Parenting for Creativity
“US Employers rate creativity/innovation among the top five skills that will increase in importance in the next five years.” ~ 2008 Conference Board Report
84% of executives say innovation is extremely or very important to their company’s growth strategy. ~ 2010 McKinsey & Company global survey
Alongside the foundational skills of reading, writing and arithmetic; creativity has risen to the top of the list of essential skills for the “21st century skills”. Creativity is not a skill, it’s a mindset, it’s a way of looking at the world, its crafting unique creations and it manifests in a myriad ways. In the 2011 State of Union Address President Obama claimed that, “In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. Its how we make a living.” I couldn’t agree more except I expand his claim to paint a picture of reality true for all the nations of the world, if not today, within the next several years.
Back in 2005, a whole decade ago in his groundbreaking book A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink forecasted that every job or any work that can be automated, will be automated in the near future. What does this really mean? It means that every job that can be set to an algorithm, a series of steps will be done by a computer program. The computer program could be in the form of a robot, an application or a stream of bits running somewhere on a remote computer. Daniel Pink’s prediction is a reality today. In fact, his predication seems tame in the face of driverless cars, washing machines that can order laundry detergent and robots that deliver pizza. The definition of automation has been extended to include artificially intelligent devices. Soon, and soon seems to come faster than most predictions, the only jobs left to do will be those that make humans uniquely human. Creativity is one of those humanly human skills, ways of being.
While technological innovation is radically altering the fundamental ways in which we live, relate and perceive life possibilities, education is only slowly responding to the demand for inspiring students to be radically creative. The good news is that today some educators and education systems are beginning to recognize the significance of cultivating creativity. Research on the significance of play and the need for a mindset open to risk-taking has provided an essential foundation for considering how to foster creativity. Media, innovation, robotics labs are beginning to occupy sizeable square footage in some schools. This change is slow to come. While some schools are grounding themselves in the pursuit of nurturing creativity and other 21st century skills, the vast majority of learning in schools, especially in middle and high school is heavily focused on traditional academic skills; those skills that are supposed to lead to college.
A fundamental truth
This raises an essential question for parents of middle and high school students – How can I best support my child’s creative growth?
I have wrestled with this question both as an educator and as the parent of two children. When I look beyond the many techniques and practices, STEAM camp experiences and art offerings that I can bring to my students and own children, I realize that any serious attempt to foster creativity is limited by one simple truth – educators and parents, all the adults responsible for fostering creativity in today’s students were all educated in the industrial era. Our lived educational experience was based on top-down instruction that taught us skills, all skills that are being programmed into automatable devices today. For us to truly parent and educate for deep and revolutionary creativity, we have question our own programming – our history and beliefs about what we value.
How can a mind that was trained with now automatable skills, a mind that was systematically measured in quantifiable terms look beyond its educational experience to foster deep creativity that allows the emergence of a new way of being, thinking and viewing the world? What can parents do to offer their children the greatest educational opportunity – the opportunity to create and live into a future radically different from the past and present?
Where to go from here
Let go: The first thing we can do is let go! Let go of thinking that how we were educated is right for today. This letting go is only possible if we can first let go of two pillars that bookend education – the first, our notion of intelligence, the second our notion of success. We need to see intelligence as manifest in ways beyond demonstrating skills in academic subjects. Next, we need to let go of what we consider success – if success only comes in the form of material comfort, financial status and social acceptance then we will continue to churn out productive adults who conform, not those who question the norm and push its limit – thinking and ways of being fundamental to innovation and creativity.
Allow yourself to get to know your children: We all want to get to know our children but often we don’t let ourselves. We are afraid to see who they really are. Instead, we want them to fit into our preconceived notions of who they ought to be. We need to really get to know and to accept our children. They are radically different from us.
How many times have you heard parents exclaim that their two year-old can navigate a touch screen device with the same fluency that they can walk? Today’s children are different in ways we can barely imagine. They are “bathed in bits.” They live in complex times, have access to experiences and media that are alien compared to the most sophisticated device any of us had access to growing up. It is important that we listen to them not just to turn around and acculturate them with our notions of success but to really understand their lived experience. We must understand why they live and breathe with their devices, what really matters to them, why the vast majority of high school students are bored out of their minds in classrooms and those that get high grades forget over 50% of the material a week after a test. In understanding them wholly, we can begin see their gifts. Every child has a gift – what is it? A child’s gift is that child’s creative expression in the world. Our job as parents is to see our children for who they truly are and to empower them to express their gifts.
Take a leap: Let your child engage in completely non-traditional learning experiences. For the fear of being trite let me remind the reader that the distinguishing idea that led to Apple’s success in the 1970s did not come from hardcore computer science but from Steve Jobs’ appreciation for calligraphy learned in a calligraphy class. Innovation and creativity is often born out of unconventional experiences that stir a person’s inner being. Seeing a child completely and listening to her wholly needlessly leads to supporting her desire to explore and learn about the world in unusual ways – all ways that lead to fostering creativity.
I have long struggled with these conclusions in my work with students and teachers, in my parenting. Its is easy to understand these conclusions intellectually, it is hard to live by them. The pursuit must continue and so must the dialog and collective effort.
Parenting for creativity is one of several ideas that will be discussed in an upcoming talk — Middle School Matters, High School Hopes. The talk will take the audience from understanding the needs of middle and high school students, to a discussion on educating for an unpredictable future and will land squarely on how to choose the right middle and high school in the midst of so much education turmoil and change. Join me for Middle School Matters, High School Hopes on Oct 4.