A few weeks back, I posted a very cool video on the book Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson which consisted entirely of a disembodied hand drawing on a whiteboard. Aside from the visuals, the message about how truly creative ideas come about really hit home.
My son Ben just sent me another video, and once again, it’s a whiteboard illustration. This time with some game-changing ideas about education.
The audio is of a lecture given by Sir Ken Robinson, a celebrated British creativity guru who I’ve written about here before. In fact, he was a client of our new Fallon, London CEO, Gail Gallie’s consultancy, GallieGodfrey.
His mission: to stop schools from robbing kids of their innate creativity.
Sir Ken is most mind-blowing when he poses questions that have been staring us in the face for years. Why do schools batch children together by age group? Why teach them all the same thing? Why drill into them the idea that there is only one correct answer to any question?
It’s almost as if schools are designed to stunt creativity.
Children are enormously good at what Edward de Bono called lateral thinking, and what Robinson calls divergent thinking: the ability to devise many answers to a single question. According to Sir Ken, 98% of kindergarten students score at genius levels in divergent thinking. But that number drops dramatically as they get older.
How do we stop this? Instead of putting them in conformist environments that frustrate their creativity, Sir Ken tells us, we should be fostering independent thinking and experimentation in our schools.
To confront the problems of the present and the future (the energy crisis, unemployment, war, poverty, just to name a few) we’ll need armies of creative geniuses in all sectors, from engineering to advertising, climate science to industrial design.
The InspirUS program at Lancaster Royal Grammar School, which my old mate Stan Hilling and I support, is in this space. The program provides an environment where gifted students can exercise their creative impulses, and escape the conformity of a traditional classroom.
Not quite the revolution that Sir Ken is calling for, but it’s one of many important steps towards unlocking the creativity of today’s young people, and preparing the mindset needed to make the world a better place for everyone.
