So You Think We Need More Innovators
.by Barbara Kerr on Sunday, December 12, 2010 at 4:12am.
So You Think We Need More Innovators: Seven Unpleasant Facts about Creativity You Probably Don�t Want to Know
1. Creativity isn�t nice. Innovators really aren�t very nice. Young math/ science geniuses often are weird, and they like being that way. Verbally gifted young people use their gifts for sarcasm and irony at your expense just as often as they use them for poetry and prose. Grown-up innovators are quirky, obsessed with their own ideas and bored with everyone else�s, and easily annoyed.
2. Creativity isn�t sociable. Little kids who are going to grow up to be innovators would rather be alone, or goofing around on the computer with one best friend. They don�t want to play soccer, go to sleepovers every weekend, and or hang out with the popular kids � and anything you do to force them into it blows up in your face. Grown-up innovators keep strange hours, arrive at meetings late and leave early, and don�t want to be part of your team-building workshop.
3. Creativity isn�t collaborative. Little smart, creative kids hate co-operative learning because they a. end up doing all the work or b. have to sit there resentfully while everybody�s opinion is enthusiastically affirmed, gold and garbage alike. Innovators do indeed work in teams � but each one has her own project, and after assignments are made and project deadlines set, everybody is off to their own cubicle, lab, or coffee shop to work on their own part, alone.
4. Creativity isn�t well-rounded. From an early age, creative kids have passionate pursuits that don�t allow time for doing all things well. They will get A�s in the classes that interest them and C�s in everything else, unless school is so easy that they can get away with a few all nighters during finals week to get all A�s. As adults, innovators may have an avocation like music or running, but spend most of their time doing the work that they love. They never believe that anything worth doing is worth doing well, in fact, they do most things outside their work pretty carelessly, like housework, travel vouchers, and marriage.
5. Creativity isn�t hard work. Forget what the old blow-hards like Edison said about perspiration, years of effort, blah, blah. Sure there are references to get into proper form, and a whole hothouse of hybrids to be pollinated by hand, and a subatomic particle whose appearance must be waited on at the bottom of some hole in the ground � but most of the work of the innovator doesn�t feel at all like work. It�s exhilarating most of the time, and just a little tedious sometimes. Roofing during the summer in Phoenix is work. Plucking chickens on a conveyor belt in a refrigeration room is work. Innovation is feeling alive, engaged, and at play with the Universe.
6. Creativity doesn�t need your support group. Creative little girls don�t notice that they are girls unless you point it out, and the smart guys they hang out with don�t care that they are girls if they can keep up with the fun. Creative minority kids know they are smarter than you are, and don�t care if your tests don�t show it. Adult innovators are not interested in banding together to insist on their rights, even when they should, and are pretty bad at pleading their case with the public or worse, their elected representatives.
7. Creativity doesn�t need creativity training, problem-finding skills, or thinking skills. Creative people already have those abilities. Creative kids want facts and skills, and they want them now. Whatever their passion is, they want to memorize every fact about it, whether it�s frogs, video games, prime numbers, or rocks. Just because you hate to memorize stuff doesn�t mean everybody does. So please just suggest the right Google terms and show them how to use the 3-D printer or rock polisher, how to tune the guitar and find the tabs and get out of the way. The only barriers for adult innovators are time and money. Some of the technology they need is very, very expensive and it does take time, lots of time alone to think things out.
All right, that�s enough for now, and as much as anybody can remember without chunking. Now, if you still think you want innovators � and believe me, everything in American education and government policy would indicate otherwise � then there is a lot of work to be done, with parents, schools, and workplaces. Because at this point, we are turning our lots of friendly, sociable, collaborative kids who work hard, but dully; who believe effort is more important than excellence; who have never had an opportunity to develop an enthusiasm of their own on their own, and who wouldn�t dare to have an original idea. Nice people. Industrious people. Service workers. Isn�t that really what you wanted from American education, after all?
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