What Your Kid Knows About Creativity

I was reading Sheila’s The Importance of Creativity In Education where she pointes to a TED talk by Sir Ken Anderson called Do schools kill creativity?

I listened to the guy. The bell rang in my head when I heard him saying this:

A child starting to learn today will retire in 2065. What world will look like then?

I couldn’t hold myself back and started to write down simple, sometimes obvious yet super powerful statements from the talk. For example, Sir Ken Anderson tells a story about a girl that pictures a god. A teacher makes a remark that no one knows how god looks like and she replies “They will in a minute”.

People got burnt for similar “sin” in some places or in other times. But kids are not afraid to be wrong. I wish I could completely get rid of such fear. Would you?

Here is another gold one:

If you are not prepared to be wrong – you are not creating original.

Can you argue with this? If you do, keep in mind Einstein’s definition for insanity:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Sir Ken Anderson warns:

We stigmatize mistakes.

Indeed, how often do you hear kids get their dose of preaching for sometimes even naive mistake like writing numbers upside down, breaking a dish, or painting on a wall? I do, I actually commit such sin quite often. And that is a big mistake. That way I commit 2 crimes – first, I hold my kids back from experimenting. Second, I stigmatize mistakes, I teach my kids that mistakes are wrong. How wrong I am! I hold my kids from growing into creativity, what a mistake!

If we do not grow into creativity then we grow out of it.

Too true, you either grow or die – there is no in between. I have learned my lesson. Have you?

Practice This – Get Results

• Give your kid space to be wrong – let her experiment.
• Do not stigmatize mistakes – grow your kid’s self esteem.
• Listen to the TED talk – Do schools kill creativity?

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