societies
are being shaped by digital technologies.
However, technology is also creating disruption.
There's a growing concern over job growth,
economic opportunity, and the world we are
building for the next generation.
The real question is how can technology create
more opportunity not for a few but for all.
Addressing that question is core to our mission,
to empower every person and every organization
on the planet to achieve more.
This is not just a set of words for us, but
something we care deeply about.
Our success is measured by others' success.
Democratizing educational opportunities speaks
directly to our mission,
and it's one of the most pressing societal challenges.
Technology can amplify the work of dedicated
people and institutions, but rarely can substitute
for it.
Kentaro Toyama, a former researcher at Microsoft,
and the author of the book, Geek Heresy, captures
it best when he says, "that societal change
requires more than just technology."
"Technocrats," a term that refers to them, have
a tendency to extol the virtues of technology
and view it as a remedy to all that ails the
system.
I'm here today as a heretic.
We are under no illusion that technology alone
is the answer to transforming education.
Dedicated administrators, great teachers,
motivated students, and involved parents and
communities are the ones changing education.
And technology is merely a tool to empower
their creativity, their ingenuity.
It is this opportunity that motivates our
work in education and everything you'll see today.
One of my favorite parts of the job is to
be able to see and learn from the students
all around the world.
Over the past two years, I've had a chance
to visit students from 20-plus countries,
to see students in Jakarta and Tel Aviv use
the same Office tools that my daughters use
in Seattle, how teachers in Tokyo and Madrid
are using Minecraft to teach students computational
thinking, how a group of young female students
in Cairo were inspired to learn to code and
built an app to assist the Syrian refugees
in their own community.
I've been struck by the commonalities amongst
the students, their ingenuity, their thirst
for learning, diversity, and dreams for future.
As I've spent time visiting these classrooms,
a few things stick out to me each time.
First, technology should help, not hinder
teachers' work in the classroom.
Teachers have constant demands on their time.
They must create curriculum, grade tests and
papers, manage classrooms, discipline, educate and inspire.
Each time I leave a classroom, the job of
a teacher makes my job look easy in comparison.
Technology should make teachers' lives simpler
and spark students' creativity, not distract
from it.
This is a top priority that we are focused
on at Microsoft.
Today, you'll see how we're delivering an
accessible, streamlined platform readily available
to all classrooms so teachers spend less time
focused on technology, and more time doing
what they love doing -- inspiring students.
Secondly, the nature of work is changing drastically.
Much of work today happens in teams, within
groups of people working together to solve
a problem, where the sum becomes greater than
the parts.
We need to prepare our students for this future
and enable team-based learning experiences
in the classroom.
Amongst groups of students, between students
and teachers, between teachers and parents
-- what you'll see today is how any classroom
can promote learning through collaboration,
hubs for teamwork, personalized learning tools,
and the ability to co-create.
By empowering students to learn together,
their educational opportunities get better.
Third, we must prepare our students for tomorrow.
Consider the report from the World Economic
Forum and their Jobs Report.
An estimated 65 percent of the students entering
school today will have jobs that do not yet
exist.
Teachers know this.
And they're hungry to equip their students
for this future.
They know that computational thinking and
problem-solving skills are key to the future,
but they also know that they need to take
a much broader view of STEM by bringing STEM
curriculum alongside reading, writing, design,
and art will set these students up for success
in the future.
Throughout today's presentation, we will show
you new technologies designed to address these needs.
And most importantly, how technology can empower
students and teachers to enhance learning
outcomes and create a world of tomorrow.
Lastly, democratizing educational opportunity
must be inclusive of everyone, not just a
select few.
To me, this is something that's deeply personal.
This includes students with disabilities and
different learning styles.
They must be given an opportunity to pursue
their own dreams.
Dyslexia is estimated to impact one in five
people.
72 percent of the classrooms of students with
special learning needs.
Reading is an essential competency.
And once a student falls far behind, it's
difficult to catch up.
And it's just not about reading, you fall
behind in every other subject area.
This is something that we aim to address with
the OneNote Learning Tools designed specifically
to help students with dyslexia, but it can
help students everywhere with their reading
and writing skills.
It's been incredible to hear the feedback
from the teachers using this to teach emerging
first-grade readers, or from parents who have
exhausted their options, seeking help for
their dyslexic children learning to read,
or how a teacher in Macedonia used the learning
tools to teach young students English.
We will take a look at these learning tools
and much more as Terry Myerson joins me today
to share more of the news.
To close, I want everyone to imagine the world
we're building for tomorrow.
Just as my grandfather's opportunity changed
the trajectory of our family, this is what
inspires me.
How can we collectively come together to democratize
the educational opportunity for every student,
both for this generation and the generations
to come?
Thank you all very, very much.
(Cheers, applause.)