On Creativity in Schools

Transcript of speech I gave in high school on our education system.

The Model T Student

Athena, the Great Greek Goddess of Wisdom, was born inside her father’s head (ThinkQuest). What a delivery. A pregnant Zeus and a wise-cracking brainchild trying to get out. And baby Athena burst from her father’s forehead, giving Zeus the worst pregnancy migraine of all time (ThinkQuest). But perhaps it was worth it, because with a spark of brilliance and a hunger for innovation, Athena came out ready to conquer the world. From Hercules (Gill) to Odysseus (Kerestes), Newton to Einstein, Gandhi to Teresa, and Gates to Jobs, Athena defined genius helping her inventors and problem solvers, revolutionize the world. And the world looked forward, expecting a new set of heroes who would battle a more monstrous set of problems. And then, we arrived. My generation: a generation of APs, SATs, and Facebook farming. Creativity? Out the window. So today, let’s explore the problems facing our generation, ask ourselves where our creativity has gone, and think of solutions to create inventors and leaders.

We live in a struggling world, a world of tsunamis, meltdowns (“Japan”), revolts, deficits, and disasters. A world of 1 billion hungry (“Global Hunger”), 1 billion illiterate (Boaz), and 1 billion living on less than a dollar 25 cents a day (Shah). A world in which humans will need two Earths to sustain their habits in just 40 years (Damassa) and a world which by 2030 will invest in water as we today invest in oil (Blain). A world of disease in which the United States alone sees 1 out of every 4 people die of cancer (American Cancer Society).

In this era of unimaginable problems, we need creativity of unimaginable proportions –the creativity of a generation of kids to tackle the problems that will devastate generations to come. We need not one, but one million Einsteins, one million Da Vincis, one million Teresas. But the majority of kids that this world so desperately needs, haven’t learned how to create, invent, or solve. We’ve inherited a world that we may not be able to handle. As Dan Meyers, in his Ted Conference speech “Math Class Needs a Makeover” comments, we “expect sitcom-sized problems that wrap up in 22 minutes, three commercial breaks and a laugh track.” We swallow the problems and regurgitate the answers.

Sir Ken Robinson in his speech “Bring on the Learning Revolution” says that school is “an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model.” In this 500 billion dollar system (National Center for Education Statistics), we are thrown into the factory from one end, hit with a flurry of facts, homework, and tests and come out manufactured, mass-produced, memorized. We torture our brains to find what has already been found or discover what has already been discovered; we memorize chemistry formula after formula, and analyze history dates time after time again. What the world is left with are Henry Ford’s model T students, who come in every single color as long as they’re bored and burned out.

Studies point to a nation wide creativity disaster. Torrance creativity tests, identified by Newsweek as a “gold standard in creativity assessment” have shown that creativity in American students has been on the decline (Bronson & Merryman). Worse, the once great leader of innovation has fallen to 21st in science and 25th in math (The Board Foundation).

And yet – in our country we teach our kids the same way their ancestors were taught a century ago (Wallis). In our country, 35,000 students drop out of school every school week (Furger). Even my cousin’s thinking about dropping out and he’s only in 4th grade. In our country and world, rather than think or read students Spark Note at the rate of 2500 hits a second (Spark Notes) and shrink entire epiphanies into the 140-character limit of Twitter. The problem is that we can’t solve poverty, global warming, or disease in just 140 characters. Today’s problems just don’t come with multiple-choice solutions. As important as absorbing data is, in order to tackle new problems, we need to learn to think. When will we, as Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it “walk on our own feet…work with our own hands… speak our own minds” (qtd. in United States History). Where is that genius, that creativity… that spark of innovation? Athena, our great Greek goddess of wisdom has been sleeping, and we need to wake her up – by changing our schools, societies, and selves.

To think or not to think, that is the question. We need to think and we must, as Hamlet would say, “take arms against a sea of troubles, / and by opposing end them” (Lamb et al.). In Michigan’s Farmington High, tinkering, thinking, and building is the curriculum. According to Time magazine, “calculus, physics, chemistry and engineering are taught through activities that fill the hallways with a cacophony of nailing, sawing and chattering …the kids…apply academic principles to the real world” (Wallis). And while traditional education, books, and tests are always essential, there should still be a problem to solve. As MIT’s mathematician Seymour Papert puts it, mathematics “started not as this…product of the abstract mind. It started as a way of controlling the water of the Nile, building the pyramids, sailing a ship” (qtd. in Curtis). When Lynbrook High School’s energetic science teacher launched a research program (Cassidy), six students made it to the Intel Science Talent Search semifinals (“Staff & Advisory Boards”) with projects improving search engines, space exploration, and clean energy (Noguchi). Such creative challenges, project-based learning, or even giving extra credit for new ideas, not only brings the curriculum home but creates thinkers who get excited about learning more.

From science to history: asking students how they would have founded America, drafted the constitution, or run the country as Washington, Lincoln, or Kennedy, inspires them to not only learn from history, but learn how to make history. From history to English – reading Shakespeare’s plays, Homer’s epics, and Hawthorne’s stories may provide insights into life but having students create their own worlds of poetry, mystery, or fantasy sparks creativity. And with creative kids, even Akron, Ohio’s project-based learning school with 42% of students in conditions of poverty, has become one of the top middle schools of its city in test scores (Bronson & Merryman). When school becomes a scientist’s laboratory, a writer’s desk, or a leader’s podium, and mass-produces environments of exploring, dissecting, and connecting the dots, there’s nothing stopping future innovations from being made.

From school to society, part two of our solution in which the community participates in real-world, real-life, and real-time education. Like California’s Collins Elementary School’s parent run “Dissecting Machines” program (Samar “Your Article”) in which students took donated (Samar “Collins Clubs”) computers, keyboards, and phones apart (Samar “Your Article”) – discovering, for themselves, the creative connections in real life contraptions. Like the few organizations or parents that give micro grants to student micro-preneurs for even starting or thinking about something new. Encouragement and challenge inspires innovation. It does after all, take a village to raise a child.

And finally to home: part three of our solution, changing ourselves. Rather than wait for decades to make a difference, we need to create now. Like California’s Lawson Middle School environment club which planted thousands of seeds to offer to community members for free (GreenChipmunks’ eClub “NewsFlash”) and launched a competitive walk to school program to save the environment (GreenChipmunks’ eClub “Walk-One-Week (WOW)”). Like those middle school students, becoming a citizen of the 21st century world means becoming immersed in its problems – and becoming aware of more than just what’s on Facebook. More than ever, our generation is connected – but if we fail to use the connectivity and the information on our fingertips, fail to act, fail to think, and to fail to make, then we’ve failed as a generation. We need to take risks, because the only time in our lives when we can devote our energy to something big and still come home, relaxed, to a dinner on the table and a basketball in the garage is now. We need to create NOW.

Today’s model-T students may be manufactured and tested-out, but by transforming our education from memorization to innovation at school and at home we can tap Athena’s power. Somewhere deep inside our minds lie unrivaled intellects, unmatched imaginations, and unimaginable ideas. We need a generation of inventors, heroes, and entrepreneurs. A generation to solve our monstrous problems. A generation that follows the ancient saying: I create, therefore I am.

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