by Michael Josefowicz

Created on: November 19, 2008   Last Updated: April 27, 2012

An operational definition of creativity is the ability to make new connections between ideas or stuff. The evidence of creativity is observable behavior. It could be a poem, a solution to a math problem, dancing a new dance. In education, creativity without observable behavior doesn't matter. Nor does it matter to see observable behavior without knowing the process. Giving back what has been given is not creativity.

American schools have a problem. For the first time, they are being asked to graduate creatives. Our economy desparately needs young people who can think and know how to learn. The irony is that our schools were never designed for such a difficult task. High schools were invented in the late 19th century. Their purpose has been the same until the world became flat.

American schools grew in the service of teaching farm kids to work in factories. The rigid schedule, the chalk-and-talk lessons, the jail-like atmosphere was/is perfect training for getting that lifelong factory job or to become an organization man. As time passed, the sorting function was added. Tests, tracks and unequal resources worked well to sort. The "smart ones" succeeded. They usually got great scores on their SATs and off to college.

Meanwhile, most of the available evidence seems to indicate that "education" has little added value on a national scale. In a recent article by Norman Nie and Saar Golde at Miller-McCune they say:

"Public debate has been dominated by the belief that education builds human capital, causing increased income, health and political participation, among many positive outcomes. But new research suggests that costly expansions of education may not always bring the promised social results. In some cases, those expansions may do little but sort people according to their native ability."

The heart of the problem is not bad students or bad teachers or bad principals or not enough money. At its root, it is a design problem. If schools are not designed to produce creative children, they won't. To produce something else, they must do something else. The good news is that many are starting to do just that - something else.

Creativity is learned by making mistakes. Getting it right is nice, but learning doesn't happen when it's right. To encourage the creative, students need a quiet, clean, well-lit, protected space to make their mistakes. They need the time to mull and explore. They need the stuff and the skills to manipulate so they get to present those new combinations - most of which will be mistakes.

Then they need a teacher who gets it. The job is to help the student understand why it is a mistake, then suggest different approaches to getting it done. Encouraging mistakes is not good practice for a factory job or a corporate job. But it is the best practice for learning what is needed to live a good life and to make a career in a globalized world.

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