Creativity is crucial to the future of kids. If you’ve ever seen that TED Talk by Sir Kenneth Robinson entitled, Do Schools Kill Creativity?, you’ll be familiar with this edict. In the most watched talk of TED time, Sir Ken very humorously describes how education systems worldwide, with their focus on academic subjects, are geared towards turning out university professors, not future innovators, creators and leaders of industry. But short of wrenching kids out of public education and forking out for a Steiner-Waldorf environment or home-schooling, how do you nurture creativity in kids? And why do we care if they’re not our children?
In a recent New York Times article, How to Raise a Creative Child. Step One: Back Off, Adam Grant explains how many child prodigies may grow up to fulfil important positions and have illustrious careers but very few manage to develop original ideas and create meaningful change in the world. Not many geniuses become Da Vinci’s, Mozart’s or Einstein’s. And the reason might be because they were encouraged by parents and peers to master and please rather than question and create. Practice makes perfect but it does not make new, revolutionary, better or transformative. It can actually make it difficult to deviate from a certain pattern of thinking.
In school, opportunities to ignite genuine passion, ingenuity and inventiveness typically tend to be overshadowed by traditional forms of academic success. Instead, being correct and getting things right becomes highly prized and respected. Teaching children to see the line they must toe can come at the expense of them seeing the bright spark within themselves.
Enabling children to recognise the glimmer of an idea as it fires in their brain, harness its creative energy and encourage its expression no matter the outcome, is surely what will develop both a future for them personally and improvements in the future for all of us. If we want to solve world-wide issues, it will no doubt take some creative thinking to invent solutions. If we value the role of art in all its forms (visual, music, dance and on it goes) to examine, comment and inspire the rest of us then we need to value creativity. If we simply want someone to come up with the next instalment of Star Wars, then we need artists and creators!
So how do we foster creativity in kids? According to the pearls of wisdom that the experts provided in the Times article, we’ve come up with some tips:
Follow their lead...
Like most things in life, it’s got to start with heart. There’s no point pushing coding if a child has no interest in computers. Witnessing where a child’s interest might lie and encouraging their efforts will have a far greater impact on their staying power. If they want to paint Pollock-style all over the floor you might want to roll out some plastic sheeting. If they heard your Foo Fighters album and want to enrol in drum lessons, you might want to soundproof your walls. Obviously there are limits to this idea in terms of cost, time and indulgence. Tread a fine line (around the Pollock inspired artwork – it may have some value in the future!) but remember that data shows that creatively successful adults, by and large, had parents that spotted their interest and encouraged it rather than pushing them to pursue an ideal.
Don’t doubt...
Just because they dance like a baby elephant or show little skill in controlling the clay in their pottery class, does not mean a child is not cut out for that activity. If they love what they’re doing, they are acquiring the valuable knowledge of what pursuing a passion feels like. Nurturing the motivation rather than the application is where it’s at. Without it, a child may never reach a stage where they can conceive of dedicating hundreds of hours to something in order to become good at it.
Process not output...
It’s the journey that matters, not the destination. A cliché, perhaps, but a cliché for a reason. At school and at home, if kids are taught to enjoy our good favour and judgement more than their enjoyment of creation, then the outcome becomes the focus. The problem with this is that if they struggle they will give up more readily, rather than face failure. And if they fail they risk being imperfect and losing favour. A good effort is better than a good job.
Restrict the rules...
Reducing the amount of rules that govern a child’s life statistically increases their propensity for creativity, according to the study Discriminating Characteristics of the Families of Highly Creative Adolescents. This doesn’t mean turning a blind eye when they refill your vodka bottle with water. It means guiding children to find their own moral compass and set of ethics. Without a list of do’s and don’ts to subscribe to and the opportunity to employ their own ideas of what constitutes wrong and right, children are able to think for themselves – a necessary quality to hone if they want to create.
Make it fun...
Elementary but important. While passion is the vehicle that gets them there, it’s the fun that keeps them there. The key to this is a great teacher, coach or mentor. If you’re lucky, you’ll remember one teacher that took dry, dull or demanding subjects and made then engaging by employing enthusiasm, storytelling and patience. The ‘who’ in teaching can make a big difference to the ‘what’. It’s worth noting that most successful athletes didn’t start off with the best coaches – they had coaches that made what they were learning really enjoyable.
Cultivate curiosity...
A thirst for discovery is what sets a lot of creative people apart. While they might specialise in one field, their frame of reference is made up of an interest in many topics. After all, creation can’t exist in a vacuum. So all those “but why?” questions that are the hallmark of 4 year olds are worth answering. Thank goodness for the creation of the internet and hello Wikipedia!
Written by Skye Wellington