According to Newsweek, the United States is in a creativity crisis. TIME reports that today’s students are less tolerant of ambiguity and have an aversion to complexity. And The Futurist suggests that the biggest challenge facing our children is their inability to think realistically, creatively, and optimistically about the future.
Article by Laura Seargeant Richardson
.
As Tim Draper voiced in the documentary 2 Million Minutes, “America is the one country that doesn’t seem to recognize that it is in competition for the great minds and capital of the world.”
.
During my keynote speech at MIT’s Sandbox Summit last year, I suggested that “Play is the greatest natural resource in a creative economy.” In the future, economies won’t be driven by financial capital or even the more narrowly focused scientific capital, but by play capital as well. I predict the countries that take play seriously, not only nurturing it in education and the workforce but also formalizing it as a national effort, will quickly rise in the world order. This is not Twister in the boardroom. Rather, it’s what Jeremy Levy, a physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, would call “a highly advanced form of play.”
.
To reap the rewards of these abilities, we must set aside the myth that play and work are two separate things. Play should be our greatest work, as it is the biggest driver of innovation. Innovation companies today don’t ask and don’t care about basic skills, grades, or SAT scores—instead, they want to know if you can brainstorm all the possible uses of bubble wrap. This falls under what I would call a MacGyver Manifesto. We must pair the practical application of our learned knowledge with the inventive use of these abilities to solve challenging problems
.
Which is why I will teach my daughter to add with colors as well as numbers. While other children may learn to sew, she will also be taking the machine apart. She will not only be introduced to the traditional periodic table, but the other valid versions we are never taught in school—and then make one of her own. I will tell her there are no SATs for the presidency, and that you can’t solve oil spills with multiple-choice answers. If everyone expects her to be a superhero, then she will have the superpowers to be one. In the end, it comes down to a simple but foregone conclusion: The future favors the flexible.
.
—
.
Also of interest in the context of this article is Stuart Brown’s presentation at a TED Talk series a few years ago:
.