5 WAYS TO ENCOURAGE KIDS TO GROW UP TO BE INNOVATORS
Gwen Moran ; fastcompany.com
In a world where children are discouraged from being innovative and taking risks, how do
we raise the next Steve Jobs?
It’s not easy being a kid today. They face shifting curricula requirements, a strong
focus on standardized test results, piles of homework, and a seemingly never-ending
quest for achievement in everything from academics to sports.
Wagner is an innovation education fellow at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center
at Harvard University, and founding executive director of Engaging Schools, a Cambridge,
Massachusetts, nonprofit that helps schools inspire enthusiasm for learning in students.
He says a narrow definition of what it means to be a successful student—including too
much emphasis on teaching for standardized tests—is creating a situation where children
will have difficulty being innovators later in life.
The research for Wagner's bestselling book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young
People Who will Change the World, has revealed some troubling dynamics.
"The average child asks 100 questions a day," he says. "But by the time a child is 10 or
12, he or she has figured out that it’s much more important to get right answers than to
keep asking thoughtful questions."
How do we support these creative finger painters in ways that will help them succeed as
innovators later in life? Cultivating these five key principles is an excellent place to
start.
1. PLAY
Wagner says a child’s innovative framework is strengthened when teachers bring a sense
of play to the curriculum; taking offbeat approaches and making whimsical connections to
the course material, he says.
One of the most important patterns he has observed in successful teachers is they make
learning fun. He says when students feel that every aspect of their learning is "dead
serious," they become afraid to take chances and think creatively—opting instead to
think in less risky ways.
2. CURIOSITY
Five years ago, kindergarten teacher Melissa Butler and Carnegie Mellon University
resident artist Jeremy Boyle began working together to find out whether it was possible
for young children to innovate. The two founded the Children’s Innovation Project, a
nonprofit that fosters innovation and creative thinking for students in the Pittsburgh
public school system.
The program allows children time for play with various technology-related materials, and
engage in a variety of individual and team projects. Observational drawings develops
awareness and attention to detail, so these exercises create greater understanding and a
desire to learn more, Boyle says.
"Whenever we can help children find connections between multiple things, they become
more curious about how they all work together," he says.
3. PASSION
In conducting interviews with hundreds of innovative people for his book, Wagner also
found innovative people were shown how to connect their passion to success. The best
teachers and parents always supported what the students’ passions and natural
curiosities were, and made an effort to connect what needed to be learned to satisfy
that curiosity.
They let children choose the subject matter they wished to study or design their own
investigations to learn more. This connected success leads to a larger purpose—
children’s individual motivations and interests, he says.
4. FEARLESSNESS
Among the key outcomes at the Children’s Innovation Project so far have been increased
fearlessness, especially when it came to taking risks and trying new ways of doing
things, Butler says. Children also became better at creative problem solving. Butler
says she thinks it’s important to shift the focus when praising children if we want to
foster more innovation.
"I think parents and communities and schools do a disservice to children when they say,
‘You’re smart,’" she says. "If you tell a child she or he is smart, then that’s all
there is, but if you can name effort as the thing that you want to encourage, effort
creates ability."
5. PURPOSE
Wagner says having a greater sense of purpose was important to innovators. The teachers
who had the greatest impact talked about the importance of doing something to make a
difference, rather than to just get a good grade.
Having a greater sense of purpose makes finding solutions more urgent. This gives
innovators greater incentive to take risks, and look for new methods of solving
challenging issues.