On Innovators & Play

In my last post, I mentioned that we just hosted our Optimates dinners where we honoured our top academic students. In the fourth of those dinners, Fraser Grant ’87, our Assistant Head (Academics) talked about innovation and how we can help youth discover and develop the skills that will allow them to be innovators.

Ours is a long-term game. There are lots of important attributes that our graduates will require to be successful (broadly defined) 25 years from now – at the top of my list are critical thinking, teaming/collaborative skills, adaptability, and a strong moral compass. But, I also think innovation is on this list, and it is the trait that is taking on greater importance. The emergence is due to both the flattening of the world as well as the pace of change in everything – our day-to-day lives, the economy, knowledge, and human interaction on a global basis. Our societal and national well-being is increasingly tied to our ability to innovate, both in absolute terms and relative to others.

Innovators are the people who able to find the intersection between creativity/imagination and human need. It is the manifestation of the very special talent of being able to re-imagine and see something in a way that was previously never done. And creativity isn’t just about the arts. The greatness of Einstein, Gretzky, the Wright brothers, Marie Curie, the Beatles and Picasso was all built on creativity. A significant proportion of societal leaders today have reached this pinnacle through applying creativity to human needs and wants.

So what does that mean for educators and for parenting?

There is an iconic TED talk from February 2006 by Sir Ken Robinson on the “How Schools Kill Creativity”. It is, in fact, the most viewed TED talk in history with more than 13.5 million viewers. Robinson’s message still lingers in my mind many years later. His premise is that children have an abundance of inherent creativity that schools squeeze away by over-emphasizing regimentation and working within systems. Not only do schools not develop creativity, they actually force it out of children.

At the start of the term this year, our faculty read a book by Tony Wagner (Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard) called Creating Innovators, and then we used it as the focus for a series of professional conversations about how we can better promote innovation through our teaching and our broader learning environment.

Wagner’s message (as introduced in his own TEDxNYED talk and fully addressed in his interactive Creating Innovators Website) is not only that innovation is the essential driver of societal development, but also that there are some very specific ways schools and post-secondary education should address it.

Some of his key points are:

·         Innovation can only happen when you have three factors coming together: 1) expertise (knowledge), 2) critical thinking skills (like flexibility, problem-solving orientation, ability to integrate many ideas, perseverance, empathy), and 3) intrinsic motivation (including some of Daniel Pink’s ideas – most importantly, an enduring, driving sense of purpose.)

·         An enduring sense of purpose can only be based on first the development of passion, which is very intense but time-limited (think the first couple months of dating a new person with whom you are infatuated.) Purpose is focused and perseveres long after passion burns down. Wagner also believes that the most effective way for youth to develop passion is by providing time for unstructured play, especially with peers in the out-of-doors. This runs counter to so much of current parenting practice, where time is the most valuable commodity for both children and their parents, so we become highly efficient “programmers”.

·         Mentors, encouraging parents, and enthusiastic teachers are essential in helping empower students as they move along the Play to Passion to Purpose Continuum.

Generally speaking, great schools have always been very good at the “expertise” factor, and we are becoming better at “critical thinking” aspects. Both schools and parents used to be better at providing unstructured play.

I recommend Creating Innovators to you, and would love to hear what you think about Wagner’s premise. More particularly, I am interested in your views on the Play to Passion to Purpose Continuum, as well as how we should better address the “critical thinking skills” in the right balance with “expertise.”

I look forward to hearing from parents, alumni and employees, but am most interested in what current students and recent graduates think about this.