Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Innovators.....This is sooo worth reading!

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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A fun, fun read. A good deal of it seems to be partially true.

Applauding loudly as I ROFL

Of course I am forced to give the opinion of the cotenant of an unkind, antisocial PG minority girl particle physicist/horticulturalist, who doesn't need thinking skills despite her ill-balanced skill set, its due weight.

I just don't think it's true. Funny, yes. But I don't think those skill sets are mutually exclusive.

DeeDee

Yeah, I agree.

I especially don't think that point #5 is true. In fact, I can see the ideas there as stifling innovation, in that they could induce feelings of inadequacy when executing a cool idea turns into actual work (and the innovator isn't having fun).

I'm creative, and for me at least, there's a lot of hard work involved in getting a new idea off the ground. Thinking or talking about the idea is fun, but executing isn't necessarily so. For example, writing, say, IRB documents or a research plan is NOT fun. It's hard work.

The result is extremely satisfying when things work out, but this isn't always the case.

As for point #3, I do best when I'm working out an idea with a small group of like-minded people. I find that the group interaction can have a synergistic effect on creativity if the members think alike in certain ways and complement each other in certain ways.

YMMV!

Val

Just look at Reese Witherspoon in Legally blonde. You can too be pretty, kind, and talented at the same time.

I agree with DeeDee. This made no sense to me. It bugs me when vague generalities are presented about creative or smart or any group of people as if they are factual. While #1 may apply to my brother, who does tend to be wickedly creative and also quite self-absorbed , there are plenty of innovators renowned for basic kindness and decency towards others. Maybe I'm just lucky, but the true geniuses I've been able to know personally have always been astonishing to me in their humility and decency. #2 and #3 are just bizarre. Innovators often rely on forming a cadre of folks who assist them, push them further, and help with aspects of a project. That often depends on social skills as well as finding a way to best use the skills of others needed for a major development.

In terms of being well-rounded, I always thought the major benefit of being PG was being able to do many things very well because so much less effort was needed to make all A's or whatever benchmark of success was used in other fields. Most of the folks I know who are truly creative and ridiculously successful at a given field could have done (and did) any number of other things and gave up music, chess, sports, physics, etc., at a late level (often after graduate school) in order to do the thing that brought the most success.

#5 states that creativity isn't hard work. I think creativity doesn't spring from chaos but rather from emergent properties from within a structure. If I think about Mozart, or Einstein, or Steinbeck -- these weren't yahoos playing music on tin cans but rather folks with deep training and deep understanding of the rules of their disciplines, who then went way beyond the traditional or typical using their own uniqueness and creative capacity. And finally, #7 baffles me. I find it so strange that someone could think creativity requires no training or work and thinking skills just show up spontaneously. I don't think the PG people in my life needed any repetition of stupid worksheets, but no question did math improve after AoPS training in thinking skills and problem-solving. Thinking skills taught the means to implement their creative ideas. Without the capacity to execute, they couldn't go anywhere with the thoughts. If creativity doesn't need training, I'd guess it hasn't been exercised at a high enough level yet to require discipline and work to create the outcome. The brilliant scientists I know still had to submit the R01 and grant writing is definitely work!

I've heard lots of generalities about PG kids and most of those didn't apply to the PG kids I know either. It's not necessary to have OEs, have difficulty socially, or have behavior issues to be PG. Some kids are just wicked smart and otherwise, quite pleasant, social, and eager to please adults and work hard. None of those other qualities say much to me about their learning or creative capacity, which can be quite extreme, even in kids who otherwise seem quite typical.

I thunk it's less of an opinion piece and more of PR publicity piece angling for tolerance and understanding for differences among the gifted species. �Supposedly, according to one of the few books I've ever read, in the old days they had a saying about the gifted called, "early ripe. �Early rot.". And everybody help a mental image of genius being sickly, pale nerdy weaklings. �It was the 1800's or something. �Some guy (I better look it up. �It is important) revolutionized the definition of giftedness by studying gifted kid's in California, who were social, tanned, active, athletic. �Now days it's all over the Internet some people are trying to counter that extreme stereotype, saying that achievement doesn't define giftedness.. �Blah, blah. It squashes the soul to train the kid's to produce and perform. This generation is bringing to light 2E geniuses with disabilities. �It's really trying to add more shades of grey to perceptions about giftedness. �This piece nicely illustrated one gray shade in that rainbow.

Of course, where this becomes a problem for the rest of everybody is that everything boils down to allocation of resources. � I get it when they say, you're so smart, make due with what you got. �Everybody else has more problems, less talent, and needs more help. ��
I get it when they say that's nice, but wasting our nations talent pool by not developing it will cost everybody more in long run in lost returns.
I get it when they say, wait! �Gifted kid's aren't national resources to be developed. They're kid's. �They're people. �they deserve to have their needs met just like everybody else, not just because they're worth something. �That's what I hear (read) parents of gifted kid's arguing for, even parents who's kid's may not be 2E and may even be high performing. �They wants gifted kid's needs met, based on need, not performance. �And that's the altruism behind that.

I think this piece was written about tolerance, resource allocation, and giftedness not being defined by performance. �And the writer did a good job with it. �Anyway, that's what I read into it. �

((I really don't think giftedness, especially creativity, is that delicate that you would squash it by teaching new stuff. �Jmo)). � (((I also am not sold on gifted classes based on personality rather than performance yet, at this point, as the best use of limited educational resources. �I do believe in providing resources if it makes a difference and actually let's a kid keep up in class, even a gifted class.)))�